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| We composted our garden wastes, ie. radish stems, egg shells and coffee grounds |
Let’s get one thing straight: compost is simply decomposed organic matter. Organic matter includes many different things in many different forms, but an easy way to think of it is anything that is -- or more accurately was --alive. Examples are: grass clippings, raked leaves, apple cores, banana peels, coffee grounds, egg shells, animal manure, and newspaper. Some of these things are not thought of as having been alive, but remember that paper is made from trees, coffee comes from a plant, and animal manure is mostly digested grass. What about meat, dairy, and cooked or processed foods? Those will decompose too (except in certain cases -- see this article), but they are a little more complicated so many people choose not to include those things. Still, given the right conditions, anything that was alive will decompose and become compost.
What is compost good for? From a gardener’s perspective, having a lot of organic matter in the soil is vital for the health and productivity of plants. It’s not something that you can add once and never think about again. The nutrients get used up as the plants grow and need to be built up and replenished every year. That’s why making your own compost is such a good idea. It recycles waste from your home and garden, diverting it from municipal landfills, and it builds healthy, fertile soil in your garden.
So far so good, but many people still turn their noses up at the idea of compost. Many people believe that if they make their own compost they will have to deal with bad smells, mess, pests, germs, worms, and manure. It’s time to take a closer look at what compost is and how it works.
Organic matter doesn’t decompose by itself. It takes many different kinds of organisms, collectively known as decomposers, to break down the organic matter into compost. Decomposers fall into three categories: fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates (you can think of them as the “F.B.I. agents”). They include worms, mold, mushrooms, insects, spiders, and many important microscopic organisms. The role of decomposers cannot be overestimated. For example, imagine if the leaves fell from the trees every autumn and there were no decomposers to break them down. They’d continue blowing around and piling up year after year, and meanwhile, the trees would not be able to grow anymore because the nutrients wouldn’t be returned to the soil. Decomposers are nature’s recyclers.
The key to producing good-smelling, nutrient-rich compost is to make your decomposers “happy,” in other words, to create conditions that are right for them to do what they do naturally. Like all living things, decomposers need the right kind of access to air, water, food and shelter. Compost also requires a balance of carbon and nitrogen. Only add things to a home composter that are easy for the decomposers to break down quickly, otherwise your compost will attract unwanted pests and may start to emit strong odors. The way you make your compost pile also dramatically affects the way it decomposes. Turning over the compost pile gives the middle part access to oxygen, which makes it decompose faster and helps prevent odors that result from anaerobic decomposition. A compost pile in direct sun may dry out too quickly, whereas one without drainage might become too soggy and drown the organisms inside.
The composters available on the market are designed to make it easy for people to create the right conditions to make good compost at home, no matter what their living situation is. The common backyard composters are designed so that you add food scraps and yard waste at one end and simply remove decomposed organic matter to return to the soil at the other end. They are made of heavy-duty plastic to keep out common urban pests, like raccoons and rats. For people who live in an apartment, an enclosed vermicompost bin is probably the best option. It is a controlled environment that uses only a special kind of earthworm to decompose the organic matter, releasing no odor at all when done correctly. People who live in rural areas can make large outdoor compost piles without worrying about pests or odors, but they may need to turn them over occasionally with a tractor to allow oxygen to reach the inner parts.
Day Center's backyard composter
There are also many creative low-cost do-it-yourself options for making compost. The internet is a great resource for figuring out how, but there is no substitute for experience. Go out and meet local gardeners. Find out what they do and then try it yourself.
| What to add to a home composter | What to avoid adding to a home composter |
| - Vegetable scraps: carrot tops, potato peels, lettuce leaves, broccoli stems, onion skins, etc. - Limited amount of fruit scraps: apple cores, melon rinds, peach pits, watermelon seeds, orange peels, etc. - Egg shells - Coffee grounds - Newspaper - Grass clippings and some yard waste | - Fatty, oily, greasy food (including salad with dressing on it). - Dairy, meat, and processed foods. - Too much fruit (it will attract fruit flies) - Garden scraps with seeds - Tree branches or woody garden scraps (they take too long to decompose) - Inorganic materials: stickers, rubber bands, plastic packaging, metal, glass, etc. |
This post is written by Nina Rogowsky from Healthy Waltham. You can contact Nina at nrogowsky@healthy-waltham.org . For more information on Healthy Waltham, check http://www.healthy-waltham.org.
To contact the Community Day Center of Waltham, please email Marilyn at director@communitydaycenter.org. Our Internet site is: www.communitydaycenter.org and/or follow us on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Day-Center-of-Waltham/
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