A 12 foot piece of that fence fabric will give you a circle about 4 feet in diameter and that is a good size. What little bit of material that will fall out of that fence will not make any difference to what happens inside. If you have enough manure you want to plunk down 6 inches of vegetative waste and put 2 inches of manure on top of that, or a mixture of about 3 parts vegetative waste to 1 part manure. Adding "dirt", soil, is not essential. Back in Sir Albert Howards day that was thought to supply the microorganisms that would digest the material but today we know that is not needed since the vegetative waste already has those microorganisms growing on them. Some of us add material to our compost over time while others build up the compost pile all at once. It really makes little difference except that piling stuff up all at once probably gets finished compost sooner. Of course, that also means you need all of your material there when you build the pile.

This far south it still to hot to actually do much though.

As the famous treasure hunter Mel Fisher used to say, Today's the day. I'm excited about the prospects of coming home with some real treasures, and seeing old friends and meeting new ones! Tom

I guess you could say, It takes a forum ;) I've often sought and received great advise on gw and am grateful. My project is far from nice at the moment. Really a yard in flux. But I am going to post a couple of pictures and ask for a bit more help;) The highlight is, regardless of the mess, there are these little oasis's of vegetables preparing to grow and you are right, they are so much better right out of the garden. Now your plan of casual weeders has me intrigued - will they, won't they? I guess time will tell. This first picture is where we mostly eat and gather outside, adjacent to it, but not in this photo, is the new space and together they make the largest span of fenced yard. You can see the buffet I made out of the extra box in the bottom of the photo. I am thinking herbs in that little garden across from the buffet, which was my only planting area before this. This picture is the other side of the yard where the house shadow will eventually shade. The dirt area was out of control arborvitaes until this past weekend. I am researching espaliered grafted fruit trees for the fence, but getting conflicting opinions of them. The grass is usually a bit nicer, but I scalped it in preparation for the garden which isn't going there...yet. Here is the new space. See my gardens? Kind of hidden at the moment. Everything to the left of the buffet back to the brick wall was on the outside of the fence before Mother's Day;) I need to decide what I am putting on the ground in that area. There isn't much space to cover, the grill is on brick. If you look below the hammock there is a swept section that shows where a cement pad starts and continues back to the neighbors brick garage. I am going to move the black table and chairs onto the cement pad because it is a larger area than where it is now. There is rock (swept back for now) between the hammock and dining table which sits on brick. Lots of materials! We thought grass, then we thought rock and most recently mulch. Today I'm feeling grass again, maybe to tie it into the other side? Is there something else I should be considering? Also, the hammock will not always be there, it is mostly a promise for the end of a work day;) plus its pulling the fence post a little too much :( As you can see we have a lot of work ahead of us, but a substantial amount behind us too!