Growing

We came out of days and days of rain with the most glorious sunrise and the most perfect day for planting.  The garden is showing signs of life.  Many plots are planted with new seedlings and flowers and others are tilled and waiting to nourish whatever grows there.
Weeds are also prevalent after such an enormous amount of rain.  The dandelions were up to my knees and some of the crab grass was taller than me.  An afternoon of mowing, weeding, and painting and the garden is ship shape again.  Sunny days are in the forecast.  Time to get planting.

Compost, looking good!

Our garden compost system supports 48 garden plots.  It is made of recycled pallets and has been around for five years now.  We never thought it would last that long and I do think it will have to be replaced next year.  There are 6 bins, a row of three back-to-back with another row of three.  The bins are at various stages of decomposition.  Right now we have three bins of finished compost, black and crumbly and ready to be added to the soil.  We have two half-full bins that gardeners can put their garden waste into, and one bin that if totally full and cooking.

I have to say that it's not exactly "cooking."  We use a cold compost system.  That means that it decomposes slowly over a long period of time.  This method was chosen mainly because of it's ease.  We have very few compost-turning volunteers.

Every spring and fall we dig everything out and consolidate it.  We completely empty one bin, fill it with larger weeds, straw, and veggie waste.  We dump finer compost on top and the "almost finished" compost last.  As we're digging, we usually find finished compost at the bottom of the bins.  These get shoveled into the empty bins to be used in the gardens.

And the results are awesome...