Compost experiments update – 8 months

Last July, I started a couple of compost experiments. As I was using up one bin full of compost today (four heaping wheelbarrows full), I realized that these two experiments have been officially completed.

First, I spread partially-completed compost on my back garden as mulch last July. Since I put everything from our kitchen, absolutely everything organic (in the original dust-to-dust meaning of the word), into our pile, I was curious to see how quickly it would break down when finished as mulch. I was also a tad worried about the neighbor complaining about the not-perfectly-neat appearance of some of the larger bits. I’m happy to report no complaints (well, about the compost anyway) and also that the recognizable bits weathered away very quickly. I’m very happy with the rough compost as mulch concept, and did it again today.

Here is my baby grape vine, waking up from winter dormancy, with a fresh bed of compost mulch:

I spread it all in the back garden, fruit trees, elderberries, mountain laurel. I didn’t have enough for the entire garden, but most of it. Ours has to be one of the few companies that shreds and composts our old office documents. That’s privacy, folks. You can see some clumps of Starbucks coffee in there, too.

My second experiment is the one I’m really excited about. Eight months ago, I added a good bit of cotton fabric to my pile (see picture and explanation in the first post). I had almost forgotten about it, until I encountered a few scraps in the middle of the pile today. Just a few! Almost all of the fabric has broken down into small enough bits that I didn’t notice it among the other chunks. The few larger pieces that I did notice got tossed back into an active pile today for finishing. So I can confidently say that my fabric + coffee grounds recipe is a keeper. That’s good to hear because I’ll be starting work on some organic cotton canvas shopping bags for this year’s farmer’s market tomorrow (yay!).

So today was a good compost day. Now that we’ve been in the house for almost two years, we are really starting to create some materials flow. I pulled out the final bit of the fall garden and filled up one compost bin to overflowing:

The wheelbarrow is full of materials from my neighbor’s fence bed, to start the new active bin. I weeded and gathered leaves from her driveway. Ain’t I nice? She said if we move, she’s following us. Heh. Anyway, we’re still not a closed-loop system. I buy hay from the Feed and Seed to mulch veggies and to balance the greens in our compost piles. I also buy finished compost in bags (organic cotton burr compost) every time I plant a new crop. We just don’t make enough yet. I’m not sure we ever will, on this size lot. But the pace is definitely picking up. I’ll check in next spring and see if we hit a plateau.

Compost experiments

I am currently running two compost experiments. Well, they’re new to me.

First, I’ve started using partially-decomposed compost as mulch. I am desperately in need of mulch in this heat. And I don’t want to use anything too woody at this stage for a couple of reasons. First, I never use anything woody in my veggie beds, because I want to be able to dig the mulch into the soil when I harvest one crop and plant a new one. So I normally mulch with compost. But these beds are just eating compost so fast that it’s not acting as a mulch for more than a couple of weeks. I could use hay or straw, but I’d like something that looks a little more “mulchy”, since the beds are in my front yard. Second, even my ornamental beds are still in need of lots of soil-building, having been recently lawn, for the most part. So I am loathe to put down anything that won’t improve the soil in the short term. Woody mulches take too long to break down for the short-term improvements that I need.

So, out came the unfinished compost. This stuff is coming out of my middle bin. The only recognizable bits are egg shells, corn cobs, and the odd peanut shell. Oh, and some hay that I added when I turned it into the middle bin. The pile was a bit too “green”, so I added hay at that time, to balance with “browns”. It worked, and now the pile is nice-smelling and foresty. But still, I wasn’t sure if my next door neighbor would see the egg shells and give me a hard time. Or something. I don’t know, I just had this sense that maybe someone would call me out on a non-federation move. But no. Not a peep. Check it out:

That’s my new turk’s cap, with a nice, thick layer of unfinished compost cooling the roots. Just be very sure not to dig this stuff into the soil if there are plants growing already, or will be soon. When the soil life are busy decomposing large bits of plant matter, it ties up nutrients that the plants rather need. So as a mulch, this is a good idea, but not as a soil amendment, unless the bed will sit empty for a season while the compost breaks down further.

I’m happy with how this worked out, so I’ll give it a go in the front yard, next.

My next experiment is in response to the fabric scraps that we have at work. I haven’t been able to find a scrap fabric recycling facility that deals with small inputs like ours. So I’m going to see if I can compost the stuff. It’s all 100% cotton, most of it organically-grown, and smaller than 2″. I donate the larger scraps to quilters. Then Jan came home with four big bags of used coffee grounds from Starbucks. It’s free. Get it. It’s really good for our alkaline soil. Anyway, very dry brown fabric + very green coffee grounds = (hopefully in a timely manner) compost!

I’ll let you know how long it takes . . .

Compost Heaven

I’ve had a couple of people ask me about composting, so when my most recent batch of compost was ready to use, I took some pictures. As I was spreading it out in the tomato bed this morning, a woman who was jogging by stopped and asked me how I keep my tomatoes looking so good in this heat. I was flummoxed. “Um, compost?”, I said, and pointed to the wheelbarrow with my shovel. She said their plants have tomatoes, but the plants look all dry and terrible. It’s hard to say, since the differences between gardens are many. But really, I am not very diligent in watering, which I do by hand. So it seems like it must be the black gold.

I got out this morning and finished harvesting the finished compost. We moved into this house last August, and immediately set up our three compost bins in the small east side yard. As I’m a lazy gardener, I use a slow method of composting, sometimes called “cold” composting. It’s made up of three wire bins, approximately 3×3 ft square, side by side. I bought it at gardeners.com:

Into the first bin go all new additions: kitchen waste, weeds without seeds, non-diseased prunings, and extra dry “browns” like leaves or hay. Once this bin fills to the top (which was slower before our garden got going, but can happen pretty quickly during harvest season), the entire contents of the first bin is forked into the 2nd bin. This aerates and mixes the ingredients, and gives you a chance to add more browns, if your pile is too wet and stinky (Which has never, ever, ever happened to me. Ever.). New additions continue to be fed into the first bin, and the 2nd bin is left to cook. I don’t water my compost piles, which is one reason they are slow and “cold”. If I kept the piles moist, and turned them every month, they would get hot in the center and cook, and break down faster. Too much work. Anyway, once the first bin is full again, the 2nd bin gets forked over into the third bin, and the first bin gets forked over into the 2nd bin. By this time, the compost getting turned into the third bin should be pretty much unrecognizable except for eggs shells, corn cobs, coffee filters, and other bits that take a long time to break down. You should also notice a big difference in the soil life. When I turn the first pile over, there are grubs and sometimes ants, earthworms, pill bugs and even maggots, occasionally (eek!). When I turn the 2nd pile over, there are many more earthworms, silverfish, snakes, rarely ants. By the time the last pile is done cooking, the earthworms rule the roost, never ants or grubs or rarely any other big insects.

This first pile in our house took almost a year to make it through this process, mostly because that’s how long it took us to fill the first bin twice. So finally, I’m harvesting my first batch of compost.

This picture is a little deceptive, because there is hay in the middle bin. But the first bin is at the top of the picture, and will be turned into the middle bin later.

Some people just spread the finished compost on the garden as is, with the big chunks still in it. But I screen mine, as ours includes little fruit stickers from our kitchen scraps, and we get leaves from neighbors, which sometimes contains candy wrappers and such. I use a 1/4″ screen to get really fine compost for our potted plants. I use 1/2″ screen to get regular garden bed compost. Since I’m lazy, as I mentioned, I bought both of my screens already made. But they’re really easy to make with materials from Home Depot. Anyway, my 1/2″ screen fits over my wheelbarrow:

I dump a shovel-full of compost onto the screen, then use the shovel to scrape and agitate the finer compost through the holes, all the while trying not to kill the earthworms that are flailing around like fish out of water. The big chunks that are left over are scraped into the bucket at the base of the barrow, and added back to the first bin to continue cooking.

And this is the good stuff; the glorious gold. From one bin, I got about 4 or 5 wheelbarrows-full.

From here on out, we’ll get more compost, faster. Not that the three of us are creating more kitchen scraps, but with the garden becoming more mature, I’ll be feeding the pile more vegetation. Just today, I turned a pile over into the middle bin.

There is now fresh hay in the last bin, and the first bin has a thin layer of hay at the bottom, waiting for new additions to the pile.

Notes for success with composting:

• You need “greens” (nitrogen) and “browns” (carbon) to make the average pile work as generally expected. In my experience, THE most common mistake made in backyard compost piles is too few browns in relation to greens. The result is a wet, slimy, smelly, infested mess. Basically everything that comes out of your kitchen is a green. So you’ll need to feed the pile with dried leaves, hay, or some other dry, brown substance. Shredded paper, shredded cardboard, something. The best input is the one that you have handy, especially if you’re diverting it from the landfill. We usually harass our neighbors into giving us their leaves (they think we’re nutty). But we plowed through a tremendous amount of leaves this year, and had to break down and buy some hay from the feed and seed store downtown.
• The more you turn the pile, the hotter it will cook, the faster it will finish, and the more buff you will become.
• If you’re going for hot, you’ll also need to keep the pile moist, like a squeezed-out sponge. Dry piles can take years to finish (like a dry leaf pile, which takes about three years to turn into leaf mold).
• Bury your kitchen waste in the pile, preferably under a handful of browns. That’s why I like to keep a bag of leaves or something right next to the first bin. If you dump your kitchen scraps, then throw in a handful of leaves, you’re virtually guaranteed to end up with the right combination of greens and browns, as well as discouraging flies and cats. Both of which I consider the most disgusting of visitors to my little homestead.
• Bugs are generally your friends. It’s true that you can get an imbalance of one bug in relation to all of the others. But if you balance your greens and browns, you should be able to step back and let the battle of the bugs play out. They’re the ones doing the magic, so leave them be.