Can You Dig It?

Not everyone gets excited about a pile of organic matter, but I do.  Let me explain by first telling you I am a lazy composter.  I don’t turn or aerate my pile, I simply dump more garden waste on top.  A well-tended compost pile will produce results in just a couple of months, but by my method of benign neglect, plant matter takes its own sweet time to decompose.  Each spring, the pile will have last fall’s debris sitting on top, still intact, but I dig in from the sides to uncover the dark, crumbly “black gold” hiding below.  Recently, I got curious as to how much finished compost was still hiding under the top veneer of detritus, so I decided to remove anything that still looked like a stem or leaf and reveal what remained.  What I found was a mountain of glorious stuff.  At almost three feet high and fifteen feet long, I discovered the mother lode of well-aged compost, just waiting to be used.  Like almost anything else homemade or homegrown, backyard compost is better than money can buy.  In economic terms, I was suddenly the Michael Bloomberg of the flower-growing set.

Not all gardeners have joined the church of the compost pile, but those who have believe in it with some fervor.  While I banish pet waste, meat scraps, or diseased plants from my pile, I do add eggshells and vegetable scraps from the kitchen.  My town doesn’t offer curbside pick-up of leaves (we don’t have curbs), but even if it did, my leaves would still stay home in my compost pile, or get chopped up for leaf mulch.  Composting on-site reduces the amount of fossil fuel it takes to haul raw organic wastes away and then haul finished bags of compost home to the garden.  It saves money and eliminates plastic packaging, too.  But the righteous feeling you get making your own compost pile pales in comparison to the compost itself.  I know what’s in my compost and what’s not.  There is no pesticide residue or heavy metals.  There is no plastic trash, or other junk either, unless that pair of secateurs I lost three years ago turns up.  There are also no invasive jumping worms, a rising concern not only locally but nationwide.  Using your own compost is a lot like knowing where your food comes from.  It feels nice.

I’m going to spread my compost wealth around the garden in a few different ways.  Primarily, I’m adding a few inches across my raised beds to benefit next year’s dahlias and vegetables.  I won’t use it to start seeds (since I can’t be entirely sure it is pathogen-free), but I will mix it with pine or hardwood bark to make a potting mix for older plants.  If I get ambitious next spring, I’d like to renovate a perennial border, and after the old plants come out, compost will go in.  Money doesn’t grow on trees, but free-for-the-making compost encourages the trees to grow better.