The Magic Compost Bin

I think we got our composter in August 2016. I’m not really sure. I usually write things like that down, but I either didn’t or just can’t find it. Not that the precise date matters. The earliest picture I have of our lovely compost bin was taken August 26, 2016.

Composter settled in nicely by the garden.

When we first moved into the new house, my husband made a do-it-yourself compost bin out of a large plastic trash bin. He drilled holes, and set it on a platform behind the garage, and it worked reasonably well. It did have a tendency to blow over when there were high winds, however. Somehow, we found out that County Stormwater Coalition had composters for sale at a discount price for county residents. We went and picked up one at a truly reasonable price, and never looked back.

A closer look at the shiny new bin.

Now, back when we lived on the mountain, we tried composting. When we had chickens, it worked well enough, but before that the climate was just not conducive to composting. It took forever to breakdown, and there was never much to spread in the garden. That seemed perfectly normal to me as that was where I grew up; in the land of weak composters.

Here things are different. There are actually worms here! I still celebrate a little every time I dig a worm while working in the garden (they were so very rare in the mountains), but the celebrations peter out around the tenth worm or so. This composter works so very well. It seems it can compost everything. Never has it been more than 2/3 full because everything breaks down so quickly, and we (meaning my husband) have only emptied it twice.

The first time emptying the compost bin.

The second emptying happened last week. It was a nice day, but I was working from home and stuck inside. My husband went out, emptied the bin, and cleaned up the garden as well. I had not put the garden to bed last fall so it was in a sad state. There was enough compost to spread over nearly two full raised beds. I’m sure that will make the veggies happy this year.

Out of the bin…

…and onto the garden.

 The compost bin is refreshed, reset, and ready for more green and browns. It was a job well-done, and I appreciate that my husband did it, though I am a tad bit sad that I couldn’t be out there working with him. But, there will be plenty more time for that as the season progresses.

One more shot of the compost bin, but mostly of the little deer who came to visit.

Putting the Garden to Bed

It’s been a strange autumn. We had a frost in early October then a snow storm and then 70 degree weather again. Then the weekends were rainy. So, it took me quite some time to actually put the garden in order for the winter.

The first hard frost was enough to kill nearly everything in the garden but it was a couple weeks before I could get in to clean up everything. It is always a bit sad to see everything suddenly brown when just a day earlier it was all brilliant and green. But it’s also nice to know that the growing season is done and it time for the next step.

I like to pull out all the dead plants in the fall. Some people let them stand and then till them into the soil in the spring. I like the look of a cleaned up garden bed so I pull everything out. Some of the dead plants I put into the compost bin. Some I leave on the beds. I don’t really have a scientific process for this. It just depends on what I feel like that day. For example, the eggplants, though they barely produced any fruit, set out deep roots. When I pulled the plants, a lot of soil came with them. So, I decided to leave the plants lying in the garden bed so I can shake some more soil off of them in the spring. The tomatoes, I removed to the brush heap in the back. Toward the end of the season the leaves got brown and spotty so I don’t want the plants lying on the soil. Similarly, when the fungus hit my chard and beets mid-season, I put the infected leaves out back. The lettuce, when I finally pull it will go into the compost bin.

Even as I type this, just days before Thanksgiving, the lettuce is still going strong. I was going to tear it out two weekends ago when I took care of the rest of the plants but a honey bee was working over the tiny lettuce flowers. The weather was so hot after I planted the second round of seeds that the lettuce came up bitter. But the plants looked nice so I just let them grow. Now I am pleased that there was something there for the little pollinators to work on later into the season.

Lettuce flowers

The strawberries got their straw and the asparagus got a good thick layer of maple leaves. Conveniently, there are a couple of maple trees near the garden so I just had to rake some leaves over and toss them over the garden fence. And even though it has been quite windy at time since I put the leaves down, the combination of the raised bed and the fact that it has fencing along two sides has kept the leaves in place.

Shh, the asparagus is sleeping.

So, for the most part, the garden is ready for its long winter’s nap.

And here are a few autumnal photos from around the yard.