Organic Gardener's Composting is a novel written by Steve Solomon and starts with a chapter about some composters who are very fussy and take great pains to produce a material exactly to their liking. Simple, less rigorous ways of composting produce a product nearly as good with much less work. One unique method suited to handling kitchen garbage might appeal even to the ecologically concerned apartment dweller. The overly-large garden produces dozens and dozens of stumps and uneaten savoy cabbages. Sprouting potatoes, mildewed squash, and shriveled apples are spread atop brassica stalks. With the first frost in October, there is a huge amount of garden cleanup. Compost turning can be a laborious, sweat-inducing, back-breaking task or it can be rather quick and simple. Even with a really sharp shovel, it is exceedingly challenging to penetrate a compost pile. One requires a hay fork, sometimes known as a "pitchfork" by most people. Spading forks with four wide-flat blades don't work well for turning heaps, but in extremes, I'd prefer one to a shovel. The normal "combination" shovel is made for builders to move piles of sand or gravel. A combination shovel has a decidedly curved blade that won't scrape up very much with each stroke.
Territorial Seed Company was started by Steve Solomon. For more than 35 years, he has grown the majority of the food for his family. He is also the author of several influential gardening publications, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades and Gardening When it Counts. When he was about 12, he asked his father what job or career he wanted him to have when Steve grew up. At that moment he was touched. Sir Steve doesn't care if you're a doctor or an auto mechanic, he added. Experiencing what his father’s ongoing anger and resentment over this did to him and to our family, he resolved to do better. Steve Solomon supposes that’s why most of his income has been created from home. In his late twenties, Steve became a secondary school teacher, this was done out of a foolish notion that he could inspire a love of knowledge in the young by getting them to “do” history, which was something he had a passion for at that time. The students back then weren't old enough to understand history very well, thus the strategy didn't work out very well (a study that rarely should be undertaken by someone under thirty years of age).
