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The Kapuler Papers - Compost as an Eco-Organism


Alan and Linda Kapuler
Peace Seeds
6-28-06

 

The cool moist spring has become summers melting heat. Many plants have made their way from overwintering and springtime beds to the compost pile. Lettuces have begun to flower. Mustards, cabbages, broccoli, turnips, arugula and their other brassicaceous relatives have flowered and many have matured seeds. Weedy grasses and daisies have shed their pollen, made seeds and spread them widely in the wind, in the soil and in the intestines of many creatures.

So when the lettuces have yellow flowers and they mature into puffs of fluff that catch the wind and the seeds begin to fly off into new locales, put the maturing plants in the compost pile. When the Red Russian Kale matures its golden yellow flowers into 2” long cylindrical seed pods (technically called siliques) filled with a dozen seeds, pull the plants and put them in the compost pile.

The idea is to allow the plants we grow for food to complete their cycles bo