Compost- How to do it wrong, like me!

Look in any garden catalog and you will find compost  temperature gauges, bio enhancer,  accelerators and picture of people smiling hold what looks like black flour that has come out of some supper doper composter. I have never gotten my compost to look like that and I don't want to - so there. My compost looks something like this;

My "finished" compost

You can clearly see what used to be leaves and stems- it looks like what people rake up in late spring when they didn't get around to cleaning their garden in the fall and it pretty much what it is. In the fall I take out my handy dandy leaf sucker thing that vacuums leaves then chops them up and collects them in a little bag then I dump them into my pile. I cut back non woody perennials and I toss that in to along with some grass clippings from my neighbor. I have a simple compost pin made out of four pallets.
 

Cleaning out my compost in the spring

 I don't put kitchen scraps in this compost pile because it is open and may attract wonderful things like skunks. I do compost kitchen scraps with the help of some little red worms  in a closed bin so that critters don't get at it. Here is my worm compost bin.

For the worms I keep this in a shady area so it doesn't get too hot.

Simply put food scraps at the top and harvest compost out the bottom.

Worm compost

Worm compost used as mulch

 I don't figure out the carbon to nitrogen formula, I don't turn it  weekly, I don't take it's temperature, I just wait until spring. In late spring after the soil has warmed and seedling have emerged I give my beds one good weeding then I put soggy mats of this stuff around all my plants a good couple of inches thick. I like mulch that breaks down easily. and then adds to the soil.  Bark and coco hulls are decorative but the don't add anything to the soil and they cost money. By mid summer the mats of compost I have put down has completely decomposed and it is time for me to clean out my compost pile and re-mulch again. After a few years of doing this you can stick a folk any where in my garden and it will be dark crumbly soily goodness.

Garden beds with compost mulch

Roses with compost mulch