Composting with Scott and Kalen

A rare post by Scott:

The other day I was working in the garden, and I noticed our compost piles were overflowing. I went to fetch my shovel and was quickly joined by Kalen, who is always eager to help. As Kalen and I shoveled fresh compost onto two empty garden beds, I felt the need to snap a few shots and spread the word about the ease and benefits of composting.

(As an aside, I just figured out that I posted the pictures in reverse order. My apologies.)

As vegans, composting is tad easier because every scrap of food can go into our pile. (Wondering what to compost? Click here.) We simply have a 5-gallon bucket on the back porch for food waste that eventually gets dumped on the compost pile by the side of the yard. (Note: I dump the bucket when it is full or when the bugs become annoying; but the bugs really only come in the heat of summer. That's when I put the bucket at the bottom of the deck. It is more tedious to get to, but Anna hates bugs.)

And that's basically it. We don't have a very complicated system, and it works beautifully. The pictures below explain the rest.

This is a shot of the garden from last week. The tomatoes in the back are still green and producing up top, even though the bottoms look like they've seen better days. The peppers are still producing and growing. The three varieties of squash were planted at the end of July. They've grown quickly with little attention. We've never planted a late squash before. I'm hoping this experiment works. So far so good.

This is another shot of the squash. We planted zucchini, butternut squash, and spaghetti squash.

Kalen being a clown. Nothing new about that.

The soil has a layer of compost on top. Notice how dark and rich it is.

We have two compost piles. When one side gets full we let it sit and then use the other side. This picture below is the active pile right now, the one we dump scraps in daily. There are weeds we've pulled, banana peels, rotten tomatoes, straw, various food scraps, and grass clippings.

Here are the two piles side by side. By the spring, the pile to the left of Kalen will look like the pile he is digging in.

Kalen is a good helper. Really. Not like, "Fine you can help," but then just give him busy work to make him think he's helping. He actually gets in there and does what I'm doing. And he does it well.

These are the two beds we covered. Anna planted seeds in this space the other day. She planted lettuce, chard, kale, turnips, and radishes.

I made the compost frames with garden timbers that were in the backyard when we moved in. I cut them using a hand saw and bought some long nails to fasten them together. Not a professional job, but it works. Now, I will use a pitchfork to turn the pile on the left over a few times before spring arrives. There is a little labor involved, but not much. And the value compost has on the garden is priceless.