What To Expect When Using Compost In Garden

Disclaimer: This post contains some affiliate links. The small commission we receive if you choose to purchase goes towards making this gardening education available for free! We do not affiliate for anything we do not personally use. Thanks so much for your support!

"We don't feed the soil. We feed the life in the soil."

Why You Need Compost in Your Garden

There are three main reasons to compost:

1. To create fertile soil
2. To close the loop (and give back to the earth that which was taken from it)
3. To work less

Compost to Create Fertile Soil

For every good farmer, growing food can be summed up in one word:

Soil.

Composting converts lifeless dirt into what we call "black gold." And it does so not merely by adding nutrients to the soil,but by enhancing and cultivating microbial life.

"There is an ecosystem below ground that supports the ecosystem aboveground."

For every good farmer, growing food can be summed up in one word:

Soil.

Composting converts lifeless dirt into what we call "black gold." And it does so not merely by adding nutrients to the soil,but by enhancing and cultivating microbial life.

Not only that, but the macro-arthropods and earthworms that come with good compost can naturally & gently till the soil, making it less compact and more well, fluffy.

Sometimes, this fluffiness is called "tilth."

This improved structure, + organic life, increases the soils' capacity for holding water.

Organic matter, which is the living part of the soil, is known to hold its weight in water ten times! This water-holding capacity is something sand, clay, or just bare dirt don't do well.

If our soil cannot:

• retain water
• provide structure and
• cultivate the microscopic life necessary to cycle minerals and nutrients for our plants to absorb,

then it washes away.

According to this Cornell study, topsoil is being lost to erosion at a rate of 10–40 times more than it can be replenished.

You and I have the power to stop this erosion through composting.

Compost to Close the Loop

Another good reason to compost in your garden is to "close the loop" in your consumption cycle and go "zero-waste" in your garden.

If you come to think of it, composting is doing more than just going zero-waste. It's going "negative-waste," if one could permit the use of such a term.

It's always good to take our cue from nature and mimic the efficient way she handles waste, which is to recycle it!

By using our waste and keeping it local, we avoid creating more carbon in the atmosphere by having the trash truck haul our garden refuse miles away.

Not only do we forgo the use of fossil fuels as a result of composting, but we also capture existing carbon into the ground where we use it to grow food! So go, "negative-waste!"

The last reason to compost, however, is sometimes the one most overlooked.

Compost to Do Less Work

"Both work & pollution are the results of incorrect design or unnatural systems."

I live in a townhouse "village" with a landscaping company that takes care of the common areas. One day, I saw the landscapers gathering pine needles that fell under the evergreen trees in our development. The workers would gather the leaves and dump them in a truck. I do not know where they would take them, but I assume it was to the municipal dump where they would have to pay a fee to offload the pine needles there.

Do we ever stop to ask? Why do we pay people to do that?

Why, in our society, do we require manicured lawns and no leaves under trees, when that is not how things naturally grow?

There must be some physiological reason that deciduous trees shed their leaves in the fall. Perhaps the tree finds these leaves help to protect its root layers and keep it warm during the winter. Maybe the tree has found a way to conserve energy during the colder months while feeding the soil around it as the leaves slowly decompose.

If we let the leaves fall under the trees, we (and others) would do less work.

And we would also spend less money.

During the fall, my family and I eagerly await the curbside-pickup possibilities of neatly-bagged leaves just waiting for us to take them home to our compost bin.

Now for the useful part.

How to Compost (An Overview)

1. Collect organic material such as kitchen scraps or garden clippings for composting. In the home, you can do this sans the flies, by having a dedicated freezable container for kitchen scraps. You can add to your scrap stash throughout the day.

2. Knowing what you have in terms of bins and space, select and study the composting method that works for you. (See below for specific techniques.)

3. Find a suitable place to store your "active" compost bin or heap. Aerobic composting methods (with air) are best done outdoors or in a garage. Anaerobic composting (sealed tight) such asbokashi can be done right below your kitchen sink. If you are keeping aerobic bins in the home, place a fly trap and some baking soda to absorb odor beside it.

4. Maintain your compost according to the method that you've chosen by regularly checking on it. Aerobic bins or heaps should ideally be checked daily to a few times a week for signs of rodent infestation and to maintain the oxygenation of the pile. Anaerobic setups should be minimally exposed to air and drained of fermented liquid.

5. Harvest your compost after (2) two weeks to (2) two or more years!

Composting Methods to Try

1. Indoor Composting

• Apply coffee grounds to your soil or water your plants with diluted coffee.
• Use pencil shavings, especially in pots where your plants are a bit soggy and smelly.
• Cut up some fast-decaying banana peels and "work them into" your pots.
• Crush up some eggshells. Blend them with some water and water your plants with this high-calcium drink.
• Plant a few peas or beans (from your pantry) in each pot. You're not expecting to harvest the beans. Just hoping the nitrogen-fixing bacteria you introduce in the soil will have a carry-over effect on your plants of interest.
• Put the dust from sweeping your floors into the pots around your house instead of into the trash bin. Just make sure that the swept dust doesn't include any plastic.
• Potty train your children by having them practice on indoor plants.

2. Ruth Stout's Lazy Composting Style

Ruth Stout was a gardener and author who lived from 1884–1980. Through her work during the era of rising pesticide use, she popularized a very minimalist approach to gardening. Her writing, especially in her book,

"Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent," is a very practical, candid, and funny read!

"It is October and I trust that your garden looks terrible, with dead vines, clumsy cabbage roots - refuse - all over it.

And I do hope you will leave everything there, and add the kitchen garbage to it through the winter."

Indeed that is about all she has to say about composting! Ruth Stout did not keep a compost heap but simply stuffed all her scraps into the perennial soft mulch that covered her entire garden.

At the Permaculture Gardens homestead, we use her method for growing potatoes. I think of all famous gardeners; she is perhaps the most deserving of the title, "lazy gardening queen."

Enjoy the video below and watch her in action at 96 years of age!

3. Vermicomposting

Vermicomposting, according to the Oxford dictionary, is "The use of earthworms to convert organic waste into fertilizer."

The best-known worms for composting food scraps are red wriggler worms or Eisenia fetida.

The few studies we have found on the gut bacteria of red wriggles reveal rich and diverse microbiology! There are so many different kinds of organisms living inside the red wriggler's gut that 18.7% are unclassified bacteria, as in this taxonomic study of the microbiome of composting worms.

Perhaps you don't have enough room for the ideal hot composting setup (two composting areas big enough for a 5-ft tall compost pile). Then vermicomposting may work well for you!

healthy red wriggler composting worms

Earthworms are amazing creatures that eat organic materials.

These worms process and innoculate the material going through their guts, creating vermicasts. Vermicasts are super-charged fertilizer for annual vegetables. Red wrigglers eat up to half their body weight per day. A pound of red wrigglers could ideally process a half-pound of kitchen scraps a day into vermicasts.

A Word on the Carbon to Nitrogen (C: N) Ratio

Vermicompost bins are relatively easy to care for. Make sure you don't add too many kitchen scraps (which tend to be nitrogens) in ratio to brown matter (shredded newspaper/cardboard, leaves, etc.). If you notice your worm bin smelling foul, the environment may be too acidic and anaerobic for your worms.

The ideal Carbon to Nitrogen ratio in most compost piles is 25–30:1.

This ratio means that there are (25) twenty-five — (30) thirty units of carbon for every (1) one part of nitrogen.

Butin vermicompost bins, the ideal ratio was determined in this study  to be 25.

If this C: N ratio is difficult to fathom, you can find examples of organic material and C: N ratios in this nifty calculator. You can combine organic materials and check if the overall pile has your desired C: N range.

Below is a video in which I demonstrate how I regulate this C: N ratio in a worm bin and, consequently, the pH of the compost.

---

How to Make Your Own Worm Bin

You can keep a simple plastic tub for your worm composting, which you'll need to turn over with a small trowel or pitchfork every few days.

Below is gardener, Emily Muphy's video on making a simple worm bin. We currently keep our worms in a similar container.

There are some commercial solutions for worm composting available. The most popular ones are worm towers that involve stacking layers of plastic bins with holes on the bottom for the worms to travel up as they consume the scraps in each layer. Worm towers are very good for temporary storage during the summer months, but not good for insulating the worms in the winter.

      A worm tower

You can collect earthworms from your garden or even build worm trenches or pits directly into your beds.

In our experience, the worm bin is the most hassle-free option.

If you have a productive "worm farm" going, you need about a pound of worms (approx. 2000), which you can find at places like Uncle Jim's Worm Farm.

4 & 5. Cold & Hot Composting

In cold composting , a big pile of leaves or grass clippings sits and rots over several months to several years. This process takes the least amount of work, but the results may take too long for our gardening needs.

Once upon a time, we had no composting bin.

Enter hot composting  or "Berkeley method" composting. This composting process, created at the University of California-Berkeley, is one that you have to manage more intentionally. Other composting masters such as

Geoff Lawton and Elaine Ingham have refined this method to create a more complex and complete compost end product.

In a hot composting pile, the C: N ratio you would aim for would be 25–30:1.

If this seems difficult to fathom, permaculture teacher, Matt Powers, and soil scientist Elaine Ingham break it down into three piles:

· (1/3) one-third cubic meter (or seventeen 5-gallon buckets) of "browns" made of dried leaves and clippings harvested after they had "gone to seed" in the late summer or early fall.

· (1/3) one-third cubic meter (or seventeen 5-gallon buckets) of "greens," which are green grass clippings or plant materials harvested before they had matured and "gone to seed."

· (1/3) one-third cubic meter (or seventeen 5-gallon buckets) of manure.

The entire pile must be at least one cubic meter in volume.

6. Bokashi

What differentiates the bokashi method from the most common types of composting is that you deliberately work withanaerobic microorganisms to "ferment" your kitchen scraps.

You throw your scraps into an air-tight bucket with some of these friendly microorganisms and ferment the scraps much like you would your sauerkraut.

Effective microorganisms (EM) in a bokashi bin.

The result is a thoroughly pickled pre-compost, which you then bury in the garden (but not near your plants) to let it finish composting.

Bokashi allows you to compost much of the organic matter, which would otherwise kill your composting worms or attract rodents.

Here are some of the things that you can compost using the Bokashi method:

• Meats
• Bone
• Pasta
• Bread
• Citrus

It is good to note that you can compost anything organic!

• An old pair of leather boots
• A dead rat
• Even your humanure

As Geoff Lawton likes to say, "If it has lived, it can live again."

However, the composting method you choose determines what type of ingredient goes into your bin.

Compost Conclusion

Now that you have several options to choose from, we hope that you will try your hand at composting (or refine your current composting skills!)

Please share your efforts: past, present, future in the comment section below.

We know that if everyone did their share of composting, we would:

• eliminate waste
• live simpler, happier lives and
• grow more abundantly

Composting in nature never really ends.

But it can begin in a more intentional way

with you.

Your challenge:

1. Choose one composting method above.
2. Start composting intentionally today.

If you need help committing to composting, we have a handy PDF to help keep you accountable.

Click HERE to get your "Hot Composting Streak-Tracker"

What To Expect When Using Compost In Garden

Source: https://growmyownfood.com/compost-in-garden/

Posted by: bransonhisherecur.blogspot.com

Share this post