I have to agree about compost volume. I just can't generate enough of it to make a dent in my garden.

BUT I do buy 12 tons of hay for my horses every year, and harvest whatever manure I can out of the corral for the garden. Where DOES all the unharvested manure go? I have to wonder. There should be literally tons of it.

I like the idea of green manure crops - but also have to wonder how it balances out. The plant takes materials from the soil to grow, and then gives back some of it when it dies. Does it give back more than it takes? How does a gardener ever catch up and bring things back to balance??

But truly I don't want balance. I want to get ahead - I want the soil to be rich in a way that technology and space age fertilizers can't achieve. Is it possible?

Cheers,
Michelle

So, Digit, I'm confused? Where did all the compost stuff you buried under the step go? I guess that's you're subject line and you're wondering the same thing huh! It decomposed but didn't make any difference in the soil under the step? Maybe something ate it?

I seem to be too impatient to wait for it to turn into compost and end up buying some bags of it every spring.

I used my un-decomposed pile this year as the bottom layer of a few lasagna beds on top of wet newspaper. There were some old Halloween pumpkins that we composted and I could barely keep up with pulling the renegade seedlings in the lasagna bed. I let a few sprout and they've taken over. I do have seven huge pumpkins though, three of them pretty darn big, from the runaway seedlings.

I think I'll finally take my neighbor up on the offer to wheel barrow some of the horse manure from the horse that rents his barn across the street. I'll just throw it somewhere out of sight. Well, he only offered because I asked:)

I've still got to find a way to get that darn wasp nest out of the compost bin. Today I threw some worm eaten cabbage leaves in there by carefully opening the lid, chucking them in there and running as fast I could away from it. I could see the wasps swarming around angrily from afar.

I think I read somewhere that the organic matter ends up at about 10% of its original volume after about a year (faster in hotter areas). I know that I piled grass clippings and leaves to a depth of about 3 feet last fall and it was only about 6 inches deep by this spring. I'm not sure how much is there now because I can't see through the pumpkin plants (all volunteer and so thick that nothing else was able to compete). If the grass and leaves ended up at 1/6 the volume over a couple of winter months, I can easily believe the volume will reduce much more given a bit more time.

BPGreen, don't bother to look - those leaves and clippings are no longer under the pumpkins.

Under the step, Charlene, maybe the earth worms all grabbed a quick snack and went back to the lawn nearby. If it hadn't been for some plant's roots (looks like a snapdragon) one would have no idea that I'd buried 4 five gallon buckets of rotting stuff in that small patch of soil beginning 24 months ago.

Michelle, I'm a believer in the value of roots. It rather fits with the green manure idea, also. The roots are the last plant parts to rot away. While alive, they absorbed moisture but that continues as they decompose. What do they call that vascular tissue? Roots give the gardener a chance to "get ahead" of the entire process since many species just donÂt seem to entirely rot away over the course of a growing season unless our gardens had considerably more months of warmth.

I once used the posthole digger method to utilize those fast-rotting peelings and such from the kitchen. I like that approach conceptually but personally, do NOT like the posthole digger (AKA the most hated tool on the farm).

Owners of large hay burners or their neighbors across the road are to be envied. Have you ever notice that the horse even piles the manure around the edge of the corral simply because of its generous nature and as a further aid to the gardener?

d'S'

I think the bugs ate it all, which is why I try to never hang out under a step.

I took out a huge area of raspberries which was not producing and clipped the waste into semi-small portions. I showed my boyfriend how tiny the pile of clippings was compared to how gigantic a space it took up as a shrub. He said, "Wow, that much? That is a lot of clippings." No! My point was that it was a teeny tiny pile of waste that took up much less space etc... Oh, well. It is even smaller now. All my piles of yard waste are shrinking. Since the composter is near full, I am thinking of using my clippings to cover delicate plants for winter. I guess I need to keep clipping stuff down for the piles keep getting smaller...
A gardener's work is never finished, is it?!

Didn't you realize there are little ceramic gnomes that wait until you go beddy-bye every night and sneak over to the compost pile and carry it off to their secret place.

Gee, I thought everyone knew that! ;)

hehehe I knew that!

Really! Bugs! Gnomes! Really!!

Heck's fire . . . the world sucks, we're all doomed! It's no use to even TRY to make compost anymore!!

When I'm not soooo depressed, I'll tell y'all about my green manure days but right now . . . . everything is sh**!!

digitS'

Okay, I'm better this morning . . .

Years ago when I didn't feel that I needed to wring every ounce of production out of the gardens that I could - I would be raising Winter rye at this time of year as a green manure crop.

What I found was that if I could follow ALL Spring crops with rye and get the seed planted sometime before August 1st and then pull it after May 1st, the rye would be 3 or 4 feet tall. I could plant it anytime in August and it would still grow and survive the Winter. And, I could pull it in April but if I planted, say, mid-August and pulled it mid-April . . . well, I couldn't pull it, the rye plants would be too short.

Pulling it was also a part of this process because I was cultivating in the Spring the same as I did in the pictures above. Waist-high annual rye with copious roots made an impressive pile of organic matter in the bottom of the bed. I needed to remove a bit more soil than 8 inches to get it sufficiently buried.

The plants growing on that bed did wonderfully thru the Summer. When they were pulled and the bed excavated, there was always plenty of the roots and the lower stens of the rye plants still apparent at the bottom of the bed - multitudinous worms also!

Nothing more needed to be done with the bed the following Spring.

What I could do, was plant Spring crops followed by Winter rye in one-half of the garden each year. It would need to be precisely one-half, because the result would be continuing levels of organic matter somewhere close to the maximum in the soil throughout the garden. I realize that the rye would decompose quicker if it was left on surface and mixed with other compostables, turned, etc. However, the beds still required cultivation and I used to do a lot of that work with a shovel.

Currently, the shovel and I are very distant acquaintances. I just cannot move weight at the end of a stick to any extent. It is way too hard on my messed-up back. I now even bruise my thigh by leveraging the shovel handle against it to lift the soil.

I don't know if I'm recommending this program or not. Spading is a rather aggressive approach to cultivation. The bed in the picture is just over 100 square feet - notice I didn't finish by refilling it with soil. That will wait for another day.

In the case of that bed - a Summer's growth of zinnias has replaced the scheme of using a Winter's growth of rye. The zinnias grow above 6 feet each year, even after weeks and weeks of cutting. If I simply dig out those beds after the first frost and toss the zinnia plants into the ground, that soil will have plenty of organic matter next year. The deficits of organic matter will occur elsewhere in the gardens but not in those beds.

So, where does it all go? Well, a lot of it doesnt go in the the compost pile. A lot of it goes right back into the bed in which it was grown. And, if its the right stuff, it is still there 12 months latter, retaining moisture, improving soil tilth, and providing a home for beneficial soil organisms.

digitS'

I always knew those gnomes were evil!