Benign neglect seems to have stood me in good stead for the compost pile so far. I went out there Sunday to add the bucket of chicken blood that Maple&Me graciously sent us home with. (fun fact: chicken blood, like chicken shit, is concentratedly high in nitrogen and will burn roots if not composted for a year before using in the garden; and so into the compost the blood went!) I've been meaning to tend the compost for a few weeks now, and figured that as long as I was adding blood to it - which if left in its glorious congealed state hanging out on the top of the pile, would certainly attract any scavengers in the area - I might as well turn it over. So I spent probably the better part of an hour with a pitch fork. There was some IMPRESSIVE lambs quarter grown to nearly my height that I tore up and added in, along with some of the grass and fireweed that was choking the edges. I forked in the sawdust and straw I'd tossed on top of the pile early this spring and late last fall, and broke up the root balls of last years porch grown container garden I'd emptied in when I planted this year's. And then I turned the compost, aerating and mixing all the good stuff together... and I was oh-so-pleasantly surprised to find that we are approaching dirt!!! Like real, actual, full-of-humus, dark loamy lovely earthy DIRT!!! Soil, I should say.
THE HERBS!
Red raspberry leaves, clover, plantain, wild acrtic chamomile (which is such a better name than pineapple weed!)... and some CSA parsley, oh my!!
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