Composting…I’m Impressed!

Good morning and how is everybody today? We hope you all had a great weekend and are getting off to a good start for the week ahead!

You know our garden has come and gone, and it was kinda a rough spring this year in regards to our garden. We just had little to no rain, but it looks as if now we are indeed getting into our normal afternoon rain pattern. It was a long time coming this year for some reason.

I guess since the rains are starting now, we’ll begin prepping our garden for some okra. This is really all we’ll be planting as we’re coming into summer, and this means…HOT!

This week, we’re going to till the garden deeply a time or two, then start covering it again in cow manure. Once we get it covered, I believe I’m going to pick up a few bales of hay, and just lightly spread this over the garden area.

Then, we’ve had a compost pile in the makings for the last 4 months or so, and we’ll spread this over as much of the garden as we can. We’ll then turn this in, maybe a couple, three inches deep, and see what happens. I’m looking forward to checking this out as we go along.

I’ve mentioned this earlier, but I’d never had or used compost before, so this was all new to Deb and I. We built a little holding area for our compost, and this stuff is really beginning to look really very good. I don’t know about anybody else we know, but I’m sure impressed with the progress of our compost.

Quickly, and I’m going back some, I believe we started with newspaper, then a layer of soil, then a layer of hay, then cow manure, then fresh grass clippings. We were mowing our lawn and bagging the green grass as we cut it. We then took it to the pile, and layered it as well.

We also had a ton of oak leaves at the time, so we raked these up, put them in small piles, and ground them up with the lawn mower too. These were layered into our compost heap just like everything else.

We ended up with about 5-6 layers of each material in our compost heap.

Every time we mow, we add the clippings. As we shelled our beans for canning, we put all bean hulls into the pile. We did the same with all our tomato stems, the ends of our peppers we threw out, all squash, and cucumber waste, actually just any vegetable or fruit kitchen scraps we acquired.

Just like our juicing we do. Again, we do 22-25 fresh different fruits and vegetables daily…every day. After juicing, we usually have two small bags of pulp, and these are spread out into the compost pile daily, as well.

Let me just throw something in here about the juicing’s we do. We’ve been doing this what, over a couple, to two and a half months now? In Deb’s blood work, her white and red blood cell count is really pretty high, plus her blood platelet count is really high, too.

With this being said, we also had one nurse tell her, and I was standing there too, that she couldn’t believe that Deb had cancer, on account of she couldn’t believe how high her blood platelet count was. She was pretty much saying her count was incredible, for having cancer in her body…

I’m not telling anyone what to do by any means, but I am telling you that Deb and I both have become firm believers in the power of juicing, that’s all. We do know through this nutrition, and it goes into your system very quickly, that we are both getting a tremendous nutritional boost from this. We drink three 16 oz. glasses daily. This was just a “for whatever it’s worth,” few statements.

We’ve both noticed lately, that since we started putting the leftover pulp from the juice into the compost pile, that when we walk by the pile, strange things seem to be happening??
For instance, just last week Deb and I were sitting on the porch and heard a little commotion out by the compost pile.

We walked over to it and were amazed by what we were witnessing…an earthworm was standing about halfway out of the compost heap, and had wrapped it’s other half around a Robin’s neck. This earthworm was body slamming the poor bird one way, and then the next.

This went on a couple-three minutes, then the earthworm stopped, turned him back loose, and the dazed Robin walked off, not flew.

Is it the pulp from the juice…we don’t know, but it could be though, I guess.

We’ve also noticed several different species of birds with hernias lately as well. We’re not positive as to what is causing this for sure, but we’re beginning to believe those little earthworms have gotten so “pumped up” from the juice pulp, that the birds are getting them from trying to pull those strong little suckers out of the ground. This too is only theory.
Back to the compost pile…

One thing we’ve done is keep it turned often, and watered well. At first we did this every week to week and a half, but for the last couple months, we’ve done this about 3-4 times a week. You wouldn’t believe the difference this has made! It’s night and day versus when we started.

All material used is breaking down just great, and mostly now it’s just a rich, dark material that seems to just shout to you, “Put me in the dern garden, and get back!” This stuff really looks good.

I wish we had much more than what we’ve composted as of this minute, but I can see the compost pile being enlarged…probably about the time we get this one into the garden. I’m pretty sold on the compost now, from a how rich this material, or final product looks.

It is impressive to us, but the response from the vegetables in the garden themselves, will supply us with the knowledge of… is it worth the effort to compost? I believe we’ll soon see that yes, it is. I’ll be shocked if not.

Plus, the first area we’ll be using this is very sandy. The ole white sand, sandy. Very, very poor soil, that we have been amending with the cow manure, and commercial fertilize once the vegetables are up. The commercial fertilize doesn’t amend the soil, but it does shoot nitrogen and other trace minerals to your plants, thus giving them a boost.

So, hopefully in the next couple weeks we’ll have our original compost pile utilized in our garden, and okra planted! I’m anxious as I can be to see the results. If this indeed supplies us with the results I’m expecting, then what a blessing for us this will be. Most, if not all the materials needed for composting are already right here, on the place!

We’ll only plant maybe a third of our garden area in okra, because of the heat, so the rest of it we’ll be amending the soil in until about August, when we put in peas, and boy oh boy, do we love them dern peas!

We take Deb today for a shot for her immune system, and this is supposed to cause bone pain for some reason or other. The nurse told her to take a Tylenol an hour prior to arriving for this shot.

This too is a new experience for us in Deb’s journey, so once more I have apprehension, but then again, who wouldn’t in regards to their wife? The main thing is simply this is one more step in Deb’s road to recovery!

Thank you all once more for your prayers and support! They are so appreciated, and I promise you that you all are in ours as well!

Thank you again for coming in to visit with us this morning. God Bless you and yours!

Remember too that Deb always says, “To keep a smile on your face, and one in your heart!”

Dub and Deb