{"id":302,"date":"2013-11-09T17:34:10","date_gmt":"2013-11-10T01:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=302"},"modified":"2013-11-22T13:45:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T21:45:52","slug":"compost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=302","title":{"rendered":"Compost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love the miracle of compost. There is a circularity to it, the way plants in their dying return nourishment to the soil that sustained their lives. I have compost bins, of course, wire frames in which I layer garden refuse, kitchen scraps and dry material. I compost vegetable matter only, because of our resident wildlife, and keep a wire mesh lid on the currently active bin. It\u2019s not entirely satisfactory. I cannot raise a hot enough temperature to kill all the weeks seeds. I\u2019m envious of our local <a title=\"Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenbythesea.org\" target=\"_blank\">Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens<\/a>, which receives regular donations of spent grain and hops from nearby <a title=\"North Coast Brewing Company\" href=\"http:\/\/www.northcoastbrewing.com\" target=\"_blank\">North Coast Brewing Company<\/a>to boost their compost processing temperature.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_303\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/wheelbarrows.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-303\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-303\" title=\"wheelbarrows\" src=\"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/wheelbarrows-300x177.jpg\" alt=\"Wheelbarrows\" width=\"300\" height=\"177\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/wheelbarrows-300x177.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/wheelbarrows-1024x605.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-303\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sieved compost in one wheelbarrow, sticks in the other.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Right now I\u2019m digging out my favorite kind of compost, a huge pile of chippings from a neighbor\u2019s tree trimming and bush pruning that has sat in the meadow behind the house for about three years. The chippings were not great. Even now, the pile contains a lot of sticks, which I have spread under my orchard trees. They\u2019ll decompose in time, and meanwhile provide some deterrent to the meadow grasses.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_304\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/nov8_13-002.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-304\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-304\" title=\"nov8_13 002\" src=\"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/nov8_13-002-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Stick pile\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/nov8_13-002-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/nov8_13-002-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-304\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">All that&#8217;s left of a huge stick pile.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Sieved out from the sticks is the treasure: rich black compost, free of weeds, to spread as mulch around the garden. The plants are smiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love the miracle of compost. There is a circularity to it, the way plants in their dying return nourishment to the soil that sustained their lives. I have compost bins, of course, wire frames in which I layer garden refuse, kitchen scraps and dry material. I compost vegetable matter only, because of our resident [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[162,408,42,163],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}