Don’t Forget to Feed the Garden

My Summer garden, which seconds as a winter compost pit

So two days ago, as I was digging around in the garden I found my soil cultivator. It is supposed to be a 3-pronged metal hand tool with a green plastic handle. However, my garden has been digesting it for a while. About a year and a half ago I was out turning the compost in the pit I call my summer garden. For some reason I felt the need to have my cultivator to help me turn the leaves in the compost. I remember I had completed my project for the night in the unfinished compost and so I began looking around at my tools. I had my shovel, my rake, and… where was the cultivator? After searching a while for it I realized I had left it in the ground. I dug around for it and have made attempts to find it previously. Over time I had given up all hope of finding it– until yesterday. This is tangible proof that my garden gets hungry! Call the cultivator an iron supplement.

As an organic gardener I have come to the realization that my compost needs to be fed often. In order to make the most of my limited backyard space, each of my two gardens seconds as a compost pile in the off-season. For house compost, I dig a ditch and throw all the biodegradable goods in. Once each ditch is almost filled I cover it with soil. Then I dig another ditch for additional kitchen scraps. My wife calls them “offerings” to my garden – perhaps suggesting that I worship my garden- which I do not! I sometimes get bags of leaves or a pickup bed of manure to add to the mix and add bioactivity to the whole system. From time to time I productively expend energy and focus my frustrations by turning the compost. When a change in the season necessitates the use of the garden I am composting in, I finish covering all the compost in my garden bed then add a layer of some very finished compost or a mix of sifted dirt, vermiculite, and peat moss.



The cultivator  looked like the other  tools until the compost "digested" it