Compost Happens!

This overview of composting was written with lots of help from composting gurus like Ed Bruske, (president of DC Urban Gardeners) Paul Crumrine, John Wheeler and others.

Organic gardening experts are constantly telling us to improve our soils with organic matter, but what kind?  Fully decayed organic matter — compost — is, in the words of one* of my favorite gardening books, "the creme de la creme, the piece de resistance, the best in show, the big rock candy mountain of organic matter." Not convinced yet?

Why it's SO Great

Buying it vs. Making It Yourself

Of course you can buy Leafgro, an excellent leaf-based product available everywhere, or one of the generic bags of compost available in stores.  But why not make it yourself?

What to Compost — and Not To

Composting by Piling it On

The cheapest technique (actually free) is to simply put organic materials in a pile, turn and water them occasionally to keep them aerated and moist, and wait while the invisible microorganisms do their job and compost happens. Making a depression in the top of the pile catches rainwater.

To speed the process, chop or shred the contents first by running over them with a bagged lawnmower or putting them through a chipper-shredder of some kind. I once tried a cheap shredder that used a Weedwacker-type plastic filament to shred my leaves but found that every tiny stick and acorn broke the filament, so the process was extremely slow-going. But then Ed writes:

I have a leaf shredder from Flowtron that has never failed me and cost less than $100. It's basically a weed wacker in a can and fits over a garbage can to catch the shredded leaves. I've never had a problem with the filament breaking — and you can always get heavier filaments at the hardware store that are almost guaranteed not to break.

Even easier is what I do with the huge amount of fallen leaves on my property — dump them in a pile and do nothing but add my green garden waste to the pile.  Then by fall the pile has settled and I use my handy pitch fork to pile it higher, making room for the next batch of fallen leaves.  The resulting product is honestly more like leafmold than fully decomposed compost, but it still works as a good soil amendment or as mulch in my woodland garden. 

Composting with Homemade Containers

One commenter to this article told me he plants seedlings right in the top of the leaf bin. He makes a slight depression and adds a quart of so of soil, then plants vegetable seedlings. "The thing to remember is that these leaf beds do need to be kept watered." Well, whoda thunk?

Containers to Buy

You can buy plastic compost bin that are either stationary or made to be tumbled using a lever.  The tumbling type is meant to be filled all at once, so you need some space to save the materails until they're ready to be added, then turned.  Also, don't fill the tumbler too full or there won't have room for the ingredients to mix as you're turning. And as always, shredding ingredients first makes compost faster. Tumblers, because they're closed, are excellent for urban situations where rats are to be discouraged.

Hot vs. Cold Composting

Unlike the cold composting methods described above, which often take a year or more, some gardeners prefer speeding up the process in a method called hot composting. It produces results much faster — as fast as three months is possible! — and kills more weed seeds than the colder methods, though not all. Temperatures inside the pile reach as high as 170 F.

How to Maximize Results from Cold Composting

Experienced cold composters often aim for the perfect combination of 8 parts brown materials, 2 parts green, and 1 part soil. The finished compost from such a cold pile will release nutrients slowly and is preferred for long-term fertility of the soil. (Compost from the hot process might better be used on one-season plants.)

How to do Hot Composting:

What to do with it

When your compost product is finally crumbly and black or dark brown, it's time to use it in the garden. Possible uses include:

How much do you need?

To cover an area with anything, including compost, here's the formula: 

Take the square footage of area to be covered by the desired thickness of the application, then divide by 324 to yield the amount in cubic yards. For example, a 200-square-foot area covered with 2 inches is 200 x 2 = 400 divided by 324 = 1.23 cubic yards.

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