Compost. Oh, how I hated the steaming, stinky stuff! The turning and churning of dead things — the rotten spots, the ends and stems, the cores and seeds that we cut out of our lives. “Behold this compost! behold it well!”[1] wrote Whitman in Leaves of Grass, viewing the whole world as a pile of moldering corpses. Refuse is one thing, but decay and decomposition are another. I understood that compost was the most efficient use of waste, but I detested the squishy-wishy, slimy ruin of the discarded. The mixture with manure, brittle leaves, stalks and woodchips. I abhorred the mess, the pile that was left to sit and mope for months on end.

I have gardened and amended the soil of my small patch of land — 20x30 feet — for twenty years. Originally my plot was part of a playground near my old Amish one-room schoolhouse. The first year I gardened that plot, I turned the sod with a tiller and worked the ground to get it ready for planting. Clumps, clods and wads of dirt had to be smoothed into a fine, loose medium, waiting to receive garden seed. My hands braced against the handle of the tiller, I walked over and over the rich, black earth. I planted in the early spring and by mid-summer I reaped huge rewards. I have photos of the inaugural year of my schoolhouse garden — large, bright green heads of cabbage, tall lush stalks of sweet corn — all seemingly grown without much effort. Even my Amish neighbors, whose gardens dazzle with their color and design, remarked upon the beauty of my plot.

But I knew that initial success would never last unless I replenished the soil. You can’t just keep working the land, harvesting its gifts without restoring its fertility. The first year of cultivation may produce spectacular results, but then you must turn your energy toward the health of the soil. And if you’re an organic gardener, that “health” translates into “compost.” Compost enriches the soil with nutrients, provides moisture management and helps prevent erosion. Compost also helps stabilize the ph of the soil. It can even bind and degrade specific pollutants. Organic gardeners live and breathe compost — a substance that reduces the need for chemical fertilizers and herbicides.

I knew all the advantages of compost, but I still resisted the pile-up and endless turning of all that moldy, putrid stuff. Pitchforks and smelly, unsightly containers! So, when I became serious about gardening, I looked for alternatives to the compost pile. A trip to the library brought the discovery of Ruth Stout and her mulching method. Here was a woman who had abandoned the compost pile in favor of a thick layer of mulch. Cakes of old hay, wood chips, grass clippings, shredded leaves or other readily available material completely covered the bare earth of the garden plot. The mulch insulated the garden in the winter, preventing wind and water erosion.

In the springtime, Stout left her tiller in the shed and simply parted the mulch, scratching a deep furrow into the ground for her seeds. The mulch kept the soil loose and pliable without need of cultivation. Once the seedlings pushed up out of the earth, Stout pulled the mulch back around the rows of plants. The mulch smothered the weeds and helped the plants retain moisture, reducing the need for irrigation. Stout planted her potatoes right on top of the mulch, covering them with more hay. The seed potatoes shot their roots down into the hay, producing large, firm new tubers. Throughout the summer, Stout added more and more mulch, the lowest layers dissolving into the earth, adding nutrients and organic matter to the soil. And what became of those kitchen scraps? Stout simply strolled out to the garden with her apple core, lifted the layer of mulch, and tucked the refuse under the hay. In mere days the core decomposed and returned to the earth.

I used the Ruth Stout method for many years and loved it. The whole garden became a compost pile — one that eliminated the squishy-wishy, or at least kept the dead at bay. My kitchen waste went right into the garden before it could even think of shriveling and decaying under my sink or outside in an unsightly heap. I kept no buckets or piles. I sniffed no odors. I hung up my pitchfork and scoffed at the garden catalogue advertisements for expensive compost bins and tumblers. I laughed at the photos: a model dressed in well-pressed jeans and a plaid shirt turning the tumbler with one hand, her painted red fingernails glinting under the studio lights.

The wild unruliness of the Stout method delighted me. Some evenings after supper I stood at the garden fence and simply pitched my garbage into the night, scattering it here or there. It quickly wormed its own way down into the embrace of the hay. Oh, the abandon of it. The purge. Behold this rubbish I call my own! Behold it well disappearing into the dark. Behold my core, seeds and stems merging, flying through the air, then becoming the earth.

In the autumn, I relished shredding and gathering up my leaves with my lawnmower, then piling the refuse on my garden plot. What a great way to keep lawn waste out of the landfill. Beneath the soil, a rich network of earthworms were ready to pull down the organic matter and convert it into humus. In the spring I didn’t have to worry about wet ground or wait to get into my plot with the tiller. I could simply walk over the mulch, part the hay, and plant.

But several successive drought years made hay scarce and what bales I could find were filled with weed seed. During the drought, the mulch I could find did save me from having to do much watering — even in the most severe conditions. Yet finally the weeds popped out of the mulch and created a lot of extra work. And the weeds were difficult to eradicate through the hay. I had to stoop down and pull each one. Using a hoe was impossible. I could not hack through the hay. So, I closed my Ruth Stout book and put it back on the bookshelf. I fell back into my traditional gardening with tillers and the Amish gartenbleche, or cultivator.

Yet, I still resisted the traditional compost heap. Behold my stubbornness! Behold it well! I looked for another method of composting and discovered trenching — simply burying the garbage and waste directly in the garden. I harvested a row of vegetables, then spaded a small trench in the ground. I tossed in my kitchen waste, manure, and any other refuse I could find, then covered the shallow trough back up with the displaced dirt. Poof. No stink, no steam. Decomposition out of sight. I pursued this composting method for several years until I finally began to feel more like a ditch digger than a gardener.

Then I discovered heavy gauge fence wire. Cheap, functional, easy to assemble. I cut off a piece, forming it into a bin, and clamped its ends together with a couple of double bolt snap hooks. In went the layers of waste — the garden refuse, dead leaves, grass clippings, and manure. I discovered that if I mixed my kitchen scraps directly with alfalfa meal, they would disappear rapidly. I unsnapped my wire bin, stuck my pitchfork into the pile and turned the heap. As long as I added enough manure or alfalfa meal, I didn’t have to pick up that pitchfork very often. The manure and meal spiked the heap. The mound quickly heated up and broke down its materials.

Soon, I began to reap bushels of dark, crumbly compost--gardener’s gold. What chemistry! Every time I planted a seedling or a row of vegetables, I added compost to my herb bed, to the soil in my cold frame, to the ground around my fruit trees. I used a bulb planter to remove small plugs of dirt near my basil, oregano and sage plants, then filled them back up with compost. The herbs, which had been looking a bit lackluster, soon returned to their usual glow and vigor. The Swiss chard and kale in the cold frame swiftly recovered from their transplantation from the vegetable plot, and the pear trees slowly began to increase their yields. The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,/The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,/The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches.

Now I am in awe of the heap, of death in the open, of the departed piled up before me, rotting before my eyes. I honor the slump of all those old corpses and enjoy watching the compaction and disappearance of waste, the blending together of like and unlike. It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions. I vow no more cover-ups, no more secret burials in shallow graves. I turn the mound and the earth whirls with me, spinning on its axis, revolving around the sun. Air fanning, wind moving, molecules bombarding molecules, forever in action. With Whitman I make the leap: the earth itself is one big mound and it gives us divine materials to sustain us. And the little offerings I stoop to place inside my wire bin are the leavings she accepts again.

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