I will be honest. I love gardening but not a big fan of back breaking labor. The idea of having to turn compost and harvesting it does not appeal to me. Saving as much kitchen waste like chicken bones from landfill as I can however, does appeal to me.
My mother, back in the days when we went fishing, used to bury fish scraps in the garden which turned into rich, fertile soil. Further research on the interwebs told me that you can bury your kitchen scraps directly in the garden, including chicken bones. Trench composting, direct composting, dig and drop composting whatever you want to call it, suits me. You don't have to turn the compost, harvest it or worry about carbon and nitrogen balance. The compost goes directly where you think it is needed, or in my case where you haven't dug compost in before. And the best thing is that you don't to worry about nitrogen and carbon balance and you can compost fish and chicken bones.
Since I started what I like to call dig and forget composting I've noticed more worms and the time it takes for the kitchen scraps to 'disappear' is faster - in summer it can be as fast as 2 weeks for vegetable and fruit to compost. All that is left of the bucket of chicken bones I buried in one corner of the garden seven months ago is a handful of bone fragments. That tells me that I have healthy soil full of worms and microbes.
This is the depth you should dig and forget compost.
I dig and drop one bucket (I think it is 20 litres) from my parents place, two buckets if I felt like cooking, once a week. Make sure you dig a hole that is at least 30cm deep so that animals don't dig up the scraps. And mark where you buried the compost. The soil drops as the scraps decompose. The number of times I have forgotten and my foot has sunk into the compost hole.
What goes into the compost bucket? Pretty much everything - citrus peel, chicken bones (I debone chicken wings and thigh cutlets), spoiled dairy products, spoiled food - my sister saves prawn shells to put in the compost bucket for me. I even have a bucket at work that people put their fruit scraps and used coffee pods in.
Make sure you put any fish,prawns and chicken bones at the bottom of the hole. I freeze these scraps as I can only get to my plots on the weekend.
The rest of the compost bucket is dumped on top of any prawn, fish and chicken bones. When I rinse out the compost bucket I throw the water into the hole before I cover the compost with soil. I give the soil a quick water and hope that I don't dig it all up again when I dig my next compost hole.
Let me start by saying I can't believe I didn't think of using leaves to mulch the garden last year. This year? Different story.
I'm pretty sure I have collected and dumped at least 15 bags of leaves onto the garden already. Mum raked three more bags for me to take to the garden this weekend. If it doesn't rain on the weekend I will probably collect another six, and let's be honest as many bags of leaves as I can be bothered in the next couple of months. There are three different places where I collect leaves. I want to have different size leaves and if I can save them going into storm drains all the better.
Last summer was unusually hot, specifically the number of 40 degree days we had. I mulched the garden but I had to buy a lot of bales of sugar cane mulch over the summer. It decomposed faster than I expected (thanks worms) so I had to top up the mulch twice. I would prefer not spending so much on mulch this summer.
Leaves are free. The plan is to mulch with leaves now, make some leaf compost and save some bags to mulch in summer. The best part about the community garden where I have plots (or allotments) is the equestrian park next to it. The regular equestrian events means free horse manure. It doesn't take long to fill a wheelbarrow with huge horse turds. I'm using horse manure to compost a pile of leaves on one plot. Hopefully the horse manure will help accelerate the decomposition of leaves. If I can get some fresh pure chicken poo I'll chuck that on too.
I've mulched the globe artichokes to give them some protection for winter. I will probably put another layer of leaves in a couple of weeks before the heavy frosts start.
About a year ago I bought myself a custom knife. The handle is pink and lime green. I loved it until it got a chip in the blade. I have to send it back and hope that the blade can be fixed. If it can't, well I won't be happy if I have to pay for the blade to be replaced.
Anyway, it hasn't deterred me from wanting, wanting desperately for another custom knife. You'll understand why when you see it.
Look at it. It's beautiful isn't it? It is almost three times more expensive than my pink and lime green custom knife was (and that was when when the exchange rate was better than it is now) but golly gosh I want this bad.
The blade is repurposed from a horseshoe rasp. It's definitely functional art. Production time is currently three months because of high demand. But that is fine as I have to save up for it anyway.
