Using old food scraps with seeds to bury in the ground this fall or winter.

Hello there! I wanna find out if any of us can experiment burying pieces of old fruit or veggie such as pumpkin into the compost or another type of soil to not better the conditions of them, but to help the seeds sprout quickly. I don't want my melon or pumpkin rinds go to waste, especially if I got seed in there. I want my gardens to be at their absolute best at all times. How deep I bury my scraps of rotten fruit with seed to help enrich the food web and the soil itself? And will my soil become a greater feeding ground for worms and other underground creatures to strengthen the web of life? Please let me know how can I strengthen the ecosystems from high and low. Thanks!

I see no reason why what you are suggesting would not work.

The best cherry tomatoes I ever had came from plants that sprouted from fruit that fell on the ground and did not get picked up.

This squash is one that a person plants whole in order for it to grow:

https://permies.com/t/136739/Article-History-Chayote-Mirlitons-North

And this squash sprouts inside the squash:

https://permies.com/t/174784/Sprout-surprise-Vivipary-spaghetti-squash

Have fun with your experiment!

I've seen enough volunteers that I'm sure it will work. I recently tossed an old, moldy squash, full of seeds, that had gone missing. There's a very fertile spot here, that's been essentially inaccessible, so far, because it's so steep. I'm hoping they take root and take over that area, next spring, and give me the impetus to find a way to get down there. If I can't find a way down there, I'm hoping my free ranging birds will find and eat them, lowering my feed costs, for them.

Winter squash is what gets buried in my garden the most, and I've had seeds come up from about 8" deep for sure, maybe even a bit more.

I thought I was safe burying chokecherry pits and pulp from a batch of vinegar a foot deep in the garden, but I had a thick patch come up the next spring.

Other than those two things I haven't noticed anything about "planting" depth.

I get lots of tomato volunteers, but those are just from tomatoes left on the soil surface.

Could we add egg shells to our compost pile as long as we clean them from yolks that draw a lot of rodents? I wanna make my gardens safe in the winter free from scrap eating pests to have a smooth transition in the spring.

I don't think the trace of eggs in the shells is problem in compost or attracts more pests. Just include the eggshells. Many of us have been doing so for years

I get rodents in my compost no matter what kind of kitchen scraps are in there, so I've never understood that advice. Mice and voles have no problem eating apple cores and carrot peels and packrats will dig through anything just to see what's there. I put absolutely everything in my compost and it's all fine. If something's super icky, I'll put it in the humanure bin.

Jan White wrote:I get rodents in my compost no matter what kind of kitchen scraps are in there, so I've never understood that advice.

I agree - I think it's the warmth and the light soil/compost that attracts them - easy to dig tunnels! To some degree I figure they're aerating it, but they do make a mess!