COMPOSTING

I can't say enough good things about this basic tenet of gardening: if you take from the soil, put something back and do the things necessary that promote healthy and constantly regenerating soil. Remember, soil is an environment of living things. Composting is painfully simple and does not cost anything to start. In fact you should profit from the activity from day-1.

Here's what I do:

• Start a pile of leaves mixed with grass clippings from the lawn. Call this "your pile".
  
• Gather enough stuff to keep the pile at least 3 feet in diameter and about 3 foot high. A sunny locale is fine.
  
• Into your pile: add food scraps from the dining table (no meat) and you are off!!
  
• Take a large fork (or shovel) and turn your pile every week or so and sprinkle it every few days. Don't soak it, just sprinkle a couple minutes with a hose.

Allow this first mixture to cook for 2 months or so, always adding new material as it comes. At the end of a single season you should have a rich mass of compost to add to the spring garden.

A variation for the more hard-core among us is to add the clippings directly to the existing garden and allow it to compost in the garden as the season goes by. Consider it an organically active mulch. Leave this layer on the garden over the off-season and work it completely into the soil the following spring. Again add another fresh layer once your plants are up and going.

I do a mixture of the two. I have two piles that I use to add bulk to the garden as well as putting on that fresh mulch layer each year. I use my bagging mower to slightly chew up and collect the leaves and mix with the green grass (nitrogen), but you don't have to chew up the leaves first.

The Benefits:

Compost adds organic material to the soil medium that encourages decomposition, release of nutrients, and retains water. So, your soil gets better every year. I live in San Antonio, so the dryness and heat make mulching an absolute necessity and using compost as mulch doubles as a defense against drought.

There you have it. There is much information about composting on the web, so crank up Google and take a spin. BEWARE: you can go out and purchase a $500 mulching kit, but take it from me, the best way to go is always nature's way.

Until Next time.....Kammy