compost heap

"We've worked with everything from soft fruit to salad greens, clearing beds and keeping crops out of the compost heap," said Holtam.

The boards themselves began to degrade after just 1 month in a compost heap.

“He would sleep at the compost heap, wake up, hop over a few trees to a favorite perch and then hunt for rats,” Lei said.

"The Craterium minutum slime mould was found on decaying vegetation, at the edge of a compost heap in my garden, captured following a hard frost," said Webb.

These practices include generating "middens" -- piles of waste and food scraps, similar to compost heaps, that are maintained in certain locations around the center of a village.