I originally started a compost during the first Autumn we were here because I wanted to make use of fallen leaves and all the nutrients they can provide a garden after breaking down. I collected bags and bags of those leaves and piled them up in a corner of my tiny garden which is hidden by a bush. Soon I was adding our house hold vegetable and fruit scraps. By the following summer, some of the matter had decomposed enough to be used in the garden.
Being an open compost which lay directly under the overhang of a veranda, it was lacking the necassary ingredient of moisture. So solve this problem, I began watering it and turning it often. I also collected some worms, hoping they would multiple and help the decomposition process. I was told that keeping a 50:50 ratio of brown matter to vegetable scraps would help keep bugs away but brown matter was hard to come by except during Autumn with the falling leaves.
When our apartment management had a clean up of the property recently and removed my compost, I found myself surprisingly unattached to it and wasn't upset by the loss. On the one hand, I feel horrible throwing scraps in the rubbish bin knowing they won't decompose quickly and are adding to the landfills. However my compost was difficult to keep up, was an eyesore for my neighbours, I was always worried about creatures visiting the compost and becoming pests, I worried about what to do with it if we were to move in a year or so, and it was really hard to get to (and use) the good decomposed stuff at the bottom of the pile.
You may remember my mother and I preparing the soil for winter by using lasagne layers last October. We layered torn up paper, leaves, and soil over the surface of the garden. This has worked surprisingly well and the soil seems rich and lovely. I haven't tested it for its nutrients, I just know that it is far nicer than when we first arrived. This will have to do for now. I am considering putting our kitchen scraps in our church garden's compost.
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