Compost, Compost, Compost

Have a gardening problem? Compost is the answer. Have a gardening question? Compost is the answer. Have a pitiful garden? Compost is the answer. Bugs? Weak stems? Flowers won’t flower? Fruit trees won’t fruit? In most cases, compost is the answer.

Compost is nature’s fertilizer. Nature designed plants to be self-sustaining. A plant draws nutrients from the soil, distributes them through the stem, branches and leaves, then drops leaves and stems to the ground to rot so they will provide food for future generations of plants to draw nutrients from the soil.

The hitch in the system is people.

For generations, we’ve taken out more than we’ve put in. We’ve exhausted thousands of years worth of drawing and dropping. So what can we do? The answer is compost. The natural system takes too long to repair the damage we’ve done, so it’s up to us to put back what we’ve taken out, stomped down, or grazed away.

Most of us buy compost, but we should all make some as well — just because we need to know the process, we need to recycle our waste, and we need to feel a little virtuous.

There are as many recipes for making compost as their are gardeners. Some composters are highly scientific; others are very haphazard. There are a lot of options. Find the one that suits your style and experiment to see what works. Here are a few recipes from the book Backyard Composting. The hottest (and fastest) are first.

Recipe #1
2 parts dry leaves
2 parts straw or wood shavings
1 part manure
1 part grass clippings
1 part fresh garden weeds
1 part food scraps *

Recipe #2
3 parts dry leaves
1 part fresh garden weeds
1 part fresh grass clippings
1 part food scraps

Recipe #3
6 parts dry leaves
3 parts food scraps
3 parts fresh grass clippings

Recipe #4
3 parts dry leaves
3 parts fresh grass clippings

Recipe #5
3 parts dry grass clippings
3 parts fresh grass clippings

* Add all kitchen waste except meat. Use veggie trimmings, egg shells, coffee grounds & filters, tea bags, paper towels, citrus rinds, and any other organic material you have leftover.