Compost experiments update – 8 months

Last July, I started a couple of compost experiments. As I was using up one bin full of compost today (four heaping wheelbarrows full), I realized that these two experiments have been officially completed.

First, I spread partially-completed compost on my back garden as mulch last July. Since I put everything from our kitchen, absolutely everything organic (in the original dust-to-dust meaning of the word), into our pile, I was curious to see how quickly it would break down when finished as mulch. I was also a tad worried about the neighbor complaining about the not-perfectly-neat appearance of some of the larger bits. I’m happy to report no complaints (well, about the compost anyway) and also that the recognizable bits weathered away very quickly. I’m very happy with the rough compost as mulch concept, and did it again today.

Here is my baby grape vine, waking up from winter dormancy, with a fresh bed of compost mulch:

I spread it all in the back garden, fruit trees, elderberries, mountain laurel. I didn’t have enough for the entire garden, but most of it. Ours has to be one of the few companies that shreds and composts our old office documents. That’s privacy, folks. You can see some clumps of Starbucks coffee in there, too.

My second experiment is the one I’m really excited about. Eight months ago, I added a good bit of cotton fabric to my pile (see picture and explanation in the first post). I had almost forgotten about it, until I encountered a few scraps in the middle of the pile today. Just a few! Almost all of the fabric has broken down into small enough bits that I didn’t notice it among the other chunks. The few larger pieces that I did notice got tossed back into an active pile today for finishing. So I can confidently say that my fabric + coffee grounds recipe is a keeper. That’s good to hear because I’ll be starting work on some organic cotton canvas shopping bags for this year’s farmer’s market tomorrow (yay!).

So today was a good compost day. Now that we’ve been in the house for almost two years, we are really starting to create some materials flow. I pulled out the final bit of the fall garden and filled up one compost bin to overflowing:

The wheelbarrow is full of materials from my neighbor’s fence bed, to start the new active bin. I weeded and gathered leaves from her driveway. Ain’t I nice? She said if we move, she’s following us. Heh. Anyway, we’re still not a closed-loop system. I buy hay from the Feed and Seed to mulch veggies and to balance the greens in our compost piles. I also buy finished compost in bags (organic cotton burr compost) every time I plant a new crop. We just don’t make enough yet. I’m not sure we ever will, on this size lot. But the pace is definitely picking up. I’ll check in next spring and see if we hit a plateau.