Compost (Day 57)

After the Gardeners Gathering on Saturday and my planning adventures on Sunday, I wanted to keep my momentum going toward getting the season started off well. For me, as much as I of course need to plan around when and what to plant, everything begins and ends with soil. If you've got good soil, your errors in the rest can be more easily forgiven. If you don't have great soil, everything else needs to be perfect, and then you still have room for error.

And while biodiversity is absolutely important, I think good compost can also provide a strong boost. And since I consider myself something of a macrophage, I decided to give our compost piles a turn this morning.

I was pleasantly surprised to run into two of the other gardeners from our community garden who were also at the Gathering; in fact, they were presenters. We spent about twenty minutes running down the ways in which the city had changed and was changing, but as one of them said, we keep at it anyway because that's just how we're moved. Amen (and I don't say that lightly).

I surveyed our plot, and I was surprised again that we had fewer permanent landmark than I'd remembered. I did try to remove two "weed trees", but I think I'm going to need heavier equipment as well as a clear plan if I don't want to disrupt our lavender and saffron too much. Good. This makes it easier for me to plan where to place things.

 

Yeah, I know, this would be more impressive with a Before version, but I'm still proud

 

I spent the next 75 minutes (or so) moving compost from one bin to another, moving woody/stemmy things to one side, and moving matter from our staging area into our compost bins. It was work, and I *really* need to work out today so I can compensate for such uneven movements, but it was also fun and rewarding. Even the staging area, the first stop where our gardeners dump their unwanted plants and sometimes food, had really good looking soil under the woodiness.

I'll go back in a couple of weeks and do this again (if my husband doesn't beat to it; he's a little territorial about the compost). But whoever does it, we'll have good compost to help strengthen our soil--and grow food.

Deb in the City