Well, first thing that comes to mind is that this method requires at least 8 inches of soil in your garden thats reasonably easy to dig - eg with out a pick and a pry bar.

I tried that one year, digging down the available 4 inches, but had issues with magpies and raccoons digging it all back up.

This year, I'm trying to surface compost stuff in the garden - heaped up a foot of weeds/vegetable plant residue, watered that, and then covered that heap-o'-vegetation with another foot of fresh grass clippings. I did that thursday/friday, and if this was going to work, by today that two feet of stuff should have shrunk down to about one foot of stuff. But it hasn't.

So I may end up with a real mess on my hands. This wouldn't be the first time that the '52 gardening theory and 52' gardening reality ended up being somewhat different.

For years I've sunk a 30 gal trash can with holes drilled in it, put in some dirt, then food scraps. Keeps the critters away. I'll bury carrot tops and clean green if I have a spot.

Dan

I've had the gardens and compost away from home for a long time but I've been known to wander about the yard with a posthole digger and plant stuff from the kitchen.

David, I have had to start every garden over the last 35 years where there has been no more than 8" of topsoil. The one exception was in the Palouse where I had no idea how deep the topsoil was! In fact, I had no idea how to garden there either. Could have manufactured brick . . .

These days, I mostly bury plant wastes in garden beds but I have one little place where it is quite shady and I have problems getting much water on the ground. It is essentially just like one of my garden beds except, I've been really loading it up with compostables - then digging that out in a few months to use the compost, elsewhere. Then, it is refilled and covered with soil/compost, I'm essentially making compost in a 5' by 10' by 10" trench.

I still have that little hole under my 4' by 4' step outside of the greenhouse (linked below). That thing has an insatiable appetite! Every year or 6 months or so, I dig it out a little, hide some stuff in the hole, cover it and . . . whatever I put in there just disappears!

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Where the heck it all goes!

I'm recovering from surgery and can't lift much, so this year I need to do something different - usually I haul all the garden waste down 150 feet to the two huge compost bins that rotate on a two year cycle, heap a years worth in one of them, leave that for a winter/summer/winter, then haul the contents all back up in the spring. The two year cycle means I don't have to turn the piles. There has to be a better way.

Ideally, I'd like to chop the plant waste up, leave it there, cover it with a good 4 inches of leaves/clippings, and then roughly stir that up with a bit of soil and leave it the winter - a few freeze/thaw cycles to break things up, but not get too far down - let the worms do that for me. Easier said than done.

Well, that was exactly the schedule I followed for about 12 years, David. I kind of lost the opportunity to have the large bins.

Trying to keep the neighbors happy, use every square foot reasonable, and still make use of the plant material - I started burying things. Then, I kind of happened onto the semi-subterranean trench composting.

I think topping the material you are layering out just with soil might be better. There's that shovel work again, tho'.

One thing I've been able to do with either this 20% of the trench at a time or harvesting 4 or 5 potato plants at a time with digging and burying plant wastes - it doesn't require more shovel work than about 30 minutes. Once or twice a week, I'm out there. Then after the frost -- I gotta dig out considerably more but I get help with that.

Steve

Steve,
I have done that, a lot. I am going to do some more of it this afternoon if it is not too windy. I have a "grave" ready to be filled (It's really a 16' by 4' raised bed built from cinder blocks on an eastern slope) I put several layers of feed bags in the bottom, add misc. compostables, grass clipping, duck pond slop, barn clean out, horse manure and anything else. Then I top all of that with the finished compost from the bin and wala, ready to plant. Next spring I will have to add about a foot more of compost, but it will be well broken down by then.

Billie

I bury stuff sometimes but often I don't seem to have any areas that I can use. Everywhere is crops, flowers or cover crops. In a sense I bury kitchen scraps once or twice per week. In the 2 bin compost system that I've been using whenever food scraps are added to the top of one pile material is taken from the other to cover it up. With plant waste I either use it directly as mulch or add it to the bins.

Posted by gjcore

I bury stuff sometimes but often I don't seem to have any areas that I can use. Everywhere is crops, flowers or cover crops. . .

Yep, that was my problem with using the posthole digger. I could keep up with the kitchen fairly well but harvesting just generated too much extra.

Here are some pictures of the partially excavated trench:

{{gwi:1222092}}

When I dug it out in June, I refilled the trench with compostables and covered that with compost & soil. After 3 months, I can't recognize anything other than a couple of sticks and some perlite from potting soil, apparently.

What I toss in and it is fairly compressed and about 10" deep:

{{gwi:1222094}}

What was tossed in 3 months ago, looked much the same. This is now 3 times that I've filled this trench.

Recovered with some to spare:

{{gwi:1222098}}

I used the "spare" in a growing bed. I could probably turn this trench into a growing bed but I'd have trouble with the water and it really only has sun early and late in the day. I think I'll just continue to use it for composting.

By the way, this mound will be completely level with the surrounding area by June of 2012. It may be mostly soil but it's pretty darn rich soil.

Steve