Why do you compost?

Assuming you do compost, why do you compost?  Do you wish to avoid filling up landfills? Is it to have control over what goes in your garden? Does it connect with your frugal self? Do you like having worms for pets? Do you crave worm tea for your garden?

I was thinking about this as I dropped more wilted veggies into my little compost pile. I have stacked two 15 gallon pots, with something at the bottom to catch any compost drippings. For that, I use my trusty baster, stolen from the kitchen. Have no fear, know I'll get a new one for turkey day.  The earthworms are slowly migrating from the bottom pail to the top one, now filled with fresh coffee grounds, mushroom bits, broccoli peelings, egg shells, and carrot fronds.  Lovely stuff, not smelly at all. 

I'm getting quite attached to my worms; I think of them as my new pets.  It's a neat little ecosystem, ending with more compost for my garden. More control over what goes into my garden is appealing, as is the sense I'm putting less stuff into the landfills.

Composting is it's own quiet metaphor, the process of taking leftovers, unused bits of pieces normally ending up in the trash, and becoming food, home and sustenance of another process. 

I'm not sure what is the most salient reason why I compost. So many ideas and desires all in one.  It makes me wonder why others compost.

 

Successful Santa Monica garden sharing

Glad to see the Los Angeles Times blogging about Santa Monica's efforts to increase garden sharing, a mutal program setting up homeowners who are willing to open up their garden to someone who is interested in gardening.  This is critical especially since community garden spots are becoming rarer than hail in Santa Monica. I know this well since I was on the community garden list for a plot for over 10 years.

Ellu Nasser, a farmer's daughter from Oregon, moved here five years ago and has been on a waiting list to get into Santa Monica's Main Street Community Garden since then. About a year ago, she signed up for the Santa Monica Garden Share program instead, which matches willing homeowner with landless gardener -- an arrangement that has worked well in Britain, where the idea originated, and in the Pacific Northwest

You can get more information directly about Santa Monica's program on garden sharing.

Cheers to my hardy volunteers

If I didn't sow any seeds, I know I would have a large mountain of volunteer nasturtiums and pumpkin plants, sure to overtake the other plots around me. By the way, know this is not a way to become popular and well-liked in a community garden.

In the center my plot would sprout a humongous tower of nasturtiums, flowers waving gaily at everyone. On the sides would be the volunteer pumpkins.

Here are two that grew over this summer, despite the wet and cold weather we endured that we euphemistically called 'summer'.

 

A spotlight on Southern California community gardening

Woohoo! The LA Times will be covering the community gardening scene in Southern California, devoting a weekly column on their newsite and paper. Here is the first piece.

More than 70 community gardens dot Los Angeles County alone, some dating back more than 30 years. Even the L.A. Community Garden Council isn’t sure about the total because some gardens are growing under the radar.

In the months to come, I’ll be blogging here on Southern California’s community gardens -- the people, the plantings, the gardening conundrums, the expert solutions. Bookmark L.A. at Home and look for my new posts every Wednesday as I bounce from community to community, meeting gardeners such as Milli Macen-Moore at the Milagro Allegro community garden in the northeast L.A. neighborhood of Highland Park.

If you are interested in the community garden scene, please be sure to check it out.

How do you compost?

I bring this up because I have been surprised to find how satisfying it is to keep a compost pile. It's easy to do especially if you are fortunate to have garden space. Besides, what else will I do with my cucumber peelings and wilted lettuce leaves?

Know it's been quite a frugal adventure so far on my part. I dump my wilty leaves, eggshells and chard rinds saved from the kitchen into one cracked 15 gallon bucket set in a quiet spot in my garden. I keep it covered with a heavy clay top, necessary to keep the neighborhood riff-raff out.

It didn't take long for the earthworms to find my compost, probably crawling in through the crack in my container. Since my compost pile evolved into a worm composting setup, I no longer worry about the temperature of my pile or how much browns and greens I have added. I feed my worms regularly with kitchen scraps and eggshells, occasionally the egg carton torn up.

Every few months when I do new plantings, I 'harvest' some of my compost for the soil. I take the top of my compost pile, which is really a clay top, dump all the newer stuff out, and dig out the stuff at the bottom.I find whatever it is down there to be swimming with earthworms.

 

The oldest stuff goes into my garden to start the new plantings. I throw back the stuff I pulled out into bucket.

I'm happy. I 'grow' my own compost, I have a use for my headed-for-the-trashcan greens, and my earthworms must be happy because they multiply faster than rabbits.

I must be in sync with the LA Times dry garden lady because she just wrote about composting here.

Spread burlap near the bin. Using a pitch fork, empty the still-cooking mass of unfinished recent additions onto the cloth, taking a short break to allow various creatures involved in the decomposition process to recover and retreat. As you pause, cuss. Curse the designers of these contraptions and every blithe garden writer who ever extolled one.


Stop moving the half-digested compost to the burlap once you reach finished compost. That it is done to perfection will be evident to the eyes, fingers and nose. It will be almost black. It will crumble to the touch. And it will be headily sweet-smelling.

Start scooping this finished compost into a wheelbarrow.