Composting: Bob's Basics

Introduction

Compost is magical stuff—much like well-rotted farmyard manure but cleaner and sweeter, more like rich friable loam. And it has a host of benefits. Indeed, the more compost is investigated, the more benefits are found. Applying compost feeds your soil, helps conserve moisture, then feeds your plants and simultaneously controls many pests and diseases. Yet it is but the rotted down remains of our kitchen and garden wastes. Stuff that otherwise would be a problem and would cost you to get rid of.

Making and applying compost is an essential for organic gardeners, but it is good sense for everyone else, too. Nothing you can do in the garden gives as many returns as collecting materials and mixing them into a compost bin. The health, vigor, yield, and taste of your plants all improve and you benefit from eating the nutrient-rich produce that grows from it. Not only will you recycle your wastes; probably soon you will be scavenging from others and helping to clean up a messy world. Even weeding, mowing, and hedge trimming become less arduous when you realize what valuable nutrients they contribute to your compost bin.

I am fascinated by composting; how different mixtures of all sorts of things come out as such a uniform and useful product. I have been composting for three decades and I have tried many methods. What is amazing is that, given a few basics, composting always works so well and produces such excellent results. Even badly made compost has a use, indeed, left much longer it would eventually become better compost. However, with careful mixing in a decent container good compost can be made in only a matter of months. Be warned, though; once you find out how effective and useful compost is there is never enough.

Why compost?

We’re all composting nowadays. Most of us compost because we want to, but some because there is no other legal easy way of disposing of household and garden wastes. Apart from being such a simple solution, composting has another benefit worth having. In decomposing the raw materials a compost bin creates fertility, something you would have to buy otherwise. Compost is a natural fertilizer and soil enricher that feeds your garden better than any store-bought fertilizer, and does as much good as a whole load of well-rotted manure. For compost does not just feed the soil immediately but also inoculates it with micro-organisms that liberate the soil’s locked-up wealth of nutrients. Compost in the soil degrades and becomes humus, which benefits the soil by improving its crumb structure, multiplying the water-holding capacity, and darkening the soil so that it warms up more in the sun. All this from wastes that would otherwise be sent to landfills (costing us money to transport them there), where they would slowly decay giving off atmosphere-destroying gases while leaching residues into our drinking water. Whereas a proper compost heap lets little of value escape, capturing it all to be returned as fertility for healthier plants and bigger crops. Even just having a compost heap encourages wildlife in your garden. Vast numbers of small critters live in, around and especially underneath compost bins. These in turn bring in more attractive creatures, such as rodents and birds. So your garden wins in many ways, and all for free. Remember, composting is a natural process, and even if it does go a bit wrong it can always be put right again, and no innocent lives are lost—in fact, countless billions are born hourly in every bin!

Not trash but treasure…

Food for thought

Here’s some food for thought: organisms in healthy soil need but a small addition of compost annually to help them combine minerals, water, and air to create natural fertilizers that will feed and fatten plants. Figures suggest that somewhere between a quarter to half of all food produced is not eaten but thrown away. If it were returned to the farmers and composted, it could be enough fertility to grow much of our food for the following year.

There are no more weeds, wastes, or surplusses; they have all become pieces of future fertility.

When did composting begin?

The deliberate construction of actively decomposing compost heaps for their soil-enhancing and enriching product is a relatively recent introduction to Western gardening. On the other side of the world, clever composting processes have long been employed by the Chinese, but their use rarely spread outside their region.

Perhaps the earliest pioneers copied nature, which gives us examples of natural composting. Fallen leaves and other matter accumulate in holes and against banks and hedges, and piles of dung build into heaps as animals return to the same toilet. As early humans settled here and there, they left archaeologists treasure troves of their kitchen middens. These, the remains of all their household wastes, were lazily dumped near their dwellings. With civilization, the wastes became deposited further from the house, though, at best, just outside the town or city walls. The fertility of these piles of rotting materials must have been evident from the vigor of the plants that sprang from seeds consigned to these dumps.

Interestingly, somehow from ancient