Eric’s uncle, Chad, once told us that the happiest tomato plant is the one that grows where a tomato was dropped on the ground. We believe whatever he says about our yard, because he's a farmer and does beautiful work. However, we had no idea the truth in this statement until just recently. I’ll start at the beginning.
One of the first goals Eric and I had as new homeowners was to start composting. We looked into a few options for the outside portion of the pile and settled on a barrel that sits on an axle, for ease in rotating. We had an experimental compost pile at one point when we lived in a rental house, but were a little lazy about turning it, and it ended up being just a bunch of rotting nasty under a piece of old carpet by the shed. Smelly. There are many other cheaper options out there, but since we actually own our home, we opted for a mobile and relatively easy option.
Suncast Plastic Tumbler Composter, from Lowes
The compost bin is currently staked in the ground behind the garage. Which brings us to the next challenge - primarily, I don’t always want to run out into the backyard to put food waste into the receptacle. So, the long walk from the kitchen to the compost bin has a couple of stops along the way. First, I painted an old pot to keep in the kitchen. This thing is great for storing little scraps while chopping and prepping. I also purchase unbleached coffee filters and toss the grinds from the coffee maker in there - filter and all!
Compost pot, painted with acrylic paint and a waterproof sealant
The next step to the compost bin isn’t a proud step, but sometimes it is a necessity. If there’s a lot in the pot inside, or if it’s rainy, or if I’d rather not go all. the. way. out to the compost bin, I keep a bucket on the deck that serves as the intermediate resting place. It’s a good bucket. Originally for birdseed, with an attached lid flap. Really, it’s perfect for this purpose, and I’m keeping it out of a landfill. (Read: the afore mentioned are all excuses for being lazy.) The only thing to keep in mind with this bucket is that there is no drainage, so if anything is in there for too long it gets really nasty...
… not that we have any experience with that, or anything.
(Fingers crossed that you can't tell just how gross this is right now.)
Final stop, the compost bin!
We had a bit of trouble when we first started our pile. It was super slimy and things were taking a long time to break down in there. And the bugs… I won’t get into it too much. But, they were maggot-ie. Ew (also kinda cool, but ew). So we brought in our consultant Chad, who kindly informed us newbies that our pile was nitrogen heavy, and we needed more carbon in that thing. Now, we think of the balance as green and brown. The green stuff is the stuff that comes from the kitchen, mainly fruit and veggie scraps. The brown stuff is the stuff that comes from outside: grass clippings, sticks, leaves, etc. As far as guidelines for what goes in from the kitchen, I learned a little jingle when I was in elementary school that helps. (Ahem)
Recycle, reduce, reuse,
Take care with what you do
Stewardship will save our earth
Go out and spread the news!
Turn trash into compost
Fruits and veggies make the most
Stewardship will save our earth
But don’t throw in the toast!
Now, it might not be top-shelf compost we’re mixing here, but we put in just about anything that grew from the ground and didn’t have something processed added to it. Plus unbleached coffee filters. Which means that last winter we cleaned up our fall gourd collection, mixed them with fall leaves, and had a real compost delight!
Flash forward to spring and prepping the garden beds for planting. We never got around to planting a cover crop over the beds for the winter, so Eric was particularly anxious to get started on mixing in our brand-spanking-new compost with the existing soil.
Bare beds, eagerly awaiting a compost treat
Then we planted radishes, lettuce varieties, carrots, and some other stuff. “But what other stuff?” you might be wondering. I can’t tell you, because Eric is very anti-labeling in the garden beds, and he forgot what he planted. After a few weeks of ritualistic watering, we noticed lettuce sprouting. And radishes were sprouting. And also these other baby plants with two leaves were popping up all over the place. The aerial view of the things looked like those wooden ice cream taster spoons, only teeny and green. Assuming that the taster spoon seedlings were a grass varietal, we pulled most of them out. But what about the experimental ones that we left behind? Today they look like this:
These bad boys are blooming every morning when I head out for school, right around the bumcrack of dawn...
... and they've closed up by the time I arrive home!
Holy pumpkin, Batman!
That’s right, pumpkin vines. Or gourd vines? I’m sure that a quick Google search would provide answers, but right now I’m enjoying the mystery of thinking that these successful plants are the product of a tumultuous journey. From Halloween Jack-o-Lantern, to rotting behind the garage for a couple months, to entering the compost bin and falling in love with another squash seed and ... you know. Which means that this vine will grow a very rare, very special cross-breed of decorative gourd.
So, there you have it. Lesson number one in Porchology: the happiest mutant gourd plant is the one that grows out of last year’s decorative gourds hanging out and making choices in the compost.
Also, still thinking about how this lesson can be applied to life in broader strokes. It's in there, somewhere...
Until next time!
-K
