Compost - A Vegetable's Best Friend

At Marty's place in Kerikeri, I found a book that I read cover to cover. Ok, it was only 86 pages, and I skipped some parts, but for me and nonfiction, it is was cover to cover. Common-Sense Compost-Making: The Quick-Return Method was written by a British woman in about 1945, and it was quite a delightful read. I will give you a sample:
"The method [of farm compost heaps] is very elastic and open to infinite variations. The chief rules are:
1. Keep heat in.
2. Keep rain out.
3. Let the heap breathe.
Use all weeds, even seeding and rampant ones. Place seeding weeds in the centre where the heat will destroy their power of germination. Have no fear of rampant weeds. The more they ramp, the more vitality they have to give the heap....Incidentally, if a stem is too tough to be severed with a spade, it is too tough for the heap. Burn it."
So you can see just how much fun I was having.
Compost, now, is a big part of my life. When I first arrived at Kerikeri Organics, Marty took me along for his regular fish pick-up - twice a week he carts 150-200 kilograms of fish scraps from a nearby fish shop and dumps it all into a huge concrete barrell. In a few years he will have some beautiful rich compost for his vegetables (although not so nice-smelling). Fish, Marty told me, have all the necessary macro-nutrients for soil - nitrogen, potassium, and [please fill in the third all you farmers out there as I can't remember it]. Seaweed has all the micro-nutrients that the soil needs (don't ask me what they are), so if you have a farm near the sea you should be all over that compost. The fish was just the beginning - most of our farmwork centered around compost - we toted wheelbarrows up and down rows of what would soon be courgettes (zucchini) and dropped a shovelfull of compost about every 2 feet, where the seedlings would be planted. After three days in the courgette field, we shoveled more compost onto holes in the ground where tamarillo plants would soon be.
And at Long Flat Bottom in Kaitaia, I (drumroll please) made my first compost heap. It was surprisingly simple, if you have pig manure, dried grass from some recent weedeating action, and a pitchfork handy, as I did. One layer of pig poo, one layer of grass, one layer of pig poo....and top it all of with plenty of dried grass and a few buckets full of pig liquid. I was so proud.
And if you think that you will never have to see compost, think again. The city of San Francisco been collecting compost (with the garbage and recycling) for the past two years. As Common-Sense Compost-Making says, healthy soil means healthy vegetables, and healthy vegetables means healthy people. If you're lucky, the local government near you will catch on soon.