Compost pile "food plot"...lol

[Tap]

We have a compost pile but I seldom turn it so it doesn't cook the viability out of the veggie seeds. Not a bad thing in our opinion. We always have a tiny, volunteer garden. There is usually a nice crop of butternut squash but this year has been amazing. We've grown a pile of squash and the deer started to eat the plants now...after all the squash have developed. Not a bad arrangement. Something has chewed at the squash, too. Not sure if its deer, rabbits, coons, or ??. It ain't groundhogs because they get shot on sight!
I watched a nice 7 point eating the plants last week. It was too dark to get pics.
Here is our "compost pile plot"...

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[Charles Clear]

That's really cool!!

 

[swat1018]

Eek!, Smartweed.

 

[Tap]

Eek!, Smartweed.

I know, I know...I'm overrun with the stuff. That's just a small sample of the acres I have of the crap.

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[swat1018]

Ya, me too. It invades my clover. I just started to get into composting and trying to do my garden organic. No synthetic fert and very limited spray this year. Always looking for composting pointers!

 

[Tap]

Ya, me too. It invades my clover. I just started to get into composting and trying to do my garden organic. No synthetic fert and very limited spray this year. Always looking for composting pointers!

We don't compost in the technically correct way.
The right way is to have a balance of carbon and N??... (not certain on those ingredients) and regularly turn the pile in order to introduce oxygen which speeds up the decay process. The O2 also allows the pile to heat and kill viable seeds from kitchen waste.

We just have a pile and dump food waste on it every couple days. We also dump all our potted plant soil on it every fall. I'll turn the pile with my front loader once in the fall and maybe once again in the spring. But all summer, we allow stuff to grow in it. We always get squash growing and sometimes a few tomatoes and peppers. Easiest "garden" I ever grew lol.
The pile produces beautiful dirt.
I like to scoop some in my front loader and add it to backfill when I plant trees. Always seems like whatever amount of dirt I dig for a tree hole, I don't have enough to backfill...where the heck does it go, anyway??
Btw...mom and her fawn were out there tonight eating the squash leaves.
I once watched a doe eat an orange peel from that pile...go figure.

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[Semisane]

Tap, I once had a compost pile just like yours on what was (at that time) an empty lot next door to my house. All of my lawn clippings/ kitchen waste/fish heads and guts/fallen leaves went on that pile. It grew stuff like crazy. One year it produced a dozen cantaloupes which we expectantly awaited ripening. When we harvested them they were large and beautiful.....but the dang things tasted like compost smells.

 

[Tap]

Tap, I once had a compost pile just like yours on what was (at that time) an empty lot next door to my house. All of my lawn clippings/ kitchen waste/fish heads and guts/fallen leaves went on that pile. It grew stuff like crazy. One year it produced a dozen cantaloupes which we expectantly awaited ripening. When we harvested them they were large and beautiful.....but the dang things tasted like compost smells.

Huh. Our butternut squash are delicious. A cousin told us it was the best he'd ever tasted.

 

[Semisane]

Yeah. Everything else that grew on that pile was great. But the cantaloupes sitting directly on the compost somehow absorbed a funky flavor - totally inedible. I suspect that had I lifted them when they were young an put some straw or cardboard between them and the compost they would have been fine.

 

[swat1018]

Did they taste like Sh*t?

 

[Semisane]

Well, I don't know what sh*t tastes like but I know the smell, and it was pretty close. You know that "earthy/moldy" smell when you turn over a hot compost pile? That's what they tasted like.

 

[Spartacus]

Go by a water treatment facility some time, and you will see huge amounts of volunteer tomato plants in their "compost" treatment areas, as those seeds survive both the human digestion process as well as the water treatment process :-)