I too am cold composting as the hot composting is not working as well as Id like. I have this in 4' square box about 2 1/2' high and like you hope its done enough I can plant something in there. Not sure at this time what it will be.

Generally, when sheet composting directly on top of the garden soil, it is recommended to dig through the layers to plant into the actual soil, rather than planting into the non-composted layers. Keep the composting material pushed aside so the seedlings can get sun. Adding finished vermicompost directly to the soil/planting hole would certainly give the growing plant or seed an advantage. You may find gardeners who will transplant potted plants into the composting layers, but those plants have at least some growing medium around their roots.

Do you have municipal composting? I can go to the county composting facility and bring back an entire van full of bins of free compost.

Re: using vermicompost--I usually dilute the compost and water with it. But I have to be selective, as I only have one bin, and my worms don't produce enough to use all over the garden.

Think I might need a post hole digger and a sledgehammer this spring.

Yes I too can go and get free compost from the city which I did once but was not satisfied with it. It had to be just leaf litter and some debris.

Last year I turned over new ground for gardening plants grew but soil was a light sandy brown at end of season. So I went to a place near me and got two cubic yards of compost for about $50. The place told me when they recieved the stuff it stunk to high hell so Im guessing it had some kind of manure in it. I feel really good about my upcoming garden in the spring.

Could of also just been anaerobic...

We get free composting yard waste from the city lot... I always get the stinky stuff from the bottom of the pile by digging a hole to it, we bring it home and finish composting it before adding it to the garden... it usually finishes very quickly.

I doubt it when I brought it home and tilled it in about a week later I saw worms coming into it , previously I just didnt have any worms in my sandy soil

Google "lasagna gardening" - maybe something there will help?

One problem of lasagna gardening is it works with the assumption that you already have some workable compost or soil to plant into while you wait for the rest to break down. If you don't, it's not really applicable.

i lasagna garden. we have glacial till here, so i i put newspaper, grass clipp9ings, compost and kitchen waste (uncomposted), cardnoard, coffee grounds, etc. in layers right on the rocks. then i cut into the layers and plunked plants in there. everything did well.

carol

Rosecanadian, are you saying you planted into the material before it broke down, and it worked?

How much of this stuff was already compost?

Yes. One or two of my layers was soil - but only about 4 inches total of soil. Compost was probably the least - since I didn't have huge amounts of compost. So maybe 1/2 inch total. I didn't plant roses, because all of my roses stay in pots, and the amount of "lasagna" (with rocks underneath) was only about 14 inches high. So I planted my perennials in there in the spring, and they did wonderfully. Although, I knew that I had put down stuff that would get hot from composted where I had placed it, so I kept the area moist. Hope that made sense. :)

Carol