Compost"
Chapter 1
Home Composting: Art or Science?
Somewhere, thousands and thousands of years ago, some hairy and slouched cave dwellers who groveled in the dirt with sticks and who managed to grow some food may have discovered that seeds grew better near the place where they piled the apparently useless refuse from their cave. Most of this waste
material was organic matter.
I doubt very much that at the moment of discovery they had either the wisdom or the inclination to shout Eureka!
But they must have passed the word along, because the idea of putting human, animal, vegetable, and mineral wastes on or into the soil, to make it better, spread to all corners of the world.
In the beginning, there was manure. Humanity has known for a long time that animal excrement is valuable stuff when it comes to growing things and has apparently always made efforts to save it. But shortly after early humans became friendly enough with animals to be able to persuade a few of them to live at home with them in a more or less peaceful relationship, they must have realized that there was never quite enough manure to go around. So they began to devise ways of stretching it and started to think about ways to make synthetic manure.
They didn’t know what they were doing, really. They probably just took a look at what was going on and then began trying things. Composting had begun long before our ancestors discovered it.
Decomposition is at least as old as the soil. The earth itself, as the poet Walt Whitman suggests, is something of a compost pile. It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
Long before there were people around to observe it, composting was going on in every forest, every meadow, every swamp, and bog, and prairie, and steppe in the world. As Richard Langer says, Composting is a natural process that began with the first plants on earth and has been going on ever since.
Primitive
Composting
Ancient people were the true discoverers of organic gardening—in spite of whatever valid claims people like Sir Albert Howard or Rudolf Steiner or J. I. Rodale may have to the modern title. Whoever they were, they were artists, not scientists. Only by trial and error were they able to learn what worked when it came to making synthetic manure. They didn’t have anyone to guide them or to give them good advice because there was nobody around who knew very much. Things like psychrophylic bacteria and the relationship between carbon and nitrogen in the process of decomposition were the furthest things from their minds—and at least thirty centuries away in terms of time.
All they saw, maybe, was the forest floor where leaves fell, turned dark, and gradually disappeared to be transformed into the dark, fertile soil gardeners were someday to call humus.
They must have realized that in time many things rot whether we try to do anything about it or not. Leave everything to Mother Nature, and eventually the conditions that encourage decay will establish themselves. We can be thankful that this is something that has been going on since shortly after the beginning of time.
Modern
Composting
Allowing nature to take its course, however, may take more time than we have. The modern practice of composting is little more than speeding up and intensifying natural processes. That’s all it is. When you come right down to it, finished compost is no more than treated
or predigested
(rotted) organic matter, which usually has undergone a natural heating process and which is very valuable stuff to incorporate into your garden’s soil.
For too long there has been an air of cultist mysticism surrounding the art of composting. This is the kind of nonsense so many people find objectionable in a lot of composting literature. It is easy to get confused by gardening magazines and gardening books that describe the science
of composting in such narrowly defined terms that you get the distinct impression that there is one, and only one, method for making humus.
Don’t misunderstand: There have been all kinds of extremely valuable scientific research done on composting, and much of the information gathered can be very helpful to the home composter as well as to the municipality that is doing or considering composting on a large scale. I suggest that you try to learn as much about the highly technical aspects of the subject as you can. But I caution that an overly scientific approach to composting may take all the fun out of it.
The word compost comes from two Latin roots, com meaning together,
and post, meaning to bring.
To make edible fruit compost
(or fruit compote
), for example, is to bring together several different kinds of fruit, mix them with sugar and other ingredients in a jar or crock, and let it sit to ferment for several days. It really doesn’t matter how long it sits or precisely how much you add of what. In fact, you might eat some of the mixture, and when the container gets low, replenish it with other fixings as they become available. The final concoction is almost always a delicious one, though rarely, if ever, the same as the last. There are really as many recipes for making fruit compote as there are fruit compote makers—probably more. You’ll find the same is true with composting.
As you get into composting, try not to get bogged down with complicated recipes and formulas. A few simple guidelines can help you eliminate some of the traditionally unpleasant aspects of composting. There are few hard-and-fast rules governing the making of good compost that must be followed to the letter.
If you are a beginner, start thinking in simple terms about a compost system. Later, you may want to develop more complicated and sophisticated techniques. Apply what scientific knowledge you have. If you find a particular section of the book too technical, skip it. You can always return to it at a later point.
Be creative. Select what you can from the information offered here and go on to establish your own composting style. When your neighbors tell you that you are doing it all wrong,
tell them that both of you are right. As you learn more and more about composting and begin to understand the rotting process a little better, you may grow to appreciate the recycling activity that takes place in nature day in and day out. You may also find, as others have, that you want to synchronize yourself with it.
SUCCESSFUL COMPOSTING REQUIRES
1.The realization that no matter what you do, no matter how many little mistakes you make, you are still probably going to come up with reasonably good, usable compost.
2.A basic understanding of the life forms and processes that operate within a compost pile.
3.A willingness to experiment.
4.A little effort.
5.A little artistry.
Principle of Return
Composting is based on the principle of return, a principle by which all good organic gardeners try to live. But you don’t have to be a purely organic gardener to be a composter. I have become more aware, sometimes with the help of organic gardening friends, that all of life is part of a continuous pattern, which should not be interrupted. As humans we reap things from the land in the form of produce. But this is only one small part of a much larger picture. There are many other life forms besides ours that come into play and help to make the cycle run. Giving back to the land is every bit as vital as taking fromit. And we have taken too much for too long. Although we may never be able to offset the damage we have done to the soil and replace all that we have taken from it, it is not too late to try to make amends. Composting is a way of using up what we have in abundance—humble things like weeds and dead grass and garbage and old sticks—to repay a long-standing debt to the earth. By becoming more and more attuned to the mechanics of Mother Nature you realize that, as my friend Catharine Osgood Foster says in her book Building Healthy Gardens, In the process of nature there is no throwing away.
My wife has often gently accused me of being a tightwad and a pack rat. She is probably right. I find it difficult to throw anything out—particularly anything that had its origin in some living thing and is potential compost material. Rather than argue with me, she has learned to throw out really worthless things when I’m not around, in the hope that I won’t notice. I have told her over and over again that she should have realized when she decided to marry someone with a name like Stuart Duncan Campbell that he would probably turn out to be something of a thrifty soul. My Scottish heritage seems to make me a more natural composter than she, but she is gradually coming around to my way of thinking.
Serious composters tend to reach a point where they view most of the solid and liquid material in the world as falling into one of three categories: (1) desirable compostable stuff, (2) undesirable compostable stuff, and (3) nonbiodegradable stuff. I sometimes have to resist the urge to stop by the side of the road and gather up a particularly attractive bunch of leaves or cut weeds. While watching television a few evenings ago, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful clumps of kelp two lovers were treading on as they walked arm in arm along a California beach in some low-budget film. I found myself wondering if maybe our garden couldn’t use a little boron and perhaps a touch of the iodine contained in seaweed. I then started wishing that I could have some of that kelp for my compost pile. I soon lost the thread of the plot and decided to go to bed. This kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time, mind
