Sweet Nourishment

Janice Emily Bowers in her book recommended by Gordon in a previous mailing: A Full Life in a Small Place addresses composting in her chapter called Sweet Nourishment: "The process could hardly be simpler. You start with kitchen scraps - melon rinds, squash innards, carrot peelings, lasagna, (it's ok, but must be plain no meat, sauce, etc.), the butt ends of cucumbers & eggplants, fingernail parings (yuck), moldy bread, cat fur (watch out Jude!), bottle corks, coffee filters (with grounds), paper towels, anything organic except bones, meat, fat & egg shells. [Bones take too long to decay, fat slows the process down, meat stinks (attracts critters) &, in the desert, eggshells add calcium to soils that already contain too much.] Then you pile your scraps in alternating layers with dry plant material & green plant material, wetting each layer as you add it. Once a week or once a month you turn the pile, moving the bottom to the top, the top to the bottom and sides to the middle. Turning aerates the contents & keeps the pile from becoming smelly & soggy. Magically, it ...... becomes transformed into cumbly granules that smell like rich soil in the woods." By popular demand, we thought we would experiment with one swale, the most east one, Gene spent his Sunday collecting dried leaves & needles from the river walk. So layer #1 has started! You are invited to add table scraps as recommended by Janice but please bury them into the dry materials, so we don't start harvesting flies, etc. As soon as we get the water going & pile turning, we may be able to see some results!