My grandfather always had a “compost pile” It was in the far corner of his yard and he’d often have me throw stuff in there and dig stuff out when it was time to get the garden ready. As a kid, I didn’t fully understand the system, but I did basically get the fact that rotten yard debris was good for the garden.
Grandpa’s compost pile always seemed productive, but in retrospect, it could have used a few improvements. One issue we had with it, was that the newly added material and the older compost were sharing the same space. My job would be to fish out the sticks and leaves that hadn’t decomposed and put the clean compost into the wheelbarrow for spreading.
For our setup, we are going to use bays like this for leaves, soil, grass clippings and food waste from our house.
We will work one bay until it becomes fairly full and then I’ll build another right next to this one and so on. I would guess that we will be able to run three bays at once. We would dig ready-to-spread compost out of the oldest one while we fill up the next ones throughout the spring and summer.
Grandpa always had me spread garden lime on it when we added new stuff. This is a tradition I will continue. Peppers and tomato plants that don’t get enough calcium don’t do very well.