dig a hole style composting

[miss djax]

does anyone know anything about this?

a friend recommended it :D dig a hole about 18 inches deep, fill it with compostable material, when its almost full, cover it. then start again.

the gist was this was great for newbies who might not pay as much attention to their compost to stir/water/make sure it reaches 160 degrees.

it sounds so easy, i'm curious about the results..

[Cath B]

I don't dig a hole when starting a new heap but when I come to dig it up there always seems to be some good stuff below ground level.



the gist was this was great for newbies who might not pay as much attention to their compost to stir/water/make sure it reaches 160 degrees.


I compost pretty much the way my Dad used to.
Make a heap of leaves, weeds* and fruit and veg waste.
Don't put too much grass in it.
Leave it
Leave it some more
And some more
Use as required

* I put pernicious weed roots into my plant feed brew

I tend to sieve too.

However, I thought this autumn I might try adding material direct in a trench where I'm planting tatties next year.

They're not fussy about the compost being fully composted and it saves shifting the stuff around twice.

I guess that's a version of the compost hole.

[Christina]

I do the same thing except that I turn it with a pitchfork every month or so and I wet it down once a week because it's so dry all summer and I keep a black tarp over it. It speeds up the decomposition. Throwing in some bread or beer gets it going faster too because of the yeast.

[Ray Moscow]

I would think that it would need oxygen -- and so turning it occasionally is the right idea.

Buried organic material can just sit there for a long time without decomposing.

[Cath B]

You don't need to water in our neck of the wood as we get some wet stuff here called rain often enough. :D

It's true, my stuff would compost more quickly if I turned it, but I have more space for compost than time to turn it - there always seems to be more urgent stuff to get on with and each garden & gardener will have a different set of priorities.

I sieve it as I use it and anything not decomposed is put on a new heap so I guess that's my method of turning, though less frequent than recommended. It's good stuff.

It should decompose more quickly now that I have chicken droppings to add to the stew.

[miss djax]

I would think that it would need oxygen -- and so turning it occasionally is the right idea.

Buried organic material can just sit there for a long time without decomposing.

won't the worms get to it tho??

[David B]

I would think that it would need oxygen -- and so turning it occasionally is the right idea.

Buried organic material can just sit there for a long time without decomposing.

won't the worms get to it tho??

They did in my Dad's compost heap. It had loads of earthworms, and even more smaller ones in it.

David

[miss djax]

i just don't see myself standing outside in the summer when its 110 with a hose, while i water the compost heap. plus it kind of seems wasteful, the water usage in the desert i mean.

i' think i might give this one a whirl. i'm afraid to ask what plant feed brew is tho ;)

[His Noodly Appendage]

My grandmother bought a house, and the garden turned out to be turf laid over unadulterated orange clay.

She always kept a compost bin in the kitchen next to the carbage - any veggie scraps went in that instead of the garbage. Every time it filled up, she'd bury it in a fresh hole, working round all the beds. A handful of years later, it was rich, black and fertile from one end to the other.

There may be better ways, but it does work.

[Lugubert]

I once had a house on a ground ideal for a "string compost". No digging, no buying drums or fancy containers (although such implements often work quite nicely). I started at one end of a hedge, and made a, say, 1.5 ft wide and .5 ft high heap of kitchen scraps, leaves, cut grass, weeds etc., taking care that the exposed parts would look just like old leaves or what Nature itself deposited. When I reached the other end of the hedge, it was time to turn the string in a relaxed way.

Some municipal environmental etc. boards may not be too happy about this model, but leave out the worst smellies and it will work. If necessary, go on with an adjacent parallel string, and after maybe only one year, the original string will be a lovely homogenously black worm-filled compost for lawn top dressing or for your annuals and shrubs and trees. If it's useful for your berries and veggies will of course depend on how carefully you've chosen the ingredients.

Here and now, the string method is less useful. Animals like deer, hares, stray cats and neighbours' children would disturb the strings. Our one plastic compost drum is sufficient and fairly pest safe, but for colonies of wood-lice. Some plastic chicken wire cubes I have tried turned out to be too useful breeding grounds for small rodents if you didn't turn the contents often enough.

[Christina]

Those black plastic ones work well if all you're composting are food scraps and the occasional weed. In the spring I would fill one of them every few days and in mid-summer when the madrones drop their old leaves I would end up with a big compost pile anyway because it would take months to do it all in a small composter. I have 2 wooden frames without bottoms that are about 5 sq. feet each. In the spring I use up the finished compost in one bin and then turn the second one into it to compost all year and then I start filling the second bin. The other reason that I use a black tarp is that if it gets hot enough under there it will kill the weed seeds.

[B Cereus]

I don't use the "dig a hole" method myself, but I know a bunch of gardeners around here that use that method. And you don't even have to dig a deep hole. You can just dig a hole large enough for the day's (or week's) compostables, put them in, and cover it up with dirt. If you have raccoons, put a rock on top of the hole to keep them from digging it up. The gardeners who use this method say that the materials decompose within about a week or so; eggshells take a little longer.

The advantage of this method is you can add compost to all different locations in your garden.

[Ray Moscow]

I would think that it would need oxygen -- and so turning it occasionally is the right idea.

Buried organic material can just sit there for a long time without decomposing.

won't the worms get to it tho??

Yes, the worms can turn and aeroate it if it's not too dense for them to work through.