Contributed by compost-lover Jenny Lohmann
If you’re reading this blog it is because you are one of the brilliantly enlightened individuals on our planet. You already know all the reasons one should compost but what about the consequences of composting?
If you’re reading this blog it is because you are one of the brilliantly enlightened individuals on our planet. You already know all the reasons one should compost but what about the consequences of composting?
Green Guilt
For example, you are on vacation and eat a banana. What are
you to do with the peel? Throw it away?! This will lead to feelings of extreme
guilt.
You’re sister’s kids never eat their bread crust. It causes you great
anxiety because:
a) she allows food waste and
b) she doesn’t compost the
crust!
If these feelings have entered your mind, get to your compost pile ASAP!
Composting will set your serotonins into “aahhh” mode.
Volunteers of a Different Variety
Another consequence I have encountered deals with
volunteers. No, not my kids who gladly rake leaves and pick up sticks (as if).
The volunteers I speak of are those tomato plants that pop out
of my newly potted plants and amended garden beds.
Do I scowl and curse? No, I
greet them as a new mother welcomes new life.
Proof of healthy soil, I
transplant them when space allows. Some of my volunteers have produced better
than my intentional plantings.
Obviously, my compost pile does not heat up enough to kill the seeds or perhaps I’m too impatient to let it “season.”
Just another reason I choose not to compost weeds with seeds. I wouldn’t have
those new mother feelings if dandelions were volunteering.
Has anyone else felt the unintended consequences of composting?
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| Unintended Consequences Can Be Delicious :) |
Thanks for sharing the surprises that come from composting. I love to take my compost out to the pile at night. Earthy. Good things from the earth returning to source. Home. Mysterious. Totally fulfilling.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I just get too house-bound. The compost pail in all its fullness calls to me: "Get your b--- out the door and go take me to my destination. Enjoy the rich outdoor odors, especially those of decomposition!
ReplyDeleteI do have these issues!!! Sometime, I'll cart peels and other compostable stuff around with me all day, just so I don't have to through it away. I really do get a terrible feeling, when I through something compostable in the garbage! I also have the same issue with my bin not being hot enough to kill seeds. A vine grew out of my bin. I decided to let it go, so I could see what would happen. Now, I have a pumpkin the size of a medicine ball growing in my yard! My neighbors must think I'm nuts...
ReplyDeleteI spread compost over the whole vegetable garden in the spring and we had volunteer tomatoes, cucumbers, and yellow squash! We had several hundred tomato plants pop up, so I only kept a few. Does that really mean the compost bin didn't get hot enough though? Was the compost not as good as it could have been?
ReplyDeleteNo, there is slower colder composting and hot composting which is faster. Both yield great compost but the hot composting will more likely kill the weed seeds.
DeleteYes, I also have those cute little seed starts at the edge of by composte pile. I let them be as they always remind me of my dear sweet grandmother the barefoot gardener. She was an Appalachian gal who was composting long before it was fashionable. She'd site her composte pile just slightly up the hill at the edge of her vegetable garden, then plant her melons at its base and let all that "good liquor" as she called it filter down from the composte pile with each rain and feed her crop all summer long.
ReplyDeleteYes! a cherry tomato plant grew itself from under the compost bin. And, where we raked some of the compost last fall, 3 more tomato plants just grew on their own! and these plants are indeed growing bigger and better than our most carefully planted ones. Gardening is about surprises!
ReplyDeleteWe get volunteers too! While I hate to kill them, they mess up our plan. How do we increase the heat? We use the round black bin with the twist off top.
ReplyDeleteLinda, here are some good tips for heating up your bin. http://confessionsofacomposter.blogspot.com/2012/05/hot-composting-secrets-for-faster.html
DeleteSo good to know those feelings of wasteful guilt aren't just MY OWN! Just getting started, but I Love Your BLOG!
ReplyDeleteMy most common volunteers are watermelons. Oddly enough, cardinals love 🍉 seeds so they too are frequent visitors to my compost pile.
ReplyDelete