It is good to be reminded that we don't HAVE to invent elaborate and ritualized compost techniques. Almost anything works!
Some people keep reminding me that they don't even bother with a heap at all. Radicals! They collect their raw materials and spread them on top of the ground, (sheet composting), if it won't attract pets and critters.
Or they bury it shallowly if pests or neighbors might make trouble: "spot composting".
They say they get more of the "goodness" into the soil by composting directly in the gorund, instead of using a heap as a middleman.
I dunno, I LIKE playing with my heap, watering and turning and watching weeds and ugly garbage turn into beautiful organic soil. It's like alchemy! And compost is easier and more reliable to cultivate than plants.
Or maybe I'm just stuck in my ways. Is there such a thing as a compost fetish?
I imagine that some weed seeds sprout and die in the heap, or are eaten by worms or microbes and die.
And when I have small woody shreds to compost, I would much rather cook them with nitrogenous greens and digest them in thr heap, rather than bury wood in my limited soil, where it attracts fungus.
And even if I'm irrational or inefficient, I just "don't like" putting weeds or garbage directly into my raised beds.
The farthest I go in the "new-fangled" direction is to harvest and spread cooking compost much sooner than I used to. I agree that if I let my compost sit for months until it is ALL uniform soil, some nutirents and organics leach out and wash away, or denitrify, or turn to CO2.
So instead, as soon as I see that any of it has become rich black gold, I'll scrounge that out and rake it right into a raised bed. Like picking the first few cherry tomatoes as soon as they are ripe.
Woody stuff is slower, and tough stems and sod are slower.
