Compost – the secret ingredient for building healthy organic garden soil
It doesn’t matter whether you are growing a garden in the ground or building a raised garden bed, healthy soil grows healthy plants. Healthy soil is a living community of a myriad small to microscopic creatures, plants and some things that aren’t quite either one…
These organisms are what digests both plant and mineral materials and make the nutrient and micro-nutrients available to the plants.
Building raised vegetable garden beds does let you have the best control of your soil, but amendments such as compost will fix almost any problem soil.
All this life needs food, and compost is the perfect meal for your soil.
Compost is made from garden and kitchen food wastes. These materials contain all the nutrients growing them has removed from the soil, and it is ready to get back to work for you. Composting is pre-digestion of the material, making it ready to enter your soil’s web of life.
In our arid climate, we face alkaline soils and water. Compost is naturally acidic and with help neutralize or soils. This re-balancing of pH releases many of the micro nutrients present in the soil but currently locked up.
Compost is mildly rich in nutrients, but its true value is in adding organic material to the soil. This material eventually decomposes to a material calles humus. In this final state, it serves as a holding medium for the minerals in an state that the plantss roots can use. It doesn’t make the ground super rich in one application, but it makes the inherent richness available.
Now that we see the value of compost, let’s make some…
Compost is a mixture of ‘green’ (leafing materials, kitchen wastes, etc.) and ‘brown’ (woody) materials. The organisms in the compost that digest it to our finished product need both carbon and nitrogen.
Compost can be made in piles, bins, tumblers, or even in place when plant trimmings are chopped and dropped in place, much like what occurs on a forest floor.
The differences in composting techniques fall into two categories – hot or cold.
Hot composting techniques involve lots of turning for aeration – the microbes need to breath. During their degestion of the pile, the microbes release heat. This heat is released rapidly and buidls up to level high enough to kill any weed seeds and most diseases. It does require more work, but it can produce finished compost in two weeks to a month.
‘Cold’ methods require not work – you pile the stuff up, prefferably in layers, let it sit for a year or two, and you have compost. The down side to this is that it never heats up enough to kill any seeds or diseases, and sitting for years lets rain leach out most of the nutrients.
Common compost problems
Properly wet compost is like a wrung out sponge – moist but not overly wet. We awnt both air and water to be available to the composting organisms.
Very often a compost pile is too dry and some of the materials are too course to digest quickly. Chopping or mowing the course materials before adding to the pile will speed up decomposition and help retain moisture. Your yard wastes and lawn clippings can be mown together and added to your compost bin at the same time. The grass clippings really fire up the pile due to their high nitrogen and water content and their fine texture.
Many cities and/or waste district have composting programs. These provide compost bins to residents, either at low cost or for free. A pre-made bin with solid sides and air slots may help your compost from drying so quickly. The compost you have in the bin, just a few inches down, should soon turn dark and crumbly.
I like to have two bins (I use larger tumblers), and one is being fed while the other one ‘finishes’. Often, city supplied bins have removable front panels that make it easier to turn the pile. The more frequently a pile is turned, the sooner it yields usable compost.
You can sieve the compost and remove the larger chunks; they go back into the pile for more digestion. The materials returned can also serve to inoculate a new pile. Good sieves can be improvised from nursery flats, or more elaborate ones may be built with wooden framework supporting ½” wire mesh.
Here are some off-site resources…
- Earthe4Energy.com » Blog Archive » Non-Edible Composting Items – In addition to the acceptable food scraps you can use to compost there are many different organic items you can add too. Some of the items on the list may surprise you while others will be ones you have heard of before. Just remember, by composting these items you are reducing the amount of waste that your home produces.
- Making Compost: How To Make A Garden Compost Bin – Making Compost: How To Make A Garden Compost Bin. August 11th, 2009 by bstanley. A garden compost bin, the container used for making compost can be quite easily made out of recycled materials at hand and can range from the simple to …