compost: 1 year later

Remember when I was trying to make compost? It was around this time of year in 2009 and I raked all the leaves in my parents' back yard together. Then I put them in a big barrel and crushed them up with a weed whacker.

 

Yeah, so not all of them got pulverized, but enough did to do the job.

Then I made some catchalls for the leaves and layered the leaves with some dried grass clippings.

 

They look a little sloppy, but I was recycling that chicken wire and it wasn't that malleable. 

There were four of them in all.

It doesn't look like a lot, but that's about eight to ten big brown lawn refuse bags worth of leaves. They take up way less space when shredded.

So after all that work, I sort of forgot about it. Every once in awhile, we'd put in some kitchen scraps, but once it snowed, going all the way back into the corner of the back yard seemed like a lot of work. Come springtime, the compost had reduced down by about 75%, but I still didn't see any "black gold" that was supposed to have happened. It might have if I had turned over the compost as I intended. 

But this year, as we were raking the leaves (the weed whacker wasn't working so I didn't try to compost them, which is too bad because there was a pile about the size of my small sedan), I went back to check on the compost. 

The contents of my chickenwire bins had reduced to a small mound on the ground. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but IT WAS REAL COMPOST! IT WAS GREAT! All soft and coal black and full of nutrients! Just like the book had said! I was so excited! So we cleared out the dead stuff from the garden and spread it all over. I'm not sure if that was the best thing to do, but I didn't want to forget about it again. 

 

 If it doesn't snow this week, I'll go out and add a picture.