Composting

Composting can be a tricky thing. There's a specific "recipe" or ratio of carbon (leaves, twigs, brown stuff) to nitrogen (grass clippings, food scraps, green stuff) in which you must layer your compost pile, add water, turn it several times, keep it well mounded so that it heats up (literally the temperature will rise) during the process of breaking down the matter into compost. I decided to try this with some rotating composting bins that I purchased on amazon and I had really high hopes for them. I thought this composting thing would be easy. I was wrong, so very very wrong. I never had enough carbon to add to the bins. I had lots and lots of kitchen scraps and I tried to use shredded newspaper as my carbon addition, but it was never enough. My compost turned into a gross slime and turning the bins was heavy and gross, it was full of palmetto bugs and gnats. It was a horrible failure. I tried for two years before I gave up.

So why am I telling you this, compost is still gardener's black gold. That's when I happened upon the worm tower. Here's my post telling you all about how to build a worm tower. After my first year, I will never go back to composting in any traditional way. All I do it throw my scraps into the tower, I even throw trimmings from the garden in there, leaves or sticks if I have any. Anything I would have composted normally goes into the tubes and I'm done. The worms come in, they eat, they go back into the garden and they poop. No turning, no spreading, no work. I will put up this disclaimer and say this is not really traditional composting as I point out in my follow up post. Most of the breakdown of the material is done by Black Soldier Fly Larvae rather than worms. The end result is the same, it's broken down into a usable form for plants. I won't split hairs because it's easy, low maintenance, and it works. Plus the kids love to "feed the worms." It absolutely embodies my mantra for gardening: Least amount of effort in, for the greatest gain out. Gardening that fits into my schedule not a schedule set by the garden.