22 Jul 2011 Compost: Getting back to basics in your garden

DID YOU KNOW:

Every year Americans dispose of 24 million tons of leaves and grass clippings.

Every Sunday, more than 500,000 trees are used to produce the 88 percent of newspapers that are never recycled.

Buried deep and cut off from aeration, food discards in landfills release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
 

by Jan Spann

Compost is one of my favorite things. About 15 years ago, an Earth Day program taught me about ways to be kind to our planet, including using kitchen scraps to make soil. That sounded easy, so I started my first compost pile.

The first contraption didn’t work, and I realized that composting doesn’t have to be hard – it’s the natural process of plant life. A gradual and constant cycle that enriches and renews our earth, a compost pile uses nature’s plan and speeds up the process a bit with the end result being good for your garden and good for your local landfill.

Composting as part of a “green conscious” movement began to trend 30 years ago. In the past 15 years the interest in composting has sparked again because of environmental concerns. With limited landfill space, more communities are directing more resources to composting because as much as 75 percent of household garbage is organic and squanders prime landfill assets.

Tossing compostable materials has two costs. Not only does it take up valuable landfill space, it also prevents nature from doing what comes, well, naturally! Our ancestors certainly didn’t have trash trucks making weekly garbage runs, so this back-to-basics approach also incorporates some of the wisdom of our ancestors. These days, compost piles are easily adaptable in suburban settings as well as organic farms.

By creating compost piles, gardeners become part of something bigger than themselves. Something as simple as putting table scraps, yard clippings and fallen leaves into compost piles allows us to give back to the earth. Consider it the ultimate environmental act that saves this “trash” from a landfill where it will receive very little air and have very little time to decompose naturally. And what little matter does decay will be trapped too deep to be of much value to the plants on the surface. But when used in home compost, everybody wins, including Mother Nature.

You don’t need any special knowledge or equipment, and it takes only a little extra effort to collect your wastes and establish an active compost pile. In its simplest form (and my method of choice), you dig a hole, toss in your kitchen scraps, add a layer of garden litter, then cover it with the soil. It’s also helpful to add compost starter to get the heat going at first. After the first few months, your pile of yuck will heat up and morph into a sweet smelling soil that’s better than anything you can buy!

Your compost pile requires a balanced diet of brown and green scraps. Browns are carbon-rich. Dry and dead plant materials such as autumn leaves, pine needles, sawdust and shredded branches provide the energy source for the compost-munching microbes.

Loaded with nitrogen, green scraps can be thought of as a protein source for the billions of multiplying microbes. Get your greens from fresh plant materials such as garden cast-offs, kitchen fruit and vegetable scraps, green leaves, eggshells, coffee grounds and tea bags. Just remember that a compost pile should never contain meat or fats. (It will also need air and water. Look for details online at uaex.edu.)

If you eat a varied diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, your compost micro buddies will enjoy that same mix of kitchen scraps. Certain items, however, may require some extra thought. The high nitrogen materials such as grass clippings can bring too much heat too quickly, and the high carbon materials like sawdust can slow the process. Using alternate layers of each in between a layer of dirt will alleviate much of this problem.

High nitrogen materials tend to be green, moist and usually sloppy. High carbon materials will usually be brown or yellow and tend to be dry and bulky. Just remember, too much of a good thing is a bad thing!

Finished compost is dark in color and has an earthy smell (like the smell of soil). Usually, it’s difficult to recognize any of the original ingredients, although bits of hard-to-decompose materials (such as straw) sometimes can be seen. I use an old screen to filter out peach pits and bark bits when necessary, but a friend of mine takes eggshells and coffee grounds and dumps them directly in her garden, so this is not rocket science.

Like most of nature, there is no single point at which compost is finished. For many outdoor garden applications, for instance, it can be fine to use compost that still has a few recognizable bits of leaves or straw – it will finish rotting in the soil. But it is not the best medium for starting seeds.

Compost does several things to benefit the soil that synthetic fertilizers cannot do. First, it adds organic matter and improves the way water mingles with the soil. In sandy soils, compost helps retain water that would otherwise drain below the reach of plant roots, protecting plants against drought. Compost helps break up clay soil so that it doesn’t stay waterlogged in wet conditions and doesn’t dry into brick during hot Arkansas summers. Compost also inoculates the soil with thousands of beneficial microbes like bacteria and fungi. These microbes are able to extract nutrients from the mineral part of the soil and eventually pass the nutrients on to plants.

Who wouldn’t love compost? Who would have thought that something so basic and free could help sustain your garden without chemical additives and high-priced widgets? Kudos to our creator on another brilliant plan!

I hope you’ll consider making compost one of your favorite things. Your county extension office (or the website at uaex.edu) can provide you with even more information.

Whether you’re a weekend gardener or an avid expert with tidy rows of vegetables mixed with flowers, composting is a tool that benefits you, your gardens and your pocketbook.