[Announce] Day 8: Compost -- because a rind is a terrible thing to waste.

[Robert Waldrop]

30 Days Towards Sustainability

Day 8: Compost: Because a rind is a terrible thing 
to waste.

Composting is a recycling activity, but it is so 
important it gets a "day of its own". Americans 
send a tremendous amount of organic material to 
landfills. This is like taking hundred dollar 
bills and burying them in the ground! How smart is 
that? Our city destroys wealth every time a load 
of compostable waste heads to the dump. Burying 
compostable materials in land fills is a Crime 
Against Nature.

Making compost is not as complicated as some 
people think. Today I will talk about three ways 
to compost.

Your Basic Very Easy Compost Pile

Select a place for a compost pile, and dig the 
ground up a bit. Put down a layer of twigs and 
small branches, and then make alternating layers 
of "brown and dry" materials and "green and wet" 
materials. Brown and dry can include leaves, 
shredded tree limbs and bark, newspapers (no shiny 
slick papers or colored inks), brown cardboard, 
dried grass clippings. Green and wet includes 
kitchen scraps, green lawn trimmings, green 
leaves, flowers, weeds, plants, etc. Some folks 
say "no fats or meats in the pile," but I put fats 
and meats in our pile and they do just fine. 
Sometimes varmints dig the pile a bit to find such 
bits, but that just helps mix and turn the pile 
without my effort, so that's fine with me.

Wet each layer (so it is like a wrung out sponge) 
and toss a shovel of soil on each layer and a 
couple of small branches. Pile it up at least 3 
feet high and 3 feet wide, & then leave it alone 
for a year. If it's a dry summer, water it so it 
stays damp inside (like a wrung out sponge). After 
about a year, rake away the leaves still on top, 
and inside will be a nice, rich, dark loamy 
compost that smells like forest dirt when you 
sniff it.

If you can't wait a whole year, you can make 
compost faster by fussing with it a bit. Every 
week or so go out and "turn it", that is to say, 
use a pitchfork and move the compost to a 
different spot, so that what was "outside" on the 
pile is now inside, and what was inside is now on 
the outside.

If the compost heap starts to smell bad, 
something's wrong, probably either too much "wet 
and green" or it has somehow gotten so compacted 
that air can't get in. For the problem of too much 
wet and green, add more brown and dry. If the pile 
has become compacted, then stir it up a bit and 
add some small branches (the purpose of the 
branches is to keep the pile from compacting and 
to help air circulate).

If you dig into the pile, you will find lots of 
little creatures at work, rolly pollies, worms, 
etc. That's good, because that's what's supposed 
to happen.

Compost In Place

An alternative to compost piles is to compost in 
place - make small compost piles at the places you 
want to fertilize (garden beds, around trees and 
fruit bushes, etc.) Sometimes with a compost pile 
nutrients are leached into the ground by rain. You 
can avoid this problem by allowing the compost 
process to happen at the places you want to 
fertilize. The process is the same as described 
above, only instead of building piles about 3 feet 
tall, you want layers that add up to about 6-8 
inches. This avoids the work of transferring 
finished compost from piles to beds. It supports a 
properly functioning oxygen-ethylene cycle in the 
soil. Micro-organisms in the soil grow on plant 
roots and deplete the soil of oxygen. Ethylene 
then forms at those sites, and this de-activates 
(but does not kill) the soil micro-organisms. As a 
result demand for oxygen decreases and thus oxygen 
diffuses back into the soil. This awakens the soil 
micro-organisms that commence work and the cycle 
is repeated. This cycle is critical to the ability 
of plants to make use of the nutrients in the 
soil. Composting in place facilitates the process.

Vermicompost

A third way of composting is using red wiggler 
worms. Worms indeed can eat your garbage and give 
you gifts of wonderfully fertile worm castings and 
worm tea. More information about vermicomposting 
can be found at:

http://www.wormdigest.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermicompost

Vermicomposting is a great choice for apartment 
dwellers who may not have a place outdoors to do 
composting. The worm castings can then be used to 
make potting soil for growing herbs, vegetables, 
and other plants indoors or on patios and 
walkways.

If you want a nice garden, the place to start is 
by building your soil. No chemical fertilizer has 
the advantages of home made compost, & it has the 
added benefit of recycling your food waste, lawn & 
garden trimmings on site, rather than sending them 
off to be buried wastefully in a landfill. 
Composting is the beginning of a beautiful home 
garden. Help stop Crimes Against Nature! Start 
your compost pile this week! Remember: a rind is a 
terrible thing to waste.

Bob Waldrop

http://www.bettertimesinfo.org

http://www.oklahomafood.coop

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These tips may be freely forwarded, credit for 
authorship is appreciated. They are posted online 
at 
http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/30days.htm .