My compost bin disaster that turned into a win for my garden

I was in my backyard last July trying to turn my compost pile and the whole thing just collapsed. The bin I'd built from pallets gave way and there was half-rotted food scraps everywhere. I spent two hours shoveling it all back into a proper bin I bought from a local gardening store for $35. But weirdly, after I got it all sorted, the plants around that spot grew twice as fast as the rest of my garden. Has anyone else had a compost pile suddenly get way more productive after a messy rebuild?

2 comments

2 Comments

white.alex1mo ago

My pallet bin collapsed last spring and I had three giant piles of half broken down leaves and kitchen scraps all over my lawn. I just left the mess for a week because I was so mad, but then my tomato plants that were closest to that spot went absolutely crazy compared to the ones farther away. Pretty sure all that extra oxygen mixing in when the pile fell apart was the secret sauce.

lee_bailey651mo ago

Hold on, you might be onto something but not the oxygen part. That pile sitting there broken open gave the worms and bugs a highway right into the middle of it. They could crawl all through that mess without having to dig through a solid wall of half-rotted stuff. Your tomatoes basically got a worm delivery service straight to their roots.