About Compost

What I’ve been doing for several years to handle my space shortage, and yet be able to use all the plants that I’ve taken out at the end of their season for compost, would make a compost expert scoff.

The common definitions of “Compost” all include that it’s decaying or decayed organic matter, used to condition and enrich the soil and to improve its composition.

Traditional compost piles can take 2-3 years to become fully ready to use in the garden. That simply won’t do for most of us today who have little space, and less time, to devote to traditional compost piles.

I’ve read several books and studied any number of articles on composting, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never be the microbiologist one almost needs to be in order to claim to be an expert on the subject. I certainly am not an expert on composting. Very few home gardeners need or even want to know the full scope of composting. We do need to know some of the basics.

There are tumblers and bins and all sorts of dandy gadgets and ingenious inventions that will speed the process. I’ve tried a few of them and all of them worked just as promised. My particular compost needs are large. There is a huge amount of plant matter left after my vegetable plants have run their life cycle. After all, I do have 420 square feet of gardens! My 80 square foot tomato bed alone, with 7 plants 4 ft. in diameter and 7 to 9 feet high, produces a considerable amount of organic matter.

Ten or twelve years ago I built a box out of scrap plywood and 2” x 4”s, about 4 ft. wide, 4 ft. deep and 8 ft. long. It sits a few inches above the ground, and has a plywood bottom that I stapled a sheet of plastic over, thinking it would take longer to rot out. I think I was right. It works well enough, but even that isn’t big enough to handle all the vegetable matter I want to compost.

If I have a very large quantity of material, I fill the box with plants that I’ve taken out of my beds. I either chop the plants up where they stand and put them into the box, or I put them in the box and chop them up there as well as I can. If I have it, I’ll throw in straw, chopped alfalfa hay, and/or old newspaper, last falls leaves that I’ve kept in large clear plastic bags, and/or corrugated cardboard, and mix the green plant material with the dried organic material (the hay, newspaper, etc.) as well as I can with my fork. I’ll water it to be sure it’s good and moist--about like a wrung out rag or sponge would feel to the touch. It will get surprisingly warm in that pile in a day or two. After a week, the full box is only about half full, so I’ll pile the left half on top of the right half, and add some water if it needs more. A few days later I’ll move all of that, starting from the top - so that the top is now on bottom, and the bottom of the old pile is now the top of the new pile. I’ll do that every few days, and in very little time, about 6-8 weeks in the late summer, it’s about as ready as I want it.

Some people just dig their old plants right back into the gardens. That’s okay too, provided they were strong and healthy plants that had no harmful insect eggs, fungus, molds or other diseases.

Very large clear plastic trash bags, doubled, with one inside the other, became a solution to the problems of space, time, and not putting harmful agents back into the soil. Clear plastic allows the sun’s rays to radiate through the bag, and the combination of that heat and the heat given off by the decomposing green material will heat the contents to well over the 130 degrees necessary to kill most of the harmful elements that may be there. In a matter of a week or less, left in the sun, a well-sealed bag 2-3 ft. wide and 2-3 ft. high will be about 75% smaller. It would be safe to dig right back into the soil, but I just empty the stinking contents-and they do stink, right into my bin. The odor quickly dissipates once air can get to the material.

If I have any doubts that I might not have destroyed any destructive agents, pill bugs, slugs, etc., in my finished compost, I’ll put it in the doubled clear plastic bags, well sealed, and let it sit in the sun for at least a week. Even at that stage, the temperature inside the bag will soar, ensuring that I’m not continuing the life-cycle of anything I don’t want in my soil.

Between the box, the bags, digging under the young legumes that I plant at least once a year in every bed, my compost needs are cheaply and easily met.

Please don’t hesitate to write to me with any questions. It’s my pleasure to answer any gardening questions I can.