Composting in the Garden

When I moved here one of my first creations was a large 3 bin compost set up at the back of the yard. One is current year dumping, the next is current year decomposing, and the third is the one being used in the gardens in the current year. I can easily fill the dumping one several times over during the year, and do. Each year I rotate over by one.

Then one year a friend offered me the lumber from her raised beds because they were going to be living in another state for a few years. I happily said yes and added 3 large 6' x 6' raised beds to my gardens. I can grow a lot in those beds. But there is one problem. I cannot easily reach the center of those beds to weed and harvest. I can't really easily reach them to plant either. So for a year or two, I just heavily mulched the centers and prayed the weeds would be light.

Then another friend brought me three of those black composters. The square ones. I had been looking at keyhole gardens so I decided to try a variation. I put one of those composters in the center of one of the big garden beds. And I put another one in the center of one of my normal garden beds (3' x 7'). And I've fallen in love.

For those garden beds, I no longer have to add compost. All the nutrients that come through when it rains and as things break down go directly into my garden soil. I am no longer feeding all of that to the honeysuckle and privet along the back property line. And so far, the plants have absolutely no problem with this.

Now if I want to, I can remove and rotate the compost bins. But I've decided on another path instead. I'm going to put the plastic composters in the center of my existing 6' x 6' garden beds. When I build the new 6' x 6' garden bed, I'll build a compost spot in the the center use fence posts and chicken wire. That one will go all the way down to the ground.

For each of my 3' x 7' garden beds, I will put in smaller homemade compost spots along the center or back edge. I'm thinking back edge because I don't want to block sunshine but I may just bisect them down the center. Because of the way my gardens face, bisecting the center would only shade either side partially for a short period of daytime.

Either way I go, I no longer have to worry about moving compost to the garden beds. Nature will do that for me as things decompose. Both the weather and the worms that like my garden beds will help disperse the nutrients where I want them. These things are already happening in the beds I experimented with.

When you add in the heavy mulching I do in each bed, I get the best of both worlds. Very little weeding that is easy to do and continually fed nutrients that don't require me continually moving compost or making things like compost tea. And then the worms add their own brand of nutrients as well.

Is there a way for this to lose? And when I move the garden beds, because sometimes I do, when I put them in their new locations I'll add the composter segment going all the way to the ground rather than on top. Same for when I put in completely new garden beds, because there are some plans for some in the works.

Oh, and in case you haven't figured it out, I try really hard to set up things in the garden so that it makes life a little easier for me in the long run. I'm not getting younger and I'd like to be able to garden for as long as I can.