Composting

 

There are many reasons to make compost. If you grow vegetables and flowers, it makes them very happy (although you wouldn't want to use a lot of compost on dryland plants).  It's much better than putting garden waste into a landfill. It's much better than buying compost, which might use a process that isn't good for the environment (i.e. chopping down trees, gasoline powered machinery, and transportation). Why buy compost when it takes even more gas to transport it from the store, and plastic bags to bag it that go into a landfill? And honestly, purchased compost isn't really all that good. It's like buying grocery store cake instead of making your own. Making compost doesn't take much more work than loading and unloading a vehicle and since it is made on-site it is low carbon footprint. In fact, it is considered to be reducing your carbon footprint. Composting is an important skill to have if you are an organic gardener, or if you want to do good for the earth. 

There are many techniques to composting, and I've tried a number of methods. It's been a learning process. The easiest is to just dig a hole and put your kitchen refuse into it and cover it back up. If you do this in a vegetable garden, the trimmings go directly back to the plants. I've tried the small spinning composter bins for kitchen waste, but frankly, it doesn't work very well in my climate, since it is harder to manage the moisture level. It dries out too fast, and I don't have the time/energy to monitor the moisture every day. Or it gets too wet and and makes clods of half decomposed material which get anaerobic and stinky. It's for a small amount of compost in a more humid climate. For making a lot of compost, or if you have a lot of garden waste (i.e. a lot of fall leaves that need to be raked off your porch), you need something with a lot more volume. The best way I've found is still the the old fashioned bin composter. The benefits of a bin composter is that it holds moisture better due to its large volume, even better if covered with a tarp. It does not tend to get too wet, and it gets enough air to help with the process. 

Composting in a bin composter is a little like baking in that you put together ingredients and then let it "bake". Yesterday, I filled by 4' x 4' bin. I took out all the older compost, then made layers of fallen leaves (we raked out the courtyard yesterday), garden waste such as lawn clippings, the older compost (which retains moisture and acts as a "starter" microbiome), and used rabbit bedding (a gift from a friend who raises Angora rabbits). The compost is best when there is a balance of high nitrogen ("green" material such as green lawn clippings, horse manure, or rabbit manure), and high carbon material (dried leaves, woody material). It is best if the material is cut or chopped to a certain size, say 1-3". If you put whole branches or large pieces in, they decompose unevenly (the small parts like leaves decompose faster than the woody parts), and the long pieces make it hard to turn the compost (more on this later). The magic ingredient, at least in this climate, is water. Dried leaves are water repellent, so it's important to wet down each layer or even better, mix the water in to the dry material. It's like making a cake when the dry ingredients get blended into the wet. If you don't moisten all the dry parts, you get lumps. In the case of compost, it doesn't compost evenly since the dry parts do not decompose, and in a dry climate, they don't get enough moisture just by being in the proximity of wetter things. You don't want too little water or it won't decompose, but you don't want too much, which will make things compact into soggy mess that stinks as it decomposes anaerobically (without air). 

The compost will need to be turned (mixed and fluffed) periodically, and I must admit that I'm not disciplined enough to do it regularly as I should. But my haphazard way seems to be adequate for my needs. The turning is important because it redistributes the nutrients, aerates the mix which may become compacted, and mixes the moist decomposing parts with the dry areas which are not decomposing. It's also a good chance to chop up the parts that have remained too large so that the compost is more even. I have mixed feelings about this, since the mixture of large and small pieces would actually be a good thing. If everything is finely composted, it gives a jolt of nutrient to your garden beds, but like a hit of sugar, it doesn't last long. The larger pieces will contribute to the soil for much longer. After all, isn't this the way that nature does things naturally? But of course a garden is not a natural thing. Turning does take some work. It would be a lot easier if I had two bins. Because then I could just move the compost from one bin to the other and that would be the turning. As you work down the pile, the top of the old pile becomes the bottom of the new pile. As I only have one bin, I have to take all the compost out and then put it back in, which is double the work. I wish KitchenAid would make a 3 cubic foot mixer for this job! Again, each layer gets moistened by a sprinkling of water as I go. If I turn the compost once a month, in about three months, the compost is ready for the garden. Easy, right?