Now that is a question I ask myself all the time. Several years ago before I really wanted a garden my husband had me set up a round wire frame and put all the grass clippings, leaves and dead foliage we had around the yard. Frankly I wasn’t interested in all that mess and it looked terrible in the corner of the yard and blah blah blah. Besides if we needed good dirt for our garden my father-in-law would give me all I needed. Well now Dad is almost 90 and has really slowed down a lot, but he’s still driving his back hoe and making compost. But not as much and am thinking now what do I do.
My husband out of no where ordered this magazine (I know everyone that has a garden knows about) Mother Earth News. Am impressed with the articles and the information they write about especially the making of compost.
Since I read the article on composting, I am hoping to start a new one-one that is easy for me to handle. After reading the article on “How to make compost” and the way they show you how to make it work, am starting one again. Quote “Compost is the ultimate ingredient for building fertile soil.”
They go on to say that composting is nothing more than guiding the natural process by which organic wastes decompose. And adding compost to your garden feeds the soil food web and provides a slow release of nutrients to your crop.
Quote “Most gardeners make compost by combining their kitchen and garden waste in an outdoor compost pile and waiting for it to rot. There is no need to buy special activators or inoculants, because each dead plant and bucket of food waste added to compost activates different strains of naturally occurring microbes that promote decomposition.
This article is too long to fully do it justice, so if you’re really interested in making compose, you need to go to the web site. www.MotherEarthNews.com
They show a variety of compost: The wire hoop form, an off the ground compost tumbler, a multi-bin composting setup out of repurposed materials, such as wooden shipping pallets and if you have critters that raid your compost you can use large garbage can with holes in the bottom, until they are ready to mix with other composting materials.
I will let you know what I finally come up with and that is easy for me to handle. If anyone has any easy to do ideas for composting let us know, since the rain is here I have a few weeks to plan what I think I want.
Preparedness Mom
All we do is pile it up over the warmer months and then bury it in a trench either before winter or during spring thaw. We also bury dirty straw with animal fecal matter in trenches around the same time. Each year we shift the location of the trenches and do it again. We try to do it in Fall so all the newly fallen leaves will rot in the ground over winter. Which I suspect also provides a warmer shelter for worms over winter. I have noticed that the plants in our garden have a tendency to send their roots pretty deep when planted over a trench from the last couple years. We do the trenches before we plow the garden.
I am aware of MEN, used to have a subscription. But I did not renew because their ultra liberal diatribe began to overwhelm what useful info was in the articles. Every issue there was another letter to the editor from a reader complaining about the diatribe and the editor would then attack (in some cases brutually) the reader for not agreeing with the heavy slant. I have since changed to Backwoods Home Magazine. BHM has a lot less advertising and does concentrate more on the subject of the article and not include a HUGE amount of political indoctrination.
Thanks, I will try Backwoods Home Magazine
Howard
You ought to try out the mag ‘Countryside & Small Stock Journal’ then if you want to prepare for SHTF check out ‘The Humanure Handbook’ JC Jenkins, gives alot of good info on composting even if you don’t want to put human manure in it. I’ve gotten sawdust and use it instead of litter and now compost all my indoor cats manure instead of sending it to the dump.
Good luck
Those are my 3 favorite magazines also.. they have Facebook pages and I know Backwoods home is online with many free articles to entice you to buy.. I also don’t care as much for MEN magazine as I used too.. You can pick up old issues cheap in bulk on Ebay and I buy new ones at end of year/one year old from the library sale for 5 cents each that helps overcome the agitation for me..
Oh also if you go on Facebook there are a couple other great pages like A Million And 1 Ideas, Homestead Survival, and Homesteading / Survivalism that are great places for information Homestead Survival has it’s own site too..