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Saturday, June 2, 2012

Sheet composting

My garden is to me what knitting is to my friend, Peggy. She finds God in the intricate ins and out of knitting needles, and I find God in the soil. Somehow, in the quiet, in the healing properties of the fragrance of dirt, there's something about creating space for God to grow something beautiful, and sometimes delicious! Having rich garden soil makes me happy. It's the foundation, the base, upon which everything grows better.

My co-gardener and neighbor, Jen, has added several timbers to her small shade garden to raise it up about a foot. We'll need 13.5 cubic feet of soil to fill it in, and she's priced it out at well over $100 just for soil to fill the 6'x6' garden. Top soil is the least expensive to purchase, but has no nutrients for yummy veggies. And then we remembered that there's a huge pile of grass clippings and plant scraps that we started a couple of years ago. We had every intention of making it into a nice compost pile, but it's really just a little dump to drop the excess yard and kitchen waste.We're running out of time, since it's the first week of June already. But we've decided to research a little and see what we can find out.

I read this article about sheet composting, which is really a better story about keeping a low maintenance garden. Hmmm...maybe it'll be a good idea.
But, what I think about sheet composting, is that we'll add in layers of those grass clippings and whatever broken down materials are actually in that compost pile, and amend the soil with that, in addition to the peat moss and maybe a bag of organic compost with manure, too. I've got to remember to bring over some worms from the other garden. They'll have a blast decomposing the new stuff. :)

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