On 2023-01-18, songbird  wrote:   
   > fos@sdf.org wrote:   
   > ...   
   >> i do still consider myself a gardening noob, so those are just my   
   >> thoughts and i'm quite capable of wrongthink so tread carefully. lol.   
      
   >   if you have room in a basement or an unfreezing and   
   > uncooked by heat in the summer type of space you can   
   > keep worms in buckets and they will actively help break   
   > down any food scraps.   
      
   that sounds a heck of a lot better than trudging through knee deep snow   
   to the compost pile in the winter. i have the perfect place for that,   
   our passion flower plants are over wintering there. dark. cool in the   
   summer, not freezing in the winter.   
      
   i'll get there eventually. i already have blood meal, bone meal, and   
   potash (Espoma brand) budgeted for spring. and i go through a gallon and   
   one half of hydrolyzed fish and seaweed fertilizer a year. i use Jack's   
   instant release fertilizer for annual flowers. i've been buying black kow   
   composted manure and i really want to get away from doing that.   
      
   my compost pile is in dire need of being turned. i have three large bins   
   side by side made from 40 inch square pallets. there's very coarse brush   
   in one bin, kitchen scraps in one, and chipped / shredded brush in another.   
   last spring i chipped the brush and planned on mixing it with the kitchen   
   scraps. when i went to do it there were hornets nests in the ground in   
   front of the compost bins due to the drought. nope. just nope. the compost   
   hasn't been turned since i started adding to it in spring 2020.   
      
   i do have four, four foot high three foot round tubes of wire mesh   
   fencing i pack full of leaves every fall. the resulting leaf mold gets   
   turned into the vegetable beds in the spring.   
      
   i'll get much closer to being self sustaining someday, Rome wasn't   
   built in a day.   
      
   --   
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   That which does not kill you makes you stranger.   
   -- Trevor Goodchild - AEon Flux   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)