Composting for The Outdoor Space? An Time-Honored Method Requires Very Little Effort.
During a recent stop to some friends' house, the subject of food waste arose. They lack a tucked-away area to establish a compost heap in their yard, and their municipal service doesn't provide collection. Previously, they used fermentation composting, but with a baby on the way, I suspect they'll have sufficient to do aside from caring for a container of processing kitchen scraps.
Yet, since they are familiar to interring their bokashi-ed food waste, it got me thinking on how easy and highly effective trench composting can be for those without room for a bigger setup. Trench composting is the simple process of putting your compostable matter – like fruit and vegetable waste, prunings, lawn cuttings, leaf litter, etc – into a ditch near where you plan to grow your crops next year. Over the coming months, this waste will gradually break down, enriching the earth and amending its texture, preparing it to support the upcoming season's crops. No further effort is necessary from you to engage in this traditional technique.
It's a simple process of placing your organic matter into a ditch close to where you plan to plant vegetables.
It's possible compost this way in a fairly shallow pit, though some advice recommend digging down to 60cm before placing the waste and covering the trench. Should you choose a more shallow method, it's wise to using a cover with a tarp and securing it securely to prevent your garden area from being excavated by animals that frequent your garden.
A further perk of trench composting is that you don't need to worry about achieving the correct ratio of wet and dry ingredients. As anyone who has dealt with a stagnant or dormant compost heap understands, it can be challenging to get that balance right, but this approach is less fussy. It is advisable to include a mixture of moist material and brown material as you would in a standard compost bin, but you can be less precise about the proportions.
Being a relatively dedicated proponent of minimal disturbance cultivation, I am hesitant about the thought of digging a trench within or near my vegetable plots, but I think it's possible to excavate a sufficient volume of earth without entirely disrupting the soil structure. I would contemplate using this method when redoing a long-term planting area or removing large amounts of perennial weeds, because both necessitate me to disrupt the earth regardless. On occasions when I need to excavate, I'm meticulous to return the earth to its original location carefully and stay away from disturbing soil when it is very wet.
This method is really worth considering if you're building planting boxes in your plot, because you can incorporate a base of waste prior to filling your beds – no digging required.
