It wasn't so long ago that composting was still considered a fringe activity, something you might find ardent back-to-the-landers doing out on their country acreage, but certainly not a practice within the realm of most suburbanites' experience. Today, however, many towns and small cities are encouraging composting like never before, sometimes offering compost bins at subsidized rates, often providing instructional materials or workshops on how to compost, while simultaneously ceasing the curbside pickup of readily compostable materials like leaves and grass clippings. At the same time, sales of bagged compost are way up, as are sales of all manner of composting equipment. Suddenly, it seems, composting has become mainstream.
But what's the big deal about compost? Organic gardeners rave about it, but why can't you just feed plants some 10-10-10 and be done with it? Well, it's like the difference between eating a well-balanced meal made from fresh, natural ingredients and eating a multivitamin and a bag of chips. In the short term, you'd be fine with either, but you wouldn't want to subsist on the latter diet for long. The same is true in your garden. Your plants will respond vigorously to chemical fertilizers initially, but they won't attain the naturally robust good health they would if you provided them with compost.
Not only does compost contain all of the major plant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) in forms readily available to plants, but it also contains a wealth of minor and trace elements as well as billions (yes, literally billions) of bacteria, yeast, fungi, and other soil creatures that will continue to break down organic and inorganic matter in the compost and in your soil, providing a long-term, steady feeding of nutrients to plants.
Finally, because of its loose, fluffy, cake-flourlike texture, compost improves the tilth, or structure, of all garden soils, both increasing the drainage of clay soils and binding together sandy soils, enhancing their moisture retention. Regardless of where you garden or what you grow, compost will make your plants healthier and more vigorous and increase their flowering and fruiting like no other substance you can give them. Simply put, composting is the best possible thing you can do for your garden.
Many gardeners don't compost simply because they perceive it to be more difficult or complicated than it really is. In truth, composting---rotting really---is a natural process that will occur even without any effort on a gardener's part. If you just put all your garden waste, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, and autumn leaves into a giant pile, you'd have good, usable compost deep within the pile in a year and a half or so.
Actively engaging in the composting process just speeds the whole process up greatly. Researchers have found that it's possible to make finished compost (that is, compost that is so completely broken down that none of its component materials are distinguishable) in as little as 10 days. Practically speaking, most home gardeners can make a good batch of compost every 3-4 weeks; over a growing season, that's a lot of free fertilizer of unparalleled quality.
So, how do you make compost? There are four key words to remember: green, brown, air, water. What this means is that, to make compost, all you have to do is bring together moist, fresh, predominantly green ingredients (grass clippings, weeds, kitchen scraps, and the like) and predominantly brown ingredients (dead leaves, straw, hay, wood shavings or chips, etc.), ensure that the mix remains damp, and turn it all every few days to reintroduce oxygen to the pile. That's it. In less than a month, you'll have rich, crumbly, brown compost that you can add to your garden soil, use in containers, or mulch with.
Compost can be made anywhere, in virtually any kind of container, or in no container at all---just a big pile. A bin or tumbler will keep the process neat and manageable, however, and will make it easier to add air to the mixture. To start your compost pile, reduce the size of the ingredients you're using in the pile by chopping them with a machete, a sharp garden spade, or other tool. Autumn leaves can be shredded quite well by repeatedly mowing over them. Then add all the ingredients together, layering them in 3-4-inch-thick layers if you're using a bin, or just tossing them altogether if you're using a tumbler of some sort. Strive for somewhere between a 5:1 and an 8:1 ratio, by volume, of brown materials (fuel for the organisms that will decompose the pile) to green, but don't get too fussy about it---if the proportion is off, it's easy enough to recognize and to remedy.
A pile that doesn't heat up within 24 hours needs more green material. A compost thermometer is very handy for determining the temperature near the center of the pile, which should rise to approximately 150-160F. Often, however, you can see a pile steaming and can feel its heat even from the outside of the tumbler or over the top of the bin. A pile that develops an ammonia-like smell needs more brown materials; just work some more into the pile, and the aroma should go away.
The air and water requirements of a composting operation are similarly low-key. The mixture of materials should remain about as moist as a wrung-out sponge---damp, that is, but not soaking wet. And the more often you turn a pile, the quicker you'll have compost, because most of the composting process is carried out by aerobic (oxygen-using) bacteria. If you decide to build your pile in a traditional square bin, you'll want to have an extra bin next to it, so that you can move the pile from one bin into another. If you use a tumbler of some type, turning is easier yet: All you have to do is spin or roll the container to re-oxygenate the pile.
Not much can go wrong with a compost pile other than the two conditions mentioned above---a pile that doesn't heat up and one that develops an ammonia-like smell. Altering the ratio of ingredients one way or the other will generally right things. You can prevent any problems with critters visiting your pile by keeping animal and dairy products out of your kitchen compost container. Vegetable and fruit scraps are excellent "green" additions
Once you've cooked your first batch of compost, what do you do with it? As mentioned above, it's excellent as an addition to garden soil, container mixes, or used as a mulch. Depending on the ingredients you used, there may be coarse pieces still in the compost. The best way to deal with these is to screen the finished compost through a piece of hardware cloth stapled to a frame (or through a "riddle," a tool designed for just such a purpose).
Anything that doesn't sift through the screen can be returned to your pile or bin for further breakdown. And be sure to save a bit of finished compost to start the next batch: The rich microbial life within that compost will get things off to an even faster start next time around.
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