
Signs of perfect compost
Mark
dug deep into the motherlode
of horse manure for
our most recent two loads. When I opened the tailgate of the
truck, I was awestruck --- I'd never seen such amazing compost.
Most of it was pure black and able to hold so much water that a
shovelful was as much as I could handle. (No pitchforks
full of manure for me!)
Mark reported seeing one
writhing clump of worms while loading up the truck, but I mostly
saw
masses of sowbugs (aka roly polies) and a few big red centipedes.
We're both convinced that a high percentage of this amazing compost is
probably worm castings, but the layer that Mark dug Monday had finished
decomposing to the point that the worms moved out and the sowbugs moved
in. Sowbugs and centipedes in your compost are a sign that
compost is cooled down and done, ready to go on the garden. My
mouth waters just looking at it!
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About us:
Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hey! I also got inspired by his mode of composting but something I didn't understand was how he keeps all of his kitchen scraps until fall. Somehow I got from the book that he is drying it and then storing it in large bags but I'm having trouble seeing how that is possible to do without ending up with lots of small critters trying to get into the bags to eat up the scraps. How are you holding onto your kitchen scraps and such until fall? Thanks!