In the surroundings all year long there is a silent and subtle conversion of raw materials into next season’s soil. Nature is cooking compost from an accumulation of yard waste, grass clippings, leaves, roots, fruits, insects, and weeds throughout our neighborhoods. In a forest setting dead plants and animals recycle basic nutrients back to the forest floor providing nutrition for future generations of organisms. As earthworms, microorganisms, and fungi work to decompose dead plants and animals, their efforts yield compost.
The same processes occurring in the natural forest are occurring in one’s backyard. The helping hands of the gardener can expedite the decomposition process.
Gardener as Chef
A gardener acts as a compost chef gathering and mixing ingredients, fine tuning compost recipes, baking the mixture in the compost pile or bin oven, monitoring the temperature, testing the texture, and serving the compost ratatouille throughout the garden.
The garden chef realizes that meal preparation augments garden preparation. Kitchen waste like fruit and vegetable cores and peels, eggshells, tea bags, coffee grounds and filters, and wilted or spoiled crisper produce are selected to be layered with leaves, hay, grass clippings, plant remains from flower and vegetable beds, wood ashes, sawdust and garden soil. The soil contains the host microorganisms that consume the kitchen discards and yard waste. Water is added to hasten the rot while the ambitious chef stirs, turns or vents the layers to add air for the aerobic bacteria. Whether compost is “slow cooked” or “fast cooked” depends on the chef’s time and energy.
A hotbed thermometer placed in the center of the pile allows one to monitor the “cooking”. The finished product - dark, crumbly, spongy, sweet-smelling loam - is ready at from 140° to 160° F.
Composting Ovens
The compost chef can choose from a variety of ovens. An open-air compost heap is the easiest to create. Select a location in the yard to start layering the recyclables. If need be, it can be enclosed with chicken wire, wooden pallets, or bales of hay. A compost pile as small as 4’x 4’x 4’ can yield a ton of compost. Vented plastic or wire bins are available at garden centers.
Most chefs have had the experience of wanting to bury an entrée. Burial is one way of composting directly underground using a post hole digger or shovel. Instead of piling waste in mounds on the surface, some chefs do their cooking underground and leave it there.
Why Compost?
Adding compost to garden soil enhances soil structure. It binds together sandy soils to increase water holding capacity and breaks up clay soils to allow water penetration. Soils with organic matter hold water like a sponge. Compost aerates soil thereby providing for the exchange of nutrients.
Compost puts major and trace elements back into depleted soil by offering a mini-periodic table of elements necessary for plant growth including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, calcium. Soil fertility is the key to healthy plants. Healthy plants resist diseases and pest. Earthworms are attracted to compost and remain to assist in building healthy soil.
Your perennials, shrubs, trees and lawn will give your composting efforts a five star rating after receiving an invigorating topdressing of compost tonic each spring and continued doses of compost throughout the growing season.
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