Traditional composting is a waste of time. Get rid of your compost piles and bins

Traditional composting is such a labor of love. Humans love to see the process of our vegetables and kitchen scraps decomposing in front of our eyes. Is it necessary to go through that process? No, it isn't at all. It is too labor intensive. Yeah, I want to have a very clear conversation about composting. I'm getting really tired of all these crazy things that people are suggesting. I guess there's two types of composters. The ones that have a big enough property where they can do a lot of different things. And the ones that are sort of doing like this balcony composting or apartment composting, whatever you want to call it. So if you have a bigger piece of land, I'll give you an example. So two years ago, we buried maybe 60 wheelbarrows of sod here. Sod and other things that we stripped off the top of the land. This is all the sod that I'm referring to that ended up in that hole. So what I'm doing now is I'm harvesting this soil that is incredible. And I'm harvesting it to move to different locations in the garden. Yeah, I was involved in putting all the sod and the green material in here. So I know that this is more than 1 meter 40, 1 meter 50 deep. I don't need 1 meter and 50 of good topsoil here. I need, you know, 60 centimeters, 50 is good enough for me. So I can harvest all this and I can take out the rocks if there's any rocks. Absolutely fantastic stuff. And I have never fussed with this. I've never done anything. I put it in the hole, I buried it and it's done. I don't have to do anything here. It saves so much work just burying the green matter and you'll save so much time. And that frees you up to do other jobs in the garden. So I'm getting compost ready to go, soil or compost, before I even start composting, if that makes any sense. So I'm harvesting my trench composting from two years ago. I'm spreading it out through other locations in the garden. And then I'm going to fill this back up with green matter. So I've already, I'm ahead of the game because I'm gaining this rich, beautiful soil. I'm gaining it just by digging this hole. So by creating a three foot or a meter deep hole here, which I'm going to do, I'm going to gain 30 wheelbarrows of great soil. I am going to combine filling this back up with organic matter, green organic matter, by having the task of cleaning up my yard. So dig the hole, clean up the yard, put all the green matter in. In the same day, get a nice layer of topsoil on top, so the CO2 when it decays doesn't come out so easily. And you're ahead of the game. So now let's talk about somebody who has, uh, they build a compost bin. If you use trench composting, there is absolutely no need for compost bins. Get rid of them. They take up a lot of space in your yard. They are smelly, and they are a lot of work to maintain. They are actually a waste of time. And they're putting all their compost in there, and they're ending up having to turn it. They're ending up having to water it. They do all this extra work by getting that compost ready for their garden. And my question is, why would I do all that work when I can rotate my garden with trench composting, harvesting the finished compost, doing that exercise by creating the hole I'm going to use to fill up, and then getting that cycle to work. So I have, I would estimate maybe 20, 20 of these holes. By next year, I know exactly where I have to go to dig this back out again and to harvest all the material. So I already know that I have good material down the, down the pipeline. I know this here is 1 meter and 20, 1 meter to 40 deep. That's how much really good soil is here. So by digging this all out and my 30 wheelbarrows or 20 wheelbarrows, whenever I get out of here, I can put them in other locations in the garden. I have a real hard time getting soil here because I'm so far away from the road. So I'm better off making my own soil. And I like to keep that work at an absolute minimum. And trench composting is basically dig, bury, cover, and ignore. And if you can really think about that, that ignoring part is very important because when you can ignore the composting process, when you don't have to get a pitchfork in there and turn it over and, and water it and do all those things, you're way ahead of the game. So my math is very different. I do this trench composting, I dig the hole, I fill it up, cover it, and I leave it alone. That means that I've freed myself up to go in the garden somewhere else to do other things that are important. So this composting checklist, don't have to do anything with it again, and I'm done. I don't have to worry about this for a year. If I want to harvest this in one year, I can come back and dig this back out again. I'll have this great soil again. And it's circular. I can do this in any location in my yard where I have enough space where I can actually do this work. So by having open areas that don't have fruit trees, that don't have ground covers that are valuable, I can make these trenches all over the place. And I, I know exactly where they are. So if I go into my greenhouse in two years, and dig everything out in there, I know I'm going to have 1 meter 40, 1 meter 20 of great soil. So this picking locations, picking a day where you're going to really focus on doing cuttings and weeding, and it doesn't take a lot. This is like another 10 wheelbarrows of green material to get this covered back up. So just think about the labor. Just think about the time. Just think about this idea of rats not getting at this, dogs not digging through this, just not having any smells. I think the only real reason I could think of having a compost pile in your yard would be if you're a fisherman and you need the worms. That would be the only logical scenario that I could see. Now a lot of people are thinking that compost needs to go on top of the garden. I'm the opinion that it does a lot more in the ground than it does on top, because the roots are heading downwards, they're not heading upwards. So remember, trench composting, or whatever you want to call this, is most likely the easiest. It's very inexpensive. It costs basically your time to dig a hole, and you're pruning, and you're weeding, and there's no harm in me dumping in kitchen waste in here. You wouldn't have a problem by having all your kitchen waste coming into this hole as well. No problem whatsoever. So there is an argument of having an ongoing hole, and what I mean by that is that you have this open for as long as you need to fill it up, and then you dig another hole, you have it open for as long as you need to fill it up. I find that okay, but if I'm putting green matter in here, I'd like to layer it. Green matter, layer of dirt, green matter, layer, just so the nutrients are trapped inside that space. So if you're going to build yourself a compost bin with three separate compartments, you're going to do this constant rotation and all that, why bother? Just dig a hole deep enough, and get rid of all that organic matter, cover it up. We're going to seed this right away. We're going to have this working 12 inches, plant it with, you know, some other vegetables again, and go again, go again, go again. There is no need to have a compost pile anywhere in your yard.