Gardening goes full circle
One person’s garbage is another person’s composting material.
People who compost in their backyards can reduce the garbage they leave at the curb by up to 30 per cent. There’s a wide variety of garbage we throw away that can be used as compost, nature’s own recycling system.
For example, it’s well known that grass clippings and leaves can be used in the composter, but so can newsprint, coffee grounds, egg shells, feathers, flowers, fruit and fruit peels, hair, seaweed and some weeds from your garden. People also put coffee filters, corn cobs, cotton, wool, silk scraps, hay, sawdust and wood chips in their composter.
If gardeners compost properly, it produces an essential soil conditioner richer than anything we can buy. Composted soil gradually releases a variety of nutrients. As well, insects and diseases don’t seem to do as much damage where the soil is enriched with plenty of decayed organic matter. And there’s another bonus: dark compost draws the sun’s heat to warm the garden soil, making the short growing season longer.
Other benefits of compost are that it acts like a sponge, soaking up water when it rains and releasing it in dry spells.
Many people have a composter, but few know how to use it properly.
Composting is based on a natural process involving micro-organisms feeding on a moist heap of organic waste materials, generating considerable heat in the process. Other groups of decomposer organisms, such as bacteria, fungi and insects go to work as the temperature rises in the composting material.
In order for those organisms to do their thing, they require a supply of food, water and oxygen. The food supply must be a balanced meal with the right levels of carbon and nitrogen. Paper, leaves and wood supply the carbon while grass clippings and vegetable scraps are high in nitrogen.
Some important hints for successful composting include:
• Composting works best when the organic pieces are small. Most materials used should be shredded.
• Thick layers of any one kind of waste are not good. Grass clippings should not be more than two inches deep, leaves no more than five inches. It’s also a good idea to let grass clippings dry and then mix it in so it doesn’t compact.
• Composter contents should be moist like a wrung-out sponge. If it’s too dry, it will take longer for things to compost, and if it’s too wet, it may begin to smell and attract rodents and other animals in search of a meal.
• Turn or mix the compost every two weeks or each time you add new material. This maintains the proper oxygen level.
There’s a wide variety of composters that can be used, including many that can be purchased through gardening and hardware stores. The ones you buy are generally made of black plastic and cost $50 or more. They can also be made using materials such as lumber, concrete and wire mesh. Some people just use a regular garbage can.
Some of the best alternatives are rotating drums, which allow you to easily mix the compost materials, and what’s called a New Zealand box. It consists of three wooden boxes side by side. The sides are ventilated and a lid is placed on the top. Materials are moved from one box to another as they begin to decompose. The final box contains the soil to be used in your garden.
For further information on composting, the following websites are recommended:
• gvrd.bc.ca/recycling-and-garbage/composting.htm
• greenventure.ca
Source: BCNG
