Great tip postmandug! I learned this tip from my dear mother in law (who would be 104 next month if she were still living. She never had a compost pile, she always just buried compostables right into her garden on a daily basis. I live in an area where we can do this year round ... no frozen ground in winter to contend with.

This all sounds good, Lin, but what about the opossums , raccoons , slugs, etc, that live in my yard? Will it just be a buffet for them?

Hap

I do it the easy way like you Postman! Yay! Great tip.

Nancy, We have lots of raccoons, possums and armadillos around here but if I bury the stuff @ 1 1/2 to 2 feet deep they don't seem to dig it up. They do however raid the birdfeeders if seed or suet is left out overnight. I heard something a couple of nights ago and knew it wasn't the cat because she was in bed with me. When I realized the noise was coming from outside I looked out the window to see a very large opossum climbing on the deck railing, reaching for a birdfeeder!

Up here, when winter is howling and the snow is too deep to get to the compost pile, Mom just dumps her compostibles right into the veggie garden on top of the snow. In the spring we just dig it all under (what's left of it that is). Have never had a problem with wild animals.

Great tip!

Very good tip! it's how my mom and grandma composted too. I have an open compost and have never had a problem with the wild animals getting in there...now the chickens and the dogs, that's another story!!

I have several beds where I just got some semi-tender perennials and reseeding annuals established, and I don't want to turn that soil over.

I was hoping that a thin layer of fine coffee grounds ON TOP of the soil, maybe raked in lightly if there seemed to be no sprouts yet, would allow seedlings to push through in the spring, and yet still enrich the soil.

I sure can't see where it could hurt... ?

My other hope was that coffee grounds would live up to their 'reputation" and attarct worms, but repel slugs.

I've been putting a lot of grounds in to my compost heap and screened-clay-pile since I found two Starbucks with Gounds For Gardeners, but see no worms in my compost. Maybe it's just too cold and they're hibernating.

It certainly won't hurt. My elderly backyard neighbor takes her coffee grounds every single morning and sprinkles them around plants that like acidity. She's been doing it for years and the plants love it.

I do the same Lin. Especially with my hydrangia. And yes, I put the coffee grounds just right on top Rick. I don't do that with all of them though because I keep a large Rubbermade bin for all of my kitchen waste. I chop it small, take it to the bin daily and turn it regularly. Periodically I add spagnum moss, some chopped leaves (not of the oak variety), small pieces of evergreen, and worms.

Perhaps you need to 'introduce' your worms to your compost.

Postman, thank you for the tip. Because it freezes here, in the next week or so, I will spread this all on top and by spring it will just have worked itself in. I only turn the (very small) part of my garden where I put vegetables. The rest is almost all mixed perennials; I just 'scratch around' there so as not to disturb the tubers, bulbs, corms, and established roots.

Hey JR!

How come no oak leaves?

They don't break down easily. I DO mulch them and leave a good portion of the mulched ones on the grass then drive the plug aerator around in the spring. For compost though, even with repetitive passes, they do not mulch small enough. The maple and ash leaves are thinner and do. I like to keep the mix very 'fluffy'. Oak leaves weigh it down too much.

>> Perhaps you need to 'introduce' your worms to your compost

I would agree 100%, and enjoy throwing my SO into throes of hilarious laughter as I went crouching around the yard going: "Here Worm! Here Wormy! Wormy Wormy Wormy!"

However, just once, at one particular point and in warm weather, the very few worms in the pile became huge, and then I had lots of tiny worms ... for a few weeks. So they can find it if they want to.

Now I don't see any. I did let one small pile finally become 'fully digested' and the other pile hasn't gotten very active yet ... maybe the cold weather makes them too drowsey to wake up and smell the coffee grounds.

Come to think of it, I haven;t seen them in soil either for quite a while. Hmm. I know I haven;t added as much compost as I should - could they have gotten hungry and left my yard altogether?

I would think they kind of go into a hibernation type of state Rick. Not really hibernation per se but s-l-o-w-e-d down & I doubt they multiply until weather warms. Plus, I'm sure they are going quite deep into the soil (oops! rocky clay) as deep as they can to keep from freezing so you likely won't be able to SEE them.

I ran into quite a few of them while putting bulbs in about a week ago but our soil hasn't frozen yet and we had had a couple of days of intermitent rain. I doubt that they took a bus Rick. Ann is likely correct, they may have gone deep to sleep.

I can just see that Worm Bus, kind of like a scene from Men In Black II.

I know that slugs will travel considerable distances to find their favorite foods, like my Delphinum seedlings, but maybe not worms.

When my compost heap leaned against a pile of clay and rocks, I would sometimes see a worm halfway out of really hard clay - they really have great tunneling skills.

Yes, a worm resume is short but efficient. They process the earth.

Actually Rick, if you keep putting compost in a hole during the winter the worms might be inclined to congregate underneath the compost as it generates heat while decomposing. See? And if you ringed that hole of compost with some rocks ---- you don't have any of those do you? --- that would be even better as the rocks help to regulate the temperature of the soil & thus help hold in heat from the decomposing compost.

"inclined to congregate"