The compost box as still life. It looks almost good enough to eat. Tuck built it out of pressure-treated pine years ago. If you put out the scraps, the microbes will come.
Think of the poor starving Chinese. Look at all the fruit and vegetable matter we toss out daily to the compost box behind the house. We used to worry about our carbon-to-nitrogen or brown-to-green ratio, mixing in just the right amount of dried fall leaves and ashes from the Franklin stove with the kitchen scraps, but now we just throw in whatever we have throughout the year. The mixture always seems to decompose enough that we never run out of room. Once a year Tuck empties the box and teds the green with the brown. In spring and early summer, he uses it to mulch the gardens. The plants love it.
Also a great nursery for spiders (note remnants of cocoon silk on lid).
Note sprouting potato upper left, onion parchment center and Ailanthus rachis right, all set upon a bed of lettuce, banana skins, carrot bits and lemons. The great chain of being in our own backyard.
I don't see any cough evidence of coffee grounds.
About a year ago a good friend bought a book called LASAGNA GARDENING. A little later she proclaimed that it has transformed her life and she was now determined to become the Queen of Compost. She's since hooked two other people on the composting practices described in it. All three describe the results as astounding, and keep yammering away to me about what's involved.
The only thing I remember is the coffee grounds because I've tuned them out. (I'm thinking of paving my yard and painting it green.) You might want to check the book out, though.
Posted by: Doyle | February 19, 2005 at 05:06 PM