I recently trade an article toSelf - Reliance Magazineand I seethey’ve now shared it on their site :
Melon Pits, Sheet Composting and Compost Tea
As an utter cheapskate , I ’ve spend much of my sprightliness find ways to re - utilize and stretch everything I own . This definitely extend into the gardening kingdom .
If you ’re like me , you ca n’t stand hurl away anything that might feast the soil . If you ’ve been have a go at it to snag bags of leaves from beside the road , or take household coffee grounds from the part for your roses , keep study , because I ’ve get some approximation for you on composting almost everything without progress a pile , buying a tumbler pigeon , tend worm , or measuring temperature .
compost does n’t have to be a full-grown heap . In its canonical form , it ’s just a process of rot nature has been performing for millenary without any assist from gardeners with pitchforks and thermometers . Sure , you may construct a compost pile , balance ratio , and work to get those fistful of black gold , but if you do n’t feel like all that hard employment , take a page from my book and popping stuff back into the ground in one of these ridiculously easygoing way .
Melon pits
One of my favourite methods for composting was cheer by Steve Solomon ’s book , Gardening When It Counts . In it he describes how Native Americans used to eat up their refuse and plant on top .
I ’ve done the same on my homestead with melons and had great results , hence the sobriquet “ melon pits . ” We ’ve planted squash vine , sunflowers , okra , and even Tree in our melon stone pit and all have done well .
To make a melon orchestra pit , just labour a 2 - 3 foot deep hole and knock down in full-bodied material such as fresh manure , kitchen scraps , whipping thriftlessness , ashes , and more . I also bury chunks of wood that will decompose into wet reservoirs . Cover up the pit and water well to verify the zephyr pouch are filled , then plant with the craw of your choosing . Squash and melons make great choices because they ’re usually implant on cumulus and set free to betray . I ’ve punched a hole in my grass , satisfy it with everything from old beef stew to poulet manure , then planted it with watermelons and had them spread luxuriously across my weedy lawn and have without any supplemental fertilizer and very little water .
This is a dead - simple pile - liberal way to get free of items that would be hard to compost conventionally or would be too hot for direct software to the garden . Just make trusted you bury items like meat well so they are n’t discovered by animals . There ’s nothing sadder than finding your vine attract up by inquisitive phalanger .
Sheet composting
Beyond distinctive mulches like wood microchip and straw , however , it ’s easy to incorporate a deal of “ waste ” materials from around the firm .
I prefer soil to mulch in my annual garden due to the diaphanous size of it of the space I garden . However , I am a big worshipper in mulching around the fruit trees and shrub in my intellectual nourishment woodland . To add fresh material to a mulched area is easygoing : just rake back a patch , dump in the novel stuff , then find with mulch …
