Back in the Compost Biz

Having closed down my rather involved compost-making operation a few years ago, I've been burying vegetable scraps in the flower beds since then (with good results -- pretty rich soil in the flower beds). But with all available space being taken up by summer veggie plants, I had resorted to just burying the scraps in the area where the compost bins used to sit -- not very productive, but I couldn't bear to throw them in the garbage.

So today I used a couple rolls of wire fencing a neighbor had given me and created four new compost bins. I'll have a good many spent plants that can go into the bins as I pull up tomatoes, etc., toward the end of the summer. I had a big container full of veggie scraps to start with, so I made the bins and then got a bale of hay from Home Depot and started the first bin this afternoon. (The hay is, I'm sure, replete with pesticide residue. Sammy Koenigsberg uses large quantities of hay to mulch his plants, and since he's certified organic the hay he uses has to be organic as well. So I'll try to find out his source and get some to use going forward.)

The new compost outpost: The bins are a bit hard to see, but they're almost four feet tall and about 3.5' wide. The tarp is covering the hay bale to keep it from getting soaked in the rain. (What rain?)

Organic alfalfa to use as food for the bacteria that decompose the green and brown matter in the pile:

Started with a layer of straw on bare earth, then a layer of household veggie scraps, then a layer of soil to add microorganisms to the mix, then a sprinkling of alfalfa meal, then another layer of straw, then a soaking of water. This won't come close to heating up until many more layers are added and the pile grows in mass. But it's a start:

P.S. Here's today's juicing content. The red chard, beets, and curly green kale are from my beds. The beets were pulled previously, but the chard and kale I cut just minutes before juicing. Those long red chard stems are full of juice! Makes me feel like the juice is all the more nutritious when it is extracted just minutes after being cut: