Com-post

Well, I don't write anything for a month and here I am, the third time in a week!  I'm nothing if not inconsistent!  

Today was a beautiful spring day.  The temperature got up to around 60º, the warmest day so far this year.  It was a perfect day to work on the compost.  We're big composters here.  Paul built three compost bins about nineteen years ago from old cedar siding taken off this house.  We keep all three of them busy during the year.  
 
During the winter they are all cooking compost.  In the spring, we dig down to find the good compost and spread it out on the garden beds.  

 


Actually, first, we have to rake all the leaves off the beds so they can be added to the compost bins.  It's a process of moving and transferring compost materials a couple of times, but it is totally worth the trouble. 

In the spring and summer, one bin is dedicated to growing Palouse Pomodoro, a tomato Paul sort of developed.  It all started nearly fifteen years ago when Paul noticed tomato plants coming up in his compost bin.  He realized that the tomato seeds left over from saucing tomatoes the fall before sprouted in the compost.  So he let them grow.  Every year, he picks the tomatoes and makes sauce from them, saving the seeds for the next year.  

He planted this year's crop in that lowest bin.   

The other two bins still contain compost.  One is usually filled up (the tall one) and left to make more luscious compost.  The other is the one we add to until fall.  Then the shifting and moving happens again as the fall leaves get raked up and put into the bins and onto the garden beds.  It's a circular process, just like the seasons and the gardening.  Each in it's own just-right time.