Having a great garden can be a lot of work.
Trust me, my main garden this year is a complete mess. After being gone at work for much of the spring and early summer, I did not even get it all planted. Many of the plants are volunteers and sprang up from seeds left behind by last year’s plants. The rest of the “volunteers” are weeds, which are not as welcome. It is hard to fight the weeds from another state, or any job site.
Honestly, except for harvesting some of the produce, I’ve kind of given up on that garden. I will not be planting it next year, as we are planning on building our house and moving down to our actual land. That is where my heart is now, not up at the guest house that we are staying in. I am working on planting down on the land, though.
BACK TO THE BLESSING
For those of us who enjoy growing our own produce, it helps to be aware of what local resources are available. Often, there are compost sites in nearby areas. We had some back up in Wisconsin and we have some in Arkansas too.
In Wisconsin, residents of the city we used to live in could drop off their yard waste for free. Whatever grass clippings, leaves, or branches city residents wanted to get rid of could be dropped off there, free of charge. The city would then make huge piles to compost the materials, and then allow residents to pick up the compost for free too! It was a huge blessing for us for many reasons.
For one, our garden became very rich and was the happy home to hundreds of earthworms. For another, it gave us the chance to meet some great people in the area. (It was where I first met 
Now, down in Arkansas, we have a lot of work to get done preparing our homestead. In a nearby town, there is usually a good supply of mulch available for free. Unlike the compost site in Wisconsin, they have a skid-steer to load it for you, at least when the equipment is working and people are not on break. Even when I have to load it by hand, the price is still right.
USING THESE GREAT RESOURCES
As we phase out the existing Green Brier, Poison Ivy, and other “not so useful” plants on our land, we will be replacing them with a variety of edible plants. Additionally, we will be working on building up the soil, which is mostly clay and rock in a lot of areas. Mulch will work wonders as we work towards these goals. Here are a few of the ways that it will help.
*Work as a weed barrier to help prevent the regrowth of undesirable plants.
- Break down over time and turn into topsoil.
- Protect the soil that does exist by preventing wind erosion.
- Work as a moisture retainer to help the plants that we plant stay watered.
I borrowed the dump trailer that
I had the man fill in the front of the trailer with the compost and he topped the back of it off with mulch. These two are huge resources for a gardener, and I am so blessed that just by taking a short drive I can get such an amazing amount of them!
SOMETIMES QUICK AND EASY CAN HELP
Trust me, I do know how to compost and I also have a wood chipper, so making my own compost and mulch are things that I do. However, picking up a trailer full of them is certainly a benefit of being a modern gardener. As with anything, having a trustworthy source is important, and I cannot personally vouch for these materials by claiming that they are 100% contaminant free or organic. Sometimes you can see things like plastic mixed in with the compost or mulch.
Still, I think that it is worth our while as modern gardeners to be aware of what incredible resources may be available to us in our local areas. No matter what scale we garden on or how much time and effort we invest in it, having resources like compost and mulch can make the job much easier, and it can help us get better results too.
Do any of you enjoy free, local resources like these? Have you met anyone interesting at your local compost site, like I did with
As always, I'm 
and here's the proof:
proof-of-free-compost-and-mulch
Until next time…
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