Circle of life

While seeding my old country cabbages last week, I ran out of potting mix. So I finally had to face the somewhat gruesome task of turning the compost. Turning aerates compost and makes it rot faster and more uniformly. So in principle, it is a good thing. The more often you turn, the better. I hear the Prince of Wales has the compost heaps in his organic gardens turned every week, which gives him mature compost in three months. The key is, though, he doesn’t do it by himself. He has someone else do it for him. So I’m more a fan of the three heap method, where you fill one compost heap, let one rot undisturbed, and have one mature heap which you deplete. The problem is, three decent sized compost heaps would take up about one tenth of my entire growing space. So rather than give up that much space, I chose to just have one pile. I fill it with whatever organic materials come out of the garden, plus our kitchen scraps, and the occasional bag of coffee grounds from our friendly neighborhood coffee shop. Whenever I need new potting mix, or whenever I really really can’t squeeze any more in, I simply take off the top layers until I reach the stuff that’s decomposed, take that out, mix the remaining material, and refill the compost with it. It’s not pretty. Unless you have a morbid fascination with invertebrates and funghi, the circle of life is one of those things that are best left to themselves.