Home Composting, time to get creative

Hi again, I have now taken you through the in’s and out’s of building your first compost. Or have I. There is a lot you can know when it comes to compost. My goal is not to make you an authority on the subject, but to give you the knowledge to grow and use your compost in the most effective way possible.

Let us start with temperature. Some people feel the need to keep their compost in a hot (sunshine) location. They say the heat speeds up the digestion by the microbes in the compost pile. This is not necessarily true. Although good composts will be slightly warm to the touch it is not from the sunshine it will receive but from the collective body heat from the billions of microbes digesting your compost. Not to say you cannot put it in the sun but you will have to make sure you have a sufficient size of a pile to keep all those microbes busy. If you go this route a pile in the size range of one cubic meter will be needed (roughly 3feet X 3feet X3feet). You don’t want these guys to run out of material to eat and die off so this is why I suggest keeping the pile in a cool place. Most people don’t generate that much yard and kitchen waste to keep a pile this big going strong so just use a nice small one that is well taken care of and you will be just fine.

How to tell if your compost is done is not an exact science. It really does not matter for a garden if you can still decipher what some of the small bits are. Any remaining material that is not decomposed will be finished off when you add your compost to the garden, but when it comes to starting seeds you want to make sure your compost is “well done”.

There are huge benefits to adding compost to your garden. The best part is no matter what soil type you have it can be helped by adding compost. For sandier soils it aids in water retention by adding organic material to the mix. Or for Clay soils it makes the soil more porous so the water can drain a little quicker so you don’t wind up with a layer of concrete on top of your garden.

One other point I want to bring up is that all of your composting does not have to be done in a bin. When you get a lot of material all at once (cutting a large lawn or autumn leaves), you can till them into your garden to allow it to break down there. Or you can bury your kitchen waste in a trench in the garden at least 8” deep so your kitchen waste can decompose right where the plants will be planted next season. If you were to go with either of these routes make sure to do this in the late fall or at least two months before you plant to make sure the material is broken down enough.

I would have to say the best part of composting is the various ways to which you can use it. There are the obvious ways of taking your compost and mixing it in with your soil in your garden to improve your plant growth in the next season, or when used as a topper that will be slowly incorporated into the soil. Then there are a couple of other ways to use it that are my favourites. You can actually use your compost as mulch. Unlike using it as a topper as I mentioned above mulch is meant to cover the entire area of soil around the plants instead of just a dressing around the plant. This will add nutrients to all the soil in the area instead of just at the plant. My favourite way to use my mulch is to make a tea out of it. All you have to do is make a 50/50 mix of compost and water and let it sit for a week. After that drain the water in to another container and use it for a boost of nutrients to sick plants. The leftover compost mush at the bottom can be thrown into the garden as mulch. Tea can also be used on young seedlings but I recommend you dilute it well first to avoid damaging the seeds.

The last thing for me to talk about is the types of compost systems out there. You can by one or build one it all depends on how much compost you want to make and how much you want to spend. Or you could go without any bins and just make your compost on the ground. I just caution you if you choose to build your own bin to make sure you do not use treated lumber. The chemicals can leach into your compost and later contaminate your garden.

In whatever system you use there will be advantages and disadvantages. Although these differences between many of these bins are usually just ease of use and aesthetic the compost you will get from most of them will be fairly comparable.

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