Loving that Brown Gold!

Finally, finally I'm getting around to the garden prep before winter strikes. Well, it is striking this afternoon some with the possibility of snow, but by the weekend we should be getting mild again so I can keep on working. I spent some time the other day sifting compost from one of the many small compost piles my husband has tucked in the woods around our house.

I got about four cartloads like the one above that I spread over the garlic bed. That is just one of many beds, so I need much more compost than I have available. Raking leaves takes on a whole new meaning around here. It is purposeful! We are fortunate to have many leaves at our disposal, as is obvious here:

So why, when I had the opportunity to rake leaves for an elderly couple with my church's children's group, would I actually bring them home? I certainly got a few raised eyebrows at that! We rake leaves as a christian service assignment to teach the kids about helping others. After bagging up the leaves they were destined for the town's landfill and I would much, much rather they ended up in a compost pile! I have heard there are some cities and municipalities that collect raked leaves and make compost which is later given out to the residents for free or for a nominal fee. I wish every town that collects leaves did that! Think of all those thousands of pounds of leaves ending up in landfills when they could be helping to grow food!

So here they are, twenty bags of leaves now ready to start a new compost pile on our property. Four years ago when I started my first vegetable garden after I retired, the soil was almost completely without nutrients and the results were a very poor harvest. I've been slowly building it up and when, after that first summer, I added about two inches of sifted leaf-mold compost to each one of the beds there was a huge difference the next year. I've added some new topsoil since, but the real key ingredient is the compost. It seems to me I can never get enough!

And here it is, the new compost pile made with all those bagged leaves. Can you see it? No? Barely maybe, because it blends right into the rest of the woods. It sits in a small depression that my husband has dubbed the Compostorium. We will toss in kitchen scraps and anything else that comes up that makes good compost. I wish I had a source of manure, but we don't keep animals and gave up chickens years ago. That would make it even better. I've heard seaweed is a good additive, and we live near the sea, so I've thought of making a trip or two down there with a few buckets! We've never had an odor problem with our compost piles and we are lucky to have plenty of space to hide them. The more the merrier.  Because in this state, the soil has been used and abused for 350 years and it needs all the help it can get! After all, here is what we grow best in Connecticut: