Organic Gardening Compost Tips
Organic Gardening Compost Tips
For anybody interested in organic gardening compost is a vital part of the picture. Food and backyard waste can make up 25% of all of our garbage and there is no need ever to throw any of it into the general garbage where it will clog up the landfill sites producing dangerous methane.
What Is Compost
Compost is what is produced when organic materials have decomposed in an aerobic situation with the help of worms and microbes. The process takes up to a year depending on weather and other conditions. It is nutrient-rich, fine textured and perfect for adding to garden soil.
What You Can Compost
Pretty much all organic waste can be composted. Here are a few examples to get you started.
- Food scraps and peelings (vegetables, fruit and grains)
- Fallen leaves
- Yard clippings
- Shredded paper
- Paper towels and napkins
- Scraps of cotton or other natural fabric and thread
- Wool
- Lint from dryers and vacuum cleaners
- Nut and egg shells
- Sawdust
- Lawn trimmings (can be composted or simply left on the lawn to break down and feed the growing grass).
Larger items such as tree branches will need to be turned into wood chips before composting. These and other yard clippings will be collected by the municipal authorities in most areas. They have the equipment needed to reduce wood to compostable material. They will sell the resulting compost to cover the costs, or use it in parks and highway landscaping schemes.
You should not compost the following:
- Leaves and trimmings from black walnut trees (can be harmful to other plants)
- Meat, fish and dairy food scraps, fats and oils (cause odor and attract rats)
- Animal droppings and pet litter (may contain bacteria that could be harmful to humans)
- Diseased plants (diseases may survive composting and transfer to other plants)
- Clippings from lawns or other plants that have been treated with pesticides or selective herbicides.
You may want to consider whether other items have been treated with chemicals before composting them. Some wood may have been coated with non-organic preservatives. Most fabric will have been dyed with chemicals, although these should be safe for consumption. Fabric dyes are well regulated because small children are likely to put cloth in their mouths. How far you go with this depends on how ‘pure’ you want your compost to be.
How To Compost
You can easily create a compost pile in your backyard. Sometimes this is simply an open heap, but for an attractive appearance most people either create a fenced box or buy a ready made compost bin. This must be placed on earth, not on a concrete area or path, so that the worms and other living organisms that do the work of decomposition will find their way in from under.
The best compost pile contains approximately equal amounts of ‘greens’ and ‘browns’. Greens include vegetable and fruit peelings and other food waste, coffee grounds and grass trimmings. Browns include dead leaves, twigs, sawdust and paper (shredded). Water is also needed, although in most cases enough is provided naturally by rainfall. The pile may be covered with a tarpaulin to keep it moist and protect from frost.
Food waste is best buried 6-12 inches into the pile to prevent it attracting rats and other vermin.
Compost should not smell bad. If your bin grosses you out when you take off the lid, you probably have too much of the green material and not enough brown. It will then rot into a slimy mess instead of breaking down into the soil-like compound that is organic gardening compost.
