Composting

Along with all the other tedious trash separation into various recyclables, burnables (shh!), and that tiny bit of to-the-dump garbage, there's separating compost for two gardens.

For food gardening, basically anything vegetable, except citrus peel. Coffee grounds, banana peels, etc. are ok.

For non-edible gardening (eg flowers), the Dark Side of composting. Animal matter: meat scraps & related residue, eggshells, dairy leftovers. Also the aforementioned citrus peels. And kitty litter box extractions. Basically, as Lady W just put it, this is almost more of a burial than composting.

I like to optimize my manual labor. I prefer timers and drip irrigation to standing there with a garden hose. So, I prefer to avoid things like tilling... or turning compost!

The ideal would seem to be beds built up with layers of compost, until it's gardening height, cover with thick mulch.

Yeah. Never quite got that going as we hoped. Like everything else in my miserable existence, I'm great on theory, but you know the saying about the difference between theory and practice. Armchair gardener. City slicker thinks he can garden in Oklahoma prairie's tough sod and determined grasses.

Seriously, my grandfathers had real, big, tractor-tilled, feed-the-extended-family gardens here back in the day. Nothing of that was transmitted or remained by my adulthood. But the gardening potential is one reason we moved back here.

Every year we say we're going to attempt (again again again) to get some garden going this year. Twenty years back on the farm, and it's like we never had those strawberry hills, the cherry bushes, the sunflower patch, or other transient victories. LadyW did grow some nice veggies last year, in pots.

But this year it'll be different. One way or another.

I mean, have you seen the price of arugula at Whole Foods lately?