My Chicago Garden

…Composting Part Two - Getting Started Managing a Compost Pile…

This is part two of our podcast series on compost and composting. I mentioned in the previous podcast that we are heavily leveraging the Rodale Book of Composting. You may find it useful to purchase the book as we move through the series. I also mentioned a few episodes back that there was an online gardening book club that I had joined. I recently finished the book for January titled Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food.  My review was posted last weekend and I would encourage you to read this book as part of learning about composting and soil. The book is more scientific than you may be use too, but it can’t hurt to really understand what is going on in your backyard.

So we’ve learned the history of compost and have a basic understanding of the science around composting.  But we don’t know how to build and manage a compost pile.  Now granted, nature doesn’t build and manage compost piles. You don’t technically need to either, but your neighbors and your garden will be happier if you do.

Since up to 75% of household trash is organic in nature, you should be able to provide everything you need for your compost pile without leaving

your house and yard. The majority of ingredients for compost piles usually comes in the form of grass clippings, leaves, and other yard waste.
If you have a yard of any reasonable size, you’ll probably have more yard waste than you can compost.  I know last year I probably had 30 or 40 yard bags full of leaves.  It would have taken more than the entire area of my vegetable garden to compost it all.  I say all this to make the point that you have everything you need for the base materials of your compost pile right at your finger tips, and for

free.
If you find that you do not have enough resources, you can plan a foraging expedition in your neighborhood. I suspect your neighbors would be more than happy to give you their trash.  One thing to be careful of though. Some locations that do curbside recycling actually have laws or ordinances that make it illegal for you to pick up trash. This is usually because they have contracted with someone who is making money off the trash, and they don’t want you take the best trash before they can get it.  Just work with your neighbors to get the trash before it goes to the curb.

The one thing you probably wont have access to is manure. Try and find a stable or ranch that doesn’t look to have it’s own garden or farming.
They probably have animal manure they would be willing to give you for free. Places with their own gardens or farms will be reluctant to give you their manure since they are probably using it themselves. Without manure you’ll be lacking the bacterial compounds that will help to rapidly break down the compost pile.

But let’s start at home first and see what we can find ourselves. There are a few things you should be avoided when building a compost pile. Some of them can actually help, but they pose a risk and alternatives are available that make taking that risk unwise in my opinion.  Never use human feces or those of your pet dog, bird, or cat as your manure. You can safely use human urine, but I’m not too keen on standing a top my compost pile and letting it fly while my neighbors are having dinner.

Things like large chunks of wood or seafood shells, rags, brushes, pine needles and corn stocks can be used, but they need to be shredded first.

Be careful of using too much of a particular item like oak leaves or pine needles. They tend to be acid and could throw the balance of your compost pile off significantly. Also watch for diseased plants and weeds making it into your pile. It’s better to burn or discard them in some other fashion than to turn them back into your dirt.

And lastly, and hopefully most obviously, don’t be putting toxic chemicals in your pile. The compost pile can possibly break down the minute trace elements that are in the organic material, but you should not be purposely adding your own toxins.

Given the caveats I already mentioned, pretty much anything else organic is fair game. After you or your wife cooks dinner, look in the sink or the trash can for anything organic.  That stuff should be going into your compost pile.

Now depending on how scientific you want to be and how much effort you are willing to put in, you may want to enrich your compost pile to maximum

the nutrient value.  Materials such as seaweed, various rock powders, blood meal and other materials add particular types of nutrients that may be beneficial to your garden. But for now, just simply work with what you have. You can play with science once you have a chance to research some of the more advanced topics such as monitoring N-P-K levels. If you really want to dig into the science, pick up those two books I mentioned at the start of the podcast. You’ll find enough discussion on the science to make your brain hurt.

So now we have figured out where to get our base materials like grass clippings, leaves and the like. We’ve added in our kitchen scraps to the mix of ingredients, but we don’t know where to get the manure.  The most common domestic resources of manure are horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits and poultry.  Without the manure, your compost pile will take forever to break down.

If you absolutely can not find or afford manure for your pile, be sure you use a high-nitrogen substitute. You can purchase blood meal, fish scraps, and alfalfa or soybean meals sold as livestock feed.

So we have all of our raw material. But where do we put this mass of roting organics. Oh yes…it’s roting, or will be shortly.

That’s why I highly suggest you manage your compost pile instead of throwing it in the corner of the yard somewhere.

The basic needs of your pile are air, moisture, energy food (as carbon), protein food (as nitrogen) and warmth.

Let’s deal with them in order.  First air…

You can manage a pile without air, that’s known as anaerobic, but I prefer the aerobic kind (or with air) so we’ll move forward with that method.
The most common way of getting air into your pile is to turn it. If you can’t or don’t want to turn your pile you can perferate some pipes and position them in the pile, or some commercial composting bins come with holes poked in them. Same sort of thing.

Moisture. The proper moisture content is like that of a damp sponge. Too little moisture slows down the decomposition, but too much moisture makes the pile stink and drops the temperature also slowing decomposition. If your pile is too soggy you can add more absorbent materials such as leaves or grass clippings. If it is too dry, give it a good sprinkling.

Food. The ideal ratio of carbon to nitrogen content is 25 or 30 to 1, with carbon being the higher number. But precision is unnecessary for most applications. With experience you’ll acquire the feel for the best combinations of the materials you have on hand.  Carbon is usually plant material, while nitrogen is usually manure. So just keep a running total in your head and add 30 times as much garden waste and food scraps as you do manure and you should be fairly close.

And lastly, warmth.  Bacteria like their house to be 55degrees or higher. A properly built compost pile will be well above that temperature at it’s core during the coldest of winters. Mass is what drives the heat. Your pile should not be too small.  The minimum you should be shooting for is 4 or 5 feet square and 4 feet tall. When turning the pile put the outside material in the middle and the middle material on the outside. Remember it’s the center of the pile that heats up. 

To give your new compost pile a quick kickstart, sprinkle in some already composted material or top soil.

Okay…so far we have the materials, the technique and the basics of managing our pile. But we still haven’t figured out how to build the pile.
Much like anything in gardening there are several techniques.  How you decide to compost is going to be a purely personal decision as every persons situation is different.  There are plenty of books on the topic of building compost piles, including the Rodale book I’ve referenced several times. There are no less than 13 methods discussed in the Rodale book. Personally I prefer a modified California method using a three bin composter. Basically you layer your composting materials in a specific way and then turn at appropriate intervals. By moving the material from one bin to another you are effectively "turning" the pile.  While the third bin holds the completed compost from the previous sessions.

Before we end this episode let’s cover a few problem areas with compost piles and couple remedies.

Most common is the wet, foul-smelling heap.  This usually means you didn’t protect the pile from rain, over watered or both.
You need to turn the pile and add high-carbon (leaves, grass clippings, etc) absorbent materials.

You might also have a dry center or slow to no decomposition. This is the opposite problem. You probably don’t have enough moisture. Turn the pile, soak each layer as you turn it and cover with plastic to retain moisture.

Many small time composters will have issues with only the center being warm. This usually means your pile isn’t large enough. Remember, size does matter in composting.

It’s possible that you will build a compost pile and be unable to keep your neighbors from turning up their nose at you. If you have such a problem you’ll probably have to invest in the tumbler or garbage can methods. They work just fine, and are often less work, but you may have to spend more money up front to buy them.

 

 Standard Podcast [11:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download