I've been evolving a personally-adapted composting system for the
past twenty years. I've gone through a number of methods. I've used
and then abandoned power chipper/shredders, used home-made bins and
then switched to crude heaps; I've sheet composted, mulched, and
used green manure. I first made compost on a half-acre lot where
maintaining a tidy appearance was a reasonable concern. Now, living
in the country, I don't have be concerned with what the neighbors
think of my heaps because the nearest neighbor's house is 800 feet
from my compost area and I live in the country because I don't much
care to care what my neighbors think.
That's why I now compost so crudely. There are a lot of refinements
I could use but don't bother with at this time. I still get fine
compost. What follows should be understood as a description of my
unique, personal method adapted to my temperament and the climate I
live in. I start this book off with such a simple example because I
want you to see how completely easy it can be to make perfectly
usable compost. I intend this description for inspiration, not
emulation.
I am a serious food gardener. Starting in spring I begin to
accumulate large quantities of vegetation that demand handling.
There are woody stumps and stalks of various members of the cabbage
family that usually overwinter in western Oregon's mild winters.
These biennials go into bloom by April and at that point I pull them
from the garden with a fair amount of soil adhering to the roots.
These rough materials form the bottom layer of a new pile.
Since the first principle of abundant living is to produce two or
three times as much as you think you'll need, my overly-large garden
yields dozens and dozens of such stumps and still more dozens of
uneaten savoy cabbages, more dozens of three foot tall Brussels
sprouts stalks and cart loads of enormous blooming kale plants. At
the same time, from our insulated but unheated garage comes buckets
and boxes of sprouting potatoes and cart loads of moldy uneaten
winter squashes. There may be a few crates of last fall's withered
apples as well. Sprouting potatoes, mildewed squash, and shriveled
apples are spread atop the base of brassica stalks.
I grow my own vegetable seed whenever possible, particularly for
biennials such as brassicas, beets and endive. During summer these
generate large quantities of compostable straw after the seed is
thrashed. Usually there is a big dry bean patch that also produces a
lot of straw. There are vegetable trimmings, and large quantities of
plant material when old spring-sown beds are finished and the soil
is replanted for fall harvest. With the first frost in October there
is a huge amount of garden clean up.
As each of these materials is acquired it is temporarily placed next
to the heap awaiting the steady outpourings from our 2-1/2 gallon
kitchen compost pail. Our household generates quite a bit of
garbage, especially during high summer when we are canning or
juicing our crops. But we have no flies or putrid garbage smells
coming from the compost pile because as each bucketful is spread
over the center of the pile the garbage is immediately covered by
several inches of dried or wilted vegetation and a sprinkling of
soil.
By October the heap has become about six feet high, sixteen feet
long and about seven feet wide at the base. I've made no attempt to
water this pile as it was built, so it is quite dry and has hardly
decomposed at all. Soon those winter rains that the Maritime
northwest is famous for arrive. From mid-October through mid-April
it drizzles almost every day and rains fairly hard on occasion. Some
45 inches of water fall. But the pile is loosely stacked with lots
of air spaces within and much of the vegetation started the winter
in a dry, mature form with a pretty hard "bark" or skin that resists
decomposition. Winter days average in the high 40s, so little
rotting occurs.
Still, by next April most of the pile has become quite wet. Some
garbagey parts of it have decomposed significantly, others not at
all; most of it is still quite recognizable but much of the
vegetation has a grayish coating of microorganisms or has begun to
turn light brown. Now comes the only two really hard hours of
compost-making effort each year. For a good part of one morning I
turn the pile with a manure fork and shovel, constructing a new pile
next to the old one.
First I peel off the barely-rotted outer four or five inches from
the old pile; this makes the base of the new one. Untangling the
long stringy grasses, seed stalks, and Brussels sprout stems from
the rest can make me sweat and even curse, but fortunately I must
stop occasionally to spray water where the material remains dry and
catch my wind. Then, I rearrange the rest so half-decomposed
brassica stumps and other big chunks are placed in the center where
the pile will become the hottest and decomposition will proceed most
rapidly. As I reform the material, here and there I lightly sprinkle
a bit of soil shoveled up from around the original pile. When I've
finished turning it, the new heap is about five feet high, six feet
across at the bottom, and about eight feet long. The outside is then
covered with a thin layer of crumbly, black soil scraped up where
the pile had originally stood before I turned it.
Using hand tools for most kinds of garden work, like weeding,
cultivating, tilling, and turning compost heaps is not as difficult
or nearly as time consuming as most people think if one has the
proper, sharp tools. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to use hand
tools has largely disappeared. No one has a farm-bred grandfather to
show them how easy it is to use a sharp shovel or how impossibly
hard it can be to drive a dull one into the soil. Similarly, weeding
with a _sharp_ hoe is effortless and fast. But most new hoes are
sold without even a proper bevel ground into the blade, much less
with an edge that has been carefully honed. So after working with
dull shovels and hoes, many home food growers mistakenly conclude
that cultivation is not possible without using a rotary tiller for
both tillage and weeding between rows. But instead of an expensive
gasoline-powered machine all they really needed was a little
knowledge and a two dollar file.
Similarly, turning compost can be an impossible, sweat-drenching,
back-wrenching chore, or it can be relatively quick and easy. It is
very difficult to drive even a very sharp shovel into a compost
pile. One needs a hay fork, something most people call a
"pitchfork." The best type for this task has a very long, delicate
handle and four, foot long, sharp, thin tines. Forks with more than
four times grab too much material. If the heap has not rotted very
thoroughly and still contains a lot of long, stringy material, a
five or six tine fork will grab too much and may require too much
strength. Spading forks with four wide-flat blades don't work well
for turning heaps, but _en extremis_ I'd prefer one to a shovel.
Also, there are shovels and then, there are shovels. Most gardeners
know the difference between a spade and a shovel. They would not try
to pick up and toss material with a spade designed only to work
straight down and loosen soil. However, did you know that there are
design differences in the shape of blade and angle of handle in
shovels. The normal "combination" shovel is made for builders to
move piles of sand or small gravel. However, use a combination
shovel to scrape up loose, fine compost that a fork won't hold and
you'll quickly have a sore back from bending over so far. Worse, the
combination shovel has a decidedly curved blade that won't scrape up
very much with each stroke.
A better choice is a flat-bladed, square-front shovel designed to
lift loose, fine-textured materials from hard surfaces. However,
even well-sharpened, these tend to stick when they bump into any
obstacle. Best is an "irrigator's shovel." This is a lightweight
tool looking like an ordinary combination shovel but with a flatter,
blunter rounded blade attached to the handle at a much sharper
angle, allowing the user to stand straighter when working. _Sharp_
irrigator's shovels are perfect for scooping up loosened soil and
tossing it to one side, for making trenches or furrows in tilled
earth and for scraping up the last bits of a compost heap being
turned over.
Once turned, my long-weathered pile heats up rapidly. It is not as
hot as piles can cook, but it does steam on chilly mornings for a
few weeks. By mid-June things have cooled. The rains have also
ceased and the heap is getting dry. It has also sagged considerably.
Once more I turn the pile, watering it down with a fine mist as I do
so. This turning is much easier as the woody brassica stalks are
nearly gone. The chunks that remain as visible entities are again
put into the new pile's center; most of the bigger and
less-decomposed stuff comes from the outside of the old heap. Much
of the material has become brown to black in color and its origins
are not recognizable. The heap is now reduced to four feet high,
five feet wide, and about six feet long. Again I cover it with a
thin layer of soil and this time put a somewhat brittle, recycled
sheet of clear plastic over it to hold in the moisture and increase
the temperature. Again the pile briefly heats and then mellows
through the summer.
In September the heap is finished enough to use. It is about thirty
inches high and has been reduced to less than one-eighth of its
starting volume eighteen months ago. What compost I don't spread
during fall is protected with plastic from being leached by winter
rainfall and will be used next spring. Elapsed time: 18-24 months
from start to finish. Total effort: three turnings. Quality: very
useful.
Obviously my method is acceptable to me because the pile is not
easily visible to the residents or neighbors. It also suits a lazy
person. It is a very slow system, okay for someone who is not in a
hurry to use their compost. But few of my readers live on really
rural properties; hopefully, most of them are not as lazy as I am.
At this point I could recommend alternative, improved methods for
making compost much like cookbook recipes from which the reader
could pick and choose. There could be a small backyard recipe, the
fast recipe, the apartment recipe, the wintertime recipe, the making
compost when you can't make a pile recipes. Instead, I prefer to
compliment your intelligence and first explore the principles behind
composting. I believe that an understanding of basics will enable
you to function as a self-determined individual and adapt existing
methods, solve problems if they arise, or create something personal
and uniquely correct for your situation.