Add this to your compost....
In my garden column in The Baltimore Sun today, I talk about composting with a Q&A on the basics with Mike Ather, who teaches composting for Gardener's Supply in Vermont.
His colleague, Kathy LaLiberte, has been with Gardener's Supply since its start 25 years ago, and she writes an advice column on the Web site.
In this one on composting, she talks about "trench" composting and "sheet" composting, in which you skip the entire compost pile step and add material directly to your gardens. She says it is ideal for kitchen scraps but best suited to a vegetable garden.
On Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter, I can be found in my kitchen making soup from the farmer's market largesse and generating a ton of vegetable scraps. The same is true at the holidays.
This year, I am going to walk right past my compost bin and go straight to the garden.
Photo courtesy of Gardener's Supply
Comments
Seems to me, I could dig a reasonable trench while I'm settling the vegetable garden in for the winter. Shouldn't be too hard to teach a GrandBoy how to bury scraps....
If you read the essay, trench is actually more work that sheeting...It requires that you actually move the bed into the trench area. And then create another trench area and move the bed again. Sounds like it would work great for vegetable gardens, not so much for borders. -- Susan
Posted by: Eve | August 20, 2009 1:58 PM
Your statement regarding adding kitchen scraps to the compost pile is not entirely correct,. In Baltimore County, MD, its residents are not allowed to add kithcen scraps. Per a private contact with the Baltimore County Bureau of Solid Wastes, re the use of a composter, I was told that in Baltimore County, that this practice is not allowed by its residents mainly to control the rat population.
Posted by: Mel | August 23, 2009 10:03 PM
Mel, my understanding is that you can add kitchen scraps to an enclosed compost bin in Baltimore County as long as you have those special composting worms in the bin as well. I'm wondering if there will be worm police checking on that.
LOL. I will be making anonymous calls to police!!!! -- Susan
Posted by: Dahlink | August 24, 2009 4:45 PM