Local Gardener Living: A toast to compost
A toast to compost
Can you make compost without a bin?
1. True or false: Nature recycles.
2. True or false: You can’t compost without a compost bin.
3. True or false: Composting indoors is smelly and attracts fruit flies.
4. True or false: Red wrigglers are the best worms for vermicomposting because they are native to Canada.
5. True or false: You can’t compost in winter.
6. True or false: You need roughly three times as much green material as brown material for a healthy compost heap.
7. True or false: Grass clippings are excellent for compost.
8. True or false: Fallen tree leaves are no good for compost.
9. True or false: You can’t have too much water in your compost bin.
10. True or false: It’s bad for your garden to apply compost that hasn’t been thoroughly broken down.
Answers
1. True. That which nature brings together, it ultimate breaks down. From the biggest tree to the tiniest ant, once death occurs, nature sets about breaking it down into carbon dioxide, water, mineral salts and a whiff of something known as humus. It’s an amazingly efficient process, involving oxygen and microorganisms, that can reduce a human from corpse to skeleton in about three weeks, left uncovered. Even the skeleton, if exposed to the elements, will be gone in about 10 years. In essence, nature recycles the matter of an old life by decomposing its physical parts into energy for new lives. The process is called composting.
2. False. Farmers reading this are laughing at the idea that you need a plastic bin to compost food scraps and yard waste; many people with acreage simply have a compost pile—a designated spot for piling organic waste. There are a few reasons for using a bin, particularly in a smaller yard. One is: compost ain’t pretty. A bin keeps your waste in a more compact area, gives you an opportunity to maintain ideal moisture levels and is less attractive to foragers.
3. False. Or at least, you can have a vermicomposter—an indoor worm farm—free of fruit flies and offensive odours, and I’ve seen many in elementary school classrooms to prove it. To prevent fruit flies, bury the new food scraps in the compost. If the composter gets stinky, add some shredded paper or dried leaves. These rules of thumb work in your outdoor composter as well.
4. False. Red wrigglers are not native to North America. They are used for vermicomposting because they are extremely efficient and effective. Our native nightcrawlers wouldn’t do much for you in a bin under the sink. Red wrigglers are detrimental to our natural forest environment, though, because they go through all of the dead material on the forest floor too quickly; our forests depend on a slower process. So… using red wrigglers is advisable for your indoor composter, but try not to add them to your garden along with the lovely compost that they process.
5. False. The activity in your compost bin may slow down or even stop in the colder weather, but there’s no harm in letting scraps pile up in the composter. To ensure speedy decomposition when things do warm up, throw a few crumpled up newspapers into the bin periodically.
6. True. Green material is the soft stuff, such as kitchen scraps and fresh, non-woody garden trimmings. Brown material is dried leaves, cardboard and newspaper.
7. True, with an explanation. First, if you use weed-n-feed on your lawn, don’t put the clippings into your compost. Second, lawn clippings are a whole lot of green material, which is bound to throw your compost off balance; make sure you add loosely crumpled newspaper with the grass. Third, with the work involved in getting lawn clippings from the lawn to the compost pile, and then balancing the mixture of green and brown… it seems a lot easier to just leave the clippings dispersed through the lawn, where they’ll be beneficial as mulch.
8. False. Some tree leaves, particularly oak, beech and birch, take so long to break down that most compost fans prefer to leave them out. But ash, cherry, elm, linden, maple, cottonwood and willow leaves all make perfectly lovely compost ingredients.
9. False. A dry compost heap is an inactive one, but too much water in the compost prevents a sufficient flow of air.
10. False. It isn’t bad for the garden; it just isn’t particularly attractive. Compost that still has recognizable chunks in it won’t harm your garden; those chunks will simply continue to decompose next to the flowers. As Ken Thompson puts it in his book Compost: the Natural Way to Make Food for your Garden, “When is compost ready? Or, to put it another way, how long is a piece of string?” Compost is ready when you like—or, at least, are prepared to accept—the look of it.
8-10 correct: Dark, moist and crumbly.
5-7 correct: Almost ready for spreading.
Fewer than 5 correct: Okay… you just need to add some green and brown material and water and air and wait about a year.
Shauna Dobbie is the publisher of Ontario Gardener Living, a magazine written exclusively for Ontario gardeners. You can subscribe for just $29.95 a year by calling toll free to 1-888-680-2008 or visit www.localgardener.net. For information write to shaunad@localgardener.net.
Ontario Gardener Living is also at newsstands throughout the province.
1. True or false: Nature recycles.
2. True or false: You can’t compost without a compost bin.
3. True or false: Composting indoors is smelly and attracts fruit flies.
4. True or false: Red wrigglers are the best worms for vermicomposting because they are native to Canada.
5. True or false: You can’t compost in winter.
6. True or false: You need roughly three times as much green material as brown material for a healthy compost heap.
7. True or false: Grass clippings are excellent for compost.
8. True or false: Fallen tree leaves are no good for compost.
9. True or false: You can’t have too much water in your compost bin.
10. True or false: It’s bad for your garden to apply compost that hasn’t been thoroughly broken down.
Answers
1. True. That which nature brings together, it ultimate breaks down. From the biggest tree to the tiniest ant, once death occurs, nature sets about breaking it down into carbon dioxide, water, mineral salts and a whiff of something known as humus. It’s an amazingly efficient process, involving oxygen and microorganisms, that can reduce a human from corpse to skeleton in about three weeks, left uncovered. Even the skeleton, if exposed to the elements, will be gone in about 10 years. In essence, nature recycles the matter of an old life by decomposing its physical parts into energy for new lives. The process is called composting.
2. False. Farmers reading this are laughing at the idea that you need a plastic bin to compost food scraps and yard waste; many people with acreage simply have a compost pile—a designated spot for piling organic waste. There are a few reasons for using a bin, particularly in a smaller yard. One is: compost ain’t pretty. A bin keeps your waste in a more compact area, gives you an opportunity to maintain ideal moisture levels and is less attractive to foragers.
3. False. Or at least, you can have a vermicomposter—an indoor worm farm—free of fruit flies and offensive odours, and I’ve seen many in elementary school classrooms to prove it. To prevent fruit flies, bury the new food scraps in the compost. If the composter gets stinky, add some shredded paper or dried leaves. These rules of thumb work in your outdoor composter as well.
4. False. Red wrigglers are not native to North America. They are used for vermicomposting because they are extremely efficient and effective. Our native nightcrawlers wouldn’t do much for you in a bin under the sink. Red wrigglers are detrimental to our natural forest environment, though, because they go through all of the dead material on the forest floor too quickly; our forests depend on a slower process. So… using red wrigglers is advisable for your indoor composter, but try not to add them to your garden along with the lovely compost that they process.
5. False. The activity in your compost bin may slow down or even stop in the colder weather, but there’s no harm in letting scraps pile up in the composter. To ensure speedy decomposition when things do warm up, throw a few crumpled up newspapers into the bin periodically.
6. True. Green material is the soft stuff, such as kitchen scraps and fresh, non-woody garden trimmings. Brown material is dried leaves, cardboard and newspaper.
7. True, with an explanation. First, if you use weed-n-feed on your lawn, don’t put the clippings into your compost. Second, lawn clippings are a whole lot of green material, which is bound to throw your compost off balance; make sure you add loosely crumpled newspaper with the grass. Third, with the work involved in getting lawn clippings from the lawn to the compost pile, and then balancing the mixture of green and brown… it seems a lot easier to just leave the clippings dispersed through the lawn, where they’ll be beneficial as mulch.
8. False. Some tree leaves, particularly oak, beech and birch, take so long to break down that most compost fans prefer to leave them out. But ash, cherry, elm, linden, maple, cottonwood and willow leaves all make perfectly lovely compost ingredients.
9. False. A dry compost heap is an inactive one, but too much water in the compost prevents a sufficient flow of air.
10. False. It isn’t bad for the garden; it just isn’t particularly attractive. Compost that still has recognizable chunks in it won’t harm your garden; those chunks will simply continue to decompose next to the flowers. As Ken Thompson puts it in his book Compost: the Natural Way to Make Food for your Garden, “When is compost ready? Or, to put it another way, how long is a piece of string?” Compost is ready when you like—or, at least, are prepared to accept—the look of it.
8-10 correct: Dark, moist and crumbly.
5-7 correct: Almost ready for spreading.
Fewer than 5 correct: Okay… you just need to add some green and brown material and water and air and wait about a year.
Shauna Dobbie is the publisher of Ontario Gardener Living, a magazine written exclusively for Ontario gardeners. You can subscribe for just $29.95 a year by calling toll free to 1-888-680-2008 or visit www.localgardener.net. For information write to shaunad@localgardener.net.
Ontario Gardener Living is also at newsstands throughout the province.