8/14/2019 How to & Help - Making Your Own Compost

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Making Your Own Compost

You could live a long time onbacon, doughnuts and vitaminpills, but nobody would evermistake you for a he althy person.Yet many gardeners feed theirgardens a similar diet chemicalfertilizer and little else. While sucha diet can produce remarkableshort-term growth, it can seriouslystress your plants. Fertilizers set upa rich/poor nutrition cycle and, likehumans e ating junk food, agarden's health ultimately suffers.

To help plants grow steadily andfight off pests and disease, youmust feed the so il. Think ofcompost as health food fo r yourgarden.

How It WorksLook at any thriving forest andyou'll see composting in action.The complex interplay of greenplants, fungi, bacteria and othermicroscopic life steadily convertsdead organic matter into nutrient-rich food. How do you make thiswork in your garden? It's sim pleenough: compost just happens.

Make a heap of weeds, kitchen scraps, grass clippings and other organicwaste, walk away, and in 18 m onths you 'll have da rk, rich compo st. Butif you get involved in the process, you can reduce the time to six weeksor less. A teaspoon of he althy garden soil provides a home for morethan four billion bacteria and other microscopic beasts. Make themhappy, and thes e little agents of chang e will work wonde rs in your soil.Just remember four key words: brown, green, water, air.

Brown and green. All compostable materials contain both carbon andnitrogen, but the relative proportions determine whether the material isbrown o r green. W hen you think "brown," think straw, wood shavings,chips and sawdust, newsprint, stalks, stems, twigs and the like. Thesecarbon-rich materials provide the fuel that the bacteria and their chumsneed to break down the greens in your compost pile. "Green" refers towet, nitrogen-rich ma terials grass clippings, weeds, prunings a nd the likeand kitchen scraps (plant material only; meat and dairy scraps attractunhe lpful kinds of wildlife). Not all of this stuff is literally brown or green,but a lot of it is, and most people find it easier to remember colors thanchemicals.

A compost pile built in fairly even layers of brown and green materialswill usually decompo se just fine. If your pile isn't brea king do wn, itprobably needs more green (nitrogen-rich) materials to heat up. Thecure for this is to rebuild the pile adding more green stuff, or "spike" itby adding a few handfuls of a high-nitrogen granular fertilizer betweenlayers. Some p eople e ven add anima l bedding or manure both are richin nitrogen.

Water and air. Decomposition take s place much faster in a moistenvironment. Cover your compos t pile with a tarp or plastic garbagebags, and it'll probably retain enough moisture to get the pile reallycooking. Some compost impresarios prefer to add water to the pile,layer by layer, as they build it. Climate, weather and the moisture in thematerials themselves will influence your chances of success with eithermethod. If you live in the dese rt and your potato peels look more likepotato chips by the time they make it to the compost pile, water the pileas you build it. In coastal Oregon, insufficient water may be the least ofyour worries. In general, your compost pile should be about as moist asa wrung-out sponge: not soaking wet, but damp throughout. If your pilerefuses to heat up but you think you've added enough green stuff, the

problem may be insufficient moisture or size. Size matters, as we'll seein Step 1 o n the next page .

If your heap gets too wet, it won't hold enough oxygen to support theaerobic bacteria that do most of the work. Excess moisture also resultsin unpleasant odors. Turning the pile evens out the moisture contentand introduces air, the final element of successful composting. Turn thepile every three days or so, and you'll replenish the oxygen supply forthe ba cteria and other friendly creatures h ard at work inside. You'll be

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rewarded with deep, dark ready-to-use compost in six weeks, maybeless. And since this method encourages rapid decomposition, your pilewill heat up to 150 degrees or more hot enough to kill most weed seeds.

Step by Step1. Contain it. You can just pile things on the ground, but a wood, wire orplastic bin encloses enough material to get a pile really cooking. Incomposting, as in nuclear fission, a critical mass is required to generateheat. The ideal shape and size for a compost pile is a cube about 4 feetper side. Anything less than 3 feet will never really get going. Darkcontainers designed specifically for composting retain solar heat andalso a llow daily turning, which hastens the break down of mate rials.

2. Prepare it. After you've gathered your compost materials, cut orbreak them into pieces the sm aller the be tter. Chopping up compost

materials makes it easier for bacteria to get in and do their work.Hardcore gardeners often keep materials in "holding" piles until they canbe chopped, chipped or shredded, and a chipper/shredder can be veryhelpful indeed. If you can't do this by machine, try a mattock or spade.

Spread the chopped mate rials in laye rs 3 to 5 inches thick. Start with alayer of brown, then add a layer of green. Atop each brown-greensection, add an inch or two of manure or garden soil. This ensuresplenty of microbes in the pile. Boost nutrients by adding a shovelful ofwood ash, rock phosphate, lime, granite dust, blood m eal, bone m eal orgreensand to each completed section. If your area's climate requires it,moisten each layer of the pile as you go. Use a gentle spray. If youmake your compost in a barrel or tumbler, you can forego the layeringprocess. Just pile the materials in, add a bit of water if necessary, thenturn the tumbler to distribute the materials and get things rotting.

3. Chop it and t urn it. Let your new pile heat up for three days, then turnit. To do this efficiently, you need a mattock and a garden fork. (Mostany fork will do, but a manure fork or hay fork is best.) First, chop

through the laye rs with the m attock, pulling back a fter each swing sothat you turn the pile inside out. Next, lift and expose the lower layerswith the fork, then chop them. Or you may find this easier use the forkto move each chopped layer to a second compost bin, and continue tochop the rest of the layers in the first bin.

The middle of the pile will decompose faster than the outside, which willremain largely unchanged; you'll especially see this the second time youturn. To work around this "cooking-from-within" phenomenon, move theoutside edges of the pile in, and vice versa. After the pile has beenthoroughly mixed (and transferred, if you're using two or more bins),moisten it again if necessary.

You can monitor temperature with a compost thermometer. Leave thepile alone as the temperature rises from day to day. When it starts todrop, it's time to turn. If you don't have a thermometer, simply turn thepile every three days, but if you can't, no harm is done your compost willjust take longer. Each turning will be easier than the last because thematerials get smaller and lighter as they decompose. When your pile

has stopped he ating up, and the compost is pretty much all the samecolor and texture, your health food is ready to use.

4. Use it. Use your compost as is or screen it. To screen fresh compost,buy a riddle (a high-sided sieve) or make your own out of hardware clothand a frame of 2-by-4s or 2-by-6s. Shake the compost through theriddle. The la rger bits that won't go through the s creen will still mak egreat mulch. Used as mulch, screened or not, compost will suppressweeds, add nutrients to the soil and help retain ground moisture. Spreadcompost in the garden before you till or fork the soil in preparation forplanting. Screened compost is a great additive for container mixes. Itsupplies a full spectrum of nutrients without burning young plants' roots.

TOOLS AND MATERIALSMacheteBone me alPruning shearsHigh-nitrogen blood meal (12-0-0)Hedge shearsSpadeHigh-nitrogen Miracid plant food (30-10-10)Manure fork or hay forkMattockMini-tiller

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