Lots of compost

So we decided to give the city compost a try. It's completely free at five pickup locations around the county, with the closest one just two miles down the road. There's a big concrete bunker full of recycled, composted yard waste available to anyone that wants to haul it away.

We picked up a trailer-load full, and composted two of our beds with a six-inch-thick layer. It's not perfectly organic, and still contains trace fertilizers and pesticides, but New College has done a test on it, and deemed it safe for use in their organic garden on campus. It had a good amount of worms and beetles in it, so we decided it's probable okay to use in our garden.

We're pretty happy with it. You can definitely see the difference between the un-composted beds and the ones with a happy dose of humus. We'll have to see how it works out this growing season.