What's that AWFUL smell?

by Linda S.
(Germantown Hills, IL )

These smell better than turkey compost!

It was a miserably hot Midwestern August when a gardener friend of mine and I volunteered to plan and plant a large courtyard area in our local middle school which was created when an addition was built.

Previously, some block walls and a wide brick path had been installed.

Our canvas was hard, dry, construction-grade clay soil….some just bare with NOTHING growing there while the shady side above the block walls had waist high weeds.

While we dug (shovel by shovel) we found NO worms at all…..definitely a bad sign.

Cathy and I planned several mini-themed gardens within this large area, presented our plans and were given the go-ahead all of a sudden with a rush to get everything done BEFORE school began in just 2 ½ weeks!

Cathy, my master gardener friend, insisted that we bring in a semi-truck load of turkey compost from a turkey farm about 15 miles away. It was dumped in back of the school, spreading its awful odor throughout the neighborhood, resulting in a rash of phone calls complaining.

The compost had to be hauled into the courtyard area one wheelbarrow at a time…leaving a smelly trail which wafted throughout the halls as the teachers filtered in preparing their classrooms for the new school year.

Cathy and I were NOT very popular people---with the neighbors, the teachers, or our families (when we came home smelling each night).

Meanwhile, we were working to till the compost in. It was still stinking, so we brought in a semi-truck load of hard-wood mulch to cover and mask the smell.

It improved slightly, we had a few nice rains, we hauled in trees, shrubs and perennials and began planting. This disturbed the soil and the smell increased again…this time along with hoards of flies!

It felt like the plagues.

To make matters increasingly worse, all the plants we had in the ground were “cooking”. The soil temps (up to 130 degrees) and the air temps (in the 90’s) were not helping. We continued to water and water and water.

By the time of the first frost that year we had only lost a few hydrangeas and one dogwood tree.

In the spring, we discovered our tree lilac had also died,

BUT…………that awful smell was gone and all that stinky stuff really paid off. The garden has exploded with color, everything that we had planted in addition to the annuals are GIGANTIC!

It’s like those “tomatoes as big as your head” pictures in the seed catalogs!!! The veggie garden that the 3rd graders planted produced sunflowers higher than the roof, corn just as tall, bushels of tomatoes, a huge hedge of marigolds and much, much, more.

The prairie garden area has coneflowers and black-eyed susans and various native grasses that are huge, too.

It’s a teaching garden, and we are trying to educate everyone as we produce our own compost now from two large, black plastic bins.

Everyone STILL comments on how horrible that smell was, but they can see the results and Cathy and I are popular people once again as teachers , staff, and students enjoy the flowers, and the butterflies and birds, etc. that the garden has attracted.