The Compost Heap!
Right, so little by little on weekend and sometimes when I feel super energetic after work, I have been working on my garden.
Aspire to grow vegetables in this garden and one of the best and most organic tools for a veggie garden is the compost heap! Not only do I have a place where I can throw the garden scraps, I also have a place to dispose of the non-meat kitchen scraps.
Indeed, in most households, we throw these kitchen scraps and the garden scraps get thrown into the dustbin for the trash collector or bagged up in black bags to go to the dump.
This is a serious kind of waste! Organic material, right in your home is ready for processing to be added to your soil so you can grow food! It is my considered opinion that every home habitat should have a place for composting.
In my case, I am lucky enough in the new home to have space for two heaps... when I eventually manage to build the second one.
The logic here is that once you have material added to one heap since kitchen scraps are something that is generated every single day, then you can stop and allow the compost heap to properly mature and then add your new material to the second heap.
Well, let's look at the process.
Our rental property includes a lucky score of a garden. Not only does it wrap around the building, but it extends behind my motor garage and the neighbor's garage. This means that I have this large area at the back that does not really have much utility.
There are trees that block the way through and there is no lawn there since there is not much sunlight here. It is a bit like a forest floor.
Here is a view of the now much greener lawn grass. This back area will actually mostly become a vegetable garden! Behind and to the right is that little area of which I speak. You can see my spade, pitchfork and garden rake standing against the wall.
As I trimmed the trees, I had a lot of scraps. These have been drying out slowly and I am going to cut them up and add them to the compost pile as brown material.
Here we can see the compost heap at the start. I actually had another place in the garden I started using as a compost more in the open. I needed the clear this space and then used some pallet and shipping wood to create a little enclosure. I will be making another box next to this one for that two stage action.
The wood is propped up by some bricks and then covered in dirt and makes for a sturdy earthwork construction. Haha. But really, nothing more is needed.
The bottom of the box is bare to the earth. This will allow worms and bugs to find their way into the heap and help with the breaking down.
It is a whole ecosystem right there. From bacteria, mites, insects all the way to the geckos and lizards that populate the garden. All and all, this machine will do well in breaking down all those scraps and everything in that food chain will benefit from that.
Great!
Here I have flipped the compost heap a few times with the garden fork. You can see a lot of material is starting to break down.
As I processed the branches, the pile was growing. Once I have the second heap up and running, I think I will need to split the existing heap so I have less to break down.
Here you can see I had a massive amount of plant material to chop up and get through. But I had help and recruited @aimeludick to help me out!
Various garden clippers, cutters and scissors were used to break it down. I also simply used my hands!
We made a lot of progress. What is leftover can almost just be raked out of the way and I can start to build the second composting heap enclosure.
But before I get started on that, I will need to do some trimming of the trees close to the pile. More about that in another post I guess.
Time to get ready for work and hopefully I can return to this little bit of work this afternoon!
Cheers!
@zakludick
Open pit composting, my Dad dug hole about 30 cm deep 2 x 3 meters next to a retaining wall. Filled with kitchen excess, paper, egg shells, thin layer of soil every so often. Would turn once a month always thin layer soil on top to hold down flies I think.
After a year would bring in farm manure to mix with compost leave for a week to settle then use into the garden and start again. An annual process. Healthy earthworms healthy compost!
@tipu curate
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That sounds amazing. I will need to look at my process and the soil thing. Makes sense with flies. I also add egg shells.
I just feel that people need to throw less stuff in the bin and make this kind of thing a normal household process.
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Stripping/shredding paper from old invoices or boxes also helps aerate the mound while decomposing kitchen excess, eventually only plastic goes into the trash bin.
Good kraal manure mixed in at the end, I tried bagasse from sugar plantations excess, that came with too many weeds. 😅
Good to know!
love a good compost heap :-) we are making ours too... soooooo much organic waste from our house. Turning it into soil to grow more veges.
good luck looks great
Awesome!
Yeah, I can't wait to get started and get my grow on!
Even though its autumn going on to winter, we have a temperate climate so it gets cold, just not snow cold. Just wet cold. So stuff still grows!
awesome!
👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Pee on there from time to time, uera back in the bio mass.
😁😄
Lol. Is that a bio-dome joke?
If we had space at home I'd surely build a compost. A heap is easier to make but it would attract a lot of animals here in our place. 😅
Mine is just in the backyard in the suburbs. Lol
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