Trench Composting

Each afternoon, I carry a bucket out to the garden and look for my shovel.  We keep the blue plastic bucket under the sink, and the bucket contains many of the same items, shredded paper, egg shells, coffee grounds/filters, vegetable scraps and other items that decompose.  While I do have a compost pile in the corner of the garden that consists of last season's leaves mixed with cow poop, my primarily composting method consists of a practice called Trench Composting.  This Article explains the simplicity of trench composting.

The compost bucket

We do pay a monthly fee for garbage pickup.  Every Friday morning a garbage truck picks up our household waste.  Benjamin wheels the can to the curb on Thursday evening and on most days, the can is only 1/3 full and only contains plastics, glass, or shiny cardboard items or other things that don't easily compost. In the past we shared our excess garbage capacity with our neighbors, it just seems like such a waste of money when we don't fill the can.  In any event, we're not adding much to the Parish Landfill and, in turn, are building our soil instead of exporting soil amendments off site.

In trench composting you don't need to worry about the temperature of the compost pile or ratio of the brown components versus green components or keeping the compost moist.  Trench composting is easy.  Simple.  I like simple. I just dig a trench in the path between the garden rows like shown in the photo below:

Then I deposit the bucketful of household waste into the trench.

Then, I back fill the hole with the dirt from the hole and put my shovel at the end of the hole to mark the location where I'll put tomorrow's waste in the ground.  Eazy-peazy, right?  When I finish trench composting on an  entire row, I'll fill the valley between the rows with leaves and hay.  That fill will also decompose, becoming a barrier for weed growth, a haven for earthworms, a soft walking area, and will ultimately become soil.  The neat thing is, you can see your soil getting better year after year.

When I reach an area where I've previously trench composted (months and months ago), I notice that the ground is not hard and compacted.  It is easier to dig and work the soil.  I also notice an abundance of earthworms.  Earthworms consume the waste and aerate the soil in the trench.  They love trench composting!

My goal is to rotate the row location each year, so that the rows  this year are built up directly over the trench composting from last year.  That enables the roots to easily locate nutrients left by the compost and earthworm activity.  Over the course of a year, we've pretty much trench composted each pathway between every row. When we butcher chickens, we easily trench compost an entire 30 foot pathway between the rows in order to bury chicken heads, guts, and feathers.  Also when an old laying hen dies, we trench compost her and she switches her productivity from producing eggs to producing vegetables.  Heck, when I kick the bucket, I might get Tricia to trench compost me...