How to Compost Directly in the Vegetable Garden

Composting is the key to a successful vegetable garden, but sometimes it can seem like such a pain to pull out all of your vegetable plants at the end of the season and haul them over to the compost pile. Why not make life easier by composting your spent vegetables right where they grew? I learned the following time-saving composting method at the Interbay Community Garden in Seattle when I had a plot there--and it is the perfect way to build healthy soil without a lot of effort.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Burlap

1. In fall, pull out all of your vegetable plants (tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.) that you do not plant to overwinter. Prevent spreading disease in your garden by carefully separating out any diseased plants and disposing of them in the garbage.
2. Mix the disease-free vegetable garden debris with an equal amount of shredded leaves. You can also add in grass clippings, coffee grounds, straw, rabbit bedding, or animal manure (just avoid horse manure because it contains a ton of weed seeds). Try to keep a 50-50 balance between high nitrogen “greens” like vegetable waste, grass clippings, and manure and carbon rich “browns” like straw and leaves.
3. Spread this mix of organic matter 6 to 12 inches deep over your vegetable garden beds and water it well.
4. Soak burlap bags in water and then lay them over the mound of organic matter, overlapping the edges of the bags by 4 to 6 inches. This burlap layer helps keep the organic matter moist, provides the dark environment that soil microorganisms and worms prefer, and prevents weeds from sprouting up.
5. Your work is done! All you have to do now is leave the pile in place for about six months or until the organic matter has broken down into a dark, crumbly, earthy-smelling compost. If the top layer hasn’t completely decomposed by the time you’re ready to plant, simply rake it aside, plant, and then spread it back around your plants as mulch.

Tips & Warnings

• Coffee shops are a great free source of burlap bags. If you can't find bags, buy a roll of burlap from a hardware store. This burlap tends to be much thinner, so cover your beds with a double layer.