Jimbos.Online Garden with a purpose.

       Composting made easy.

You do not need to dig a hole. In many years of gardening, all of my composting efforts have been the simplest and so far most productive with sheet composting.

When I cut the lawn simply rake clippings and layer them in the garden directly or compost area. Each layer is about 3 to 6 inches thick. This is alternating layers sandwiching each one as the sheet layer compost area is built up. The photo is that of my garden. To get the idea of how big and how deep this sheet compost bed is looking at the concrete block laying on the right half in the photo.

As you can see this is a raised bed and it is directly where the garden will grow. That way I do not need to move the compost into the garden since it is already in the garden. I have slopped land that is hard to cut. So it is allowed to grow very tall sometimes about 2 feet tall. This becomes my source of grass clippings.

Once all of the clippings are raked up I start building the sheet compost pile. When it is finished it goes all Fall and through Winter un-touched until the next Spring. When only a few areas of it might need to be turned over. For the most part, you plant directly without ever needing to turn the pile.

                                                            Building the compost pile

The sheet compost pile is like a big sandwich. You have bread on the top and bread on the bottom. What I used for “bread” is straw [not hey] while straw is not completely free of seeds it is more seed-free than hey. If you have rotted straw that is even better. Each layer alternates with different materials.

• Straw
• Green clippings
• wood ashes
• manure
• soil
• straw

If you have enough material make it a “double-decker” and build another sandwich right on top of the first one. That is basically a “double-decker” in the photo below.

Does this work? Yes, and it is easy because there is no need to turn it over. But you do need to let it sit unused for one to two seasons.

This is the same area where the sheet compost pile was two seasons afterward. 

These tomato plants never needed any additional fertilizers, I do not use it. The composting was all it needed. You do need to cover the soil around all of the vegetables that will be planted. This prevents soil runoff, it stops rain from splashing the soil back onto the plants and thereby reducing sick plants.

Here are potato growing

I hope that this helps with your composting.