Get Great Compost NOW!

Soon, we’ll be putting our gardens to bed for the winter by removing dead vegetable plants, pulling out weeds to haul to Urbana’s Landscape Recycling Center, and aerating the soil.  My husband loves to grow tomatoes, and we chop up some of their spent branches to degrade in the heat of our compost pile which will be heaped high and covered with a black cloth until spring.   In past, you’ve been able to get finished compost, a.k.a. “black gold,” at The I.D.E.A. Store early in the year to work into the warming soil, but you’ll have that opportunity this month instead.

When I asked Sandy Mason of University of Illinois Extension about best times to can add compost to garden beds, she advised that you should do it “whenever you have time.”   She explained that although people have the best of intentions about fertilizing their gardens in spring before planting, she hears so many say that they didn’t get it done because the season’s to-do list is long and the window of planting time isn’t.  Just work about a quarter-inch depth of compost into vegetable beds now, and the soil will be more porous, richer and easier to work when you are ready to plant next year. 

At The I.D.E.A. Store:  While they last!    Gallon bags of homemade compost. $2.00 each.

Contributor: Carol Jo