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The first time I tried trench composting, I couldn’t dig down very deep because of the hugelkulture logs I buried.

All was well for a couple of days, then I woke to find the buried compost in the trench had been discovered by some critters.

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They dug around and brought out some choice pieces of pineapple skin and corn cob with little bits of kernels left on them. Aside from making a small mess of the neatly raked row, it wasn’t a problem because I was waiting for it to settle a while before planting anything there.

They continued to dig around for a couple of nights after that first time, and then once all the good was gone, have left it alone since.

For my second trench composting experiment, top photo, I dug twice as deep. No logs this time, just a buried telephone cable. Luckily I knew it was there and unearthed it carefully. I don’t know how deep these cables are supposed to be, but I think this one is a little on the shallow side.

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Another awesome delivery of restaurant trimmings:

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Have you seen enough of my barrow of kitchen trimmings? Let me know if I’m disgusting anyone.

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In went everything. I stomped it down a little and covered it back up with the soil I removed earlier.

IMG_3543It’s only been one overnight since I did this one. No critters, yet. I’ll let you know if burying it deeper was enough to keep the night raiders from finding it. Meanwhile, I’ll smooth over the first one. I still haven’t decided what to plant there, but I want to make sure when I do that the night digging has completely stopped.