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compost pile bounty

 
pollinator
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Location: North Central Michigan
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went out to fill and turn our compost pile the other day..we also sheet compost so i hadn't been back to the pile for a while..and i was totally surprised to find it was growing huge huge huge vegetables !!!

there is a large rhubarb plant (thanks to the neighbor who moved all her rhubarb and tossed her bits in our pile..guess i'll have to dig that puppy out and move it..

there was a bunch of potato plants..also likely thanks to the neighbor (we did give them "permission" to use our compost pile for their veggie scraps..and yard scraps that don't have any chemicals in them..

and there was also a bunch of vine..i don't know what they are..but i'll let them grow and bear fruit..maybe they'll be something decent?? not likely..but it won't hurt to let them go this year..and see..they are HUGE !!! so i just fed a corner that wasn't growing  anything and we'll wait until frost to turn this pile and pull out the taters and rhubarb plant..to relocate..


funny it is close to my potato plot so i don't have to go to far to harvest them all at once
 
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It's like a raised bed surprise!
 
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how fun! it is like experiencing the surprise of the first pre farmer humans who notice their favorite foods in the rubbish heap!
 
gardener
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Location: Central IL
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Awesome!  I just love "bonus" stuff.  A few weeks back I found some watermelon slowly creeping out of my finishing pile.  It's growing slower than our others (a little shady in the bin, I guess), but what the heck, why not see what it makes?  If nothing else, it's generating more stuff for the active pile when it's done!
 
Brenda Groth
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Location: North Central Michigan
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very true, well i know the taters will be yum..and the rhubarb should be really easy to move into a better permanent place...but the vine..we'll see what turns up..i looked at it agian today and it really is healthy but i didn't see any little orbs on it yet !!

coon have eaten my corn and it wasn't even hardly ears yet ..wahhh.

beans are done and vines pulled as mulch..so my garden has had good surprises and bad..at least i have some produce put up for winter..

 
Leah Sattler
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thats a real bummer about your corn brenda. I have only had marginal success with corn anyway and it is readily available and cheap here in season so I haven't bothered with it for several years. super fresh corn is soooo good. I prefer to buy it from road side stand type places.
 
Brenda Groth
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well unless i can completely enclose an area with a cage some year..i'm not going to do corn again.

i'm going to turn over the area that i had the corn and potatoes and beans this year..into a berry garden for next year..as the berries do so well here they might actually become a cash crop again for me..i have sold raspberries in the past (before our housefire) and i had bumper crops of raspberries again this year including blacks and golds..so..i'm strongly considering turning a 40 x 40 area into rows of berries for a possible cash crop in a year or so.
 
Leah Sattler
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although not as deviant as raccoons I have bunny problems here at the new place so I have got to get serious about getting my chicken moat in around it. I had a few straggling surviving table queen squash plants and all the squash next to the ground had bunny bites taken out of it! and of course the two green bean plantings I attempted were swiftly destroyed.
 
Brenda Groth
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i have wascally wabbits here too, but the cats really scare them..tee hee..so they aren't doing much damage..but in the winter they are worse than hell itself..well maybe not.

i found some tiny melons and tiny squash (winter) on some plants finally..kinda late to be seeing them..they have much less than a prayer of making it until ripe here with our no summer summer and horrible winter forcast.
 
steward and tree herder
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I often get potatoes sprouting from scraps in my compost heap - I bet the rhubarb loved the extra nutrients. Probably starting a new pile in a different place each year and just planting into the old one would work well on a rotation....
 
gardener
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Among other things, a bunch of pie pumpkins grew in our compost pile this year. The strength of the pumpkin vines amazes me. They are almost ready to harvest!
20250910_170247.jpg
Voluptuous Volunteer Pie Pumpkins grow in a compost bin
Pumpkin growing on a vine that has climbed a fence above a compost pile
 
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