Corey's Back: Big Dig #2

Look for this apple core if you like shoveling

Cedar Grove Compost is back with another Big Dig contest.  Just like last year, you look at participating retailers for a small poster with a picture of Corey, the anthropomorphic apple core pictured above.  Input the code on the poster at the form on the Compost Days website, and get a coupon for a free bag of compost, and a chance to participate in The Big Dig, where you dig around in a big pile of compost for more interesting prizes.  Last year I won a garden consult and a gift card at Sky Nursery.

A few things have changed since last year.  First of all, there will be 3 Big Digs instead of just one, on 3 successive Saturdays, one in Lynnwood, one in Ballard, and one in Rainier Beach.  Probably as a consequence, the sites with Coreys are more spread out, reaching all the way up to Arlington, with sites on the Eastside as well.  Less dramatically, almost all the Corey sites this year are stores with Garden sections, so there's no need to go looking for bulletin boards in the back of restaurants like last year.  And the codes this year are no longer 4 digit numbers, but rather things that can be composted (which probably means you can guess some of them without actually visiting the locations).

Unfortunately, as of this writing, many of the sites that are supposed to have the Corey posters up do not.  I've visited 10 of them so far, and only 5 have had the posters available.  4 of the missing 5 didn't have any sign that the promotion was underway, even though it was supposed to start last weekend.  So either put things off for a few days, or be prepared to be disappointed.

Vital strategy point if you get to dig:  wear pants you don't mind throwing out

Strategy

Strategy-wise, it's a no-brainer to go to your nearest location and get the code, as it basically gets you a free bag of compost (coupon mailed later, so you can't do it all in one trip).  But let's assume you want to participate in the Big Dig.  You should probably read the rules, which contain a number of interesting wrinkles that might affect your strategy.

First of all, you can enter up to 30 times, and each entry increases your chance of being in a Big Dig, so you should enter as often as you can.  There are 3 distinct drawings for the 3 Big Digs, so if you can attend all 3, the logical strategy is to get your entries in as soon as possible so that you have as many chances to be drawn as possible (entries that aren't drawn stay in the pool of entries to be possibly drawn later).

But actually, it's not clear this is the best strategy because of another rule:  unclaimed prizes in the first Big Dig will be buried in the second Big Dig.  And unclaimed prizes in the second Big Dig will be buried in the third.  So maybe you want to be drawn later, since later Digs will have more good prizes.  A lot of this, I think, will depend on how they run the Big Digs.  In last year's contest, they basically let people dig until they found a prize chest.  The new rules say the diggers get 90 seconds, and, if they don't find a chest, they just get another bag of compost.  Given how difficult it was to find prizes last year, I suspect this will be relaxed; the first box wasn't found last year until about the 5th minute of digging, and I doubt they're going to let the first Digs finish without someone winning a good prize.  Still, I would rather be in the 2nd or 3rd Big Dig than the 1st, as I suspect they're going to have many details to iron out and you might not want to be in the Dig where they do their initial ironing.

Personally, I can only attend one of the Big Digs, so I'm going to time my entries accordingly.  If you can't attend them all, you should do the same.  The first drawing (for the March 30th Big Dig) only includes entries received by March 26.  The second drawing (for the April 7 Dig) includes entries received by April 2.  The deadline for the last drawing (for the April 14 Dig) is April 10.  So if you definitely want the second Dig, save up your entries and submit them March 27-April 2, and if you want the third dig, only submit them April 3-10.