ORGANIC GARDENER'S COMPOSTING TEXT

compost they are making. One governmental composting operation that does succeed in selling everything they can produce is Lane County, Oregon. Their _yard waste compost_ is eagerly paid for by local gardeners. Lane County compost is made only from autumn leaves, grass clippings, and other yard wastes. No paper! Yard waste compost is a product much like a homeowner would produce. And yard waste compost contains no industrial waste or any material that might pose health threats. All woody materials are finely chipped before composting and comprise no more than 20 percent of the total undecayed mass by weight. Although no nutrient analysis has been done by the county other than testing for pH (around 7.0) and, because of the use of weed and feed fertilizers on lawns, for 2-4D (no residual trace ever found present), I estimate that the overall C/N of the materials going into the windrows at 25:1. I wouldn't be surprised if the finished compost has a C/N close to 12:1. Incidentally, Lane County understands that many gardeners don't have pickup trucks. They reasonably offer to deliver their compost for a small fee if at least one yard is purchased. Other local governments also make and deliver yard waste compost. So what about your own home compost? If you are a flower, ornamental, or lawn grower, you have nothing to worry about. Just compost everything you have available and use all you wish to make. If tilling your compost into soil seems to slow the growth of plants, then mulch with it and avoid tilling it in, or adjust the C/N down by adding fertilizers like seed meal when tilling it in. If you are a vegetable gardener and your compost doesn't seem to provoke the kind of growth response you hoped for, either shallowly till in compost in the fall for next year's planting, by which time it will have become stable humus, or read further. The second half of this book contains numerous hints about how to make potent compost and about how to use complete organic fertilizers in combination with compost to grow the lushest garden imaginable. CHAPTER FOUR All About Materials In most parts of the country, enough organic materials accumulate around an average home and yard to make all the compost a backyard garden needs. You probably have weeds, leaves, perhaps your own human hair (my wife is the family barber), dust from the vacuum cleaner, kitchen garbage and grass clippings. But, there may not be enough to simultaneously build the lushest lawn, the healthiest ornamentals _and _grow the vegetables. If you want to make more compost than your own land allows, it is not difficult to find very large quantities of organic materials that are free or cost very little. The most obvious material to bring in for composting is animal manure. Chicken and egg raisers and boarding stables often give manure away or sell it for a nominal fee. For a few dollars most small scale animal growers will cheerfully use their scoop loader to fill your pickup truck till the springs sag. As useful as animal manure can be in a compost pile, there are other types of low C/N materials too. Enormous quantities of loose alfalfa accumulate around hay bale stacks at feed and grain stores. To the proprietor this dusty chaff is a nuisance gladly given to anyone that will neatly sweep it up and truck it away. To the home gardener, alfalfa in any form is rich as gold. Some years, rainy Oregon weather is still unsettled at haying season and farmers are stuck with spoiled hay. I'm sure this happens most places that grass hay is grown on natural rainfall. Though a shrewd farmer may try to sell moldy hay at a steep discount by representing it to still have feed value, actually these ruined bales must be removed from a field before they interfere with working the land. A hard bargainer can often get spoiled hay in exchange for hauling the wet bales out of the field There's one local farmer near me whose entire family tree holds a well-deserved reputation for hard, self-interested dealing. One particularly wet, cool unsettled haying season, after starting the spoiled-hay dicker at 90 cents per bale asked--nothing offered but hauling the soggy bales out of the field my offer--I finally agreed to take away about twenty tons at ten cents per bale. This small sum allowed the greedy b-----to feel he had gotten the better of me. He needed that feeling far more than I needed to win the argument or to keep the few dollars Besides, the workings of self-applied justice that some religious philosophers call karma show that over the long haul the worst thing one person can do to another is to allow the other to get away with an evil act. Any dedicated composter can make contacts yielding cheap or free organic materials by the ton. Orchards may have badly bruised or rotting fruit. Small cider mills, wineries, or a local juice bar restaurant may be glad to get rid of pomace. Carpentry shops have sawdust. Coffee roasters have dust and chaff. The microbrewery is becoming very popular these days; mall-scale local brewers and distillers may have spent hops and mash. Spoiled product or chaff may be available from cereal mills. City governments often will deliver autumn leaves by the ton and will give away or sell the output of their own municipal composting operations. Supermarkets, produce wholesalers, and restaurants may be willing to give away boxes of trimmings and spoiled food. Barbers and poodle groomers throw away hair. Seafood processors will sell truckloads of fresh crab, fish and shrimp waste for a small fee. Of course, this material becomes evil-smelling in very short order but might be relatively inoffensive if a person had a lot of spoiled hay or sawdust waiting to mix into it. Market gardeners near the Oregon coast sheet-compost crab waste, tilling it into the soil before it gets too "high." Other parts of the country might supply citrus wastes, sugar cane bagasse, rice hulls, etc. About Common Materials _Alfalfa_ is a protein-rich perennial legume mainly grown as animal feed. On favorable soil it develops a deep root system, sometimes exceeding ten feet. Alfalfa draws heavily on subsoil minerals so it will be as rich or poor in nutrients as the subsoil it grew in. Its average C/N is around 12:1 making alfalfa useful to compensate for larger quantities of less potent material. Sacked alfalfa meal or pellets are usually less expensive (and being "stemmy," have a slightly higher C/N) than leafy, best-quality baled alfalfa hay. Rain-spoiled bales of alfalfa hay are worthless as animal feed but far from valueless to the composter. Pelletized rabbit feed is largely alfalfa fortified with grain. Naturally, rabbit manure has a C/N very similar to alfalfa and is nutrient rich, especially if some provision is made to absorb the urine. _Apple pomace_ is wet and compact. If not well mixed with stiff, absorbent material, large clumps of this or other fruit wastes can become airless regions of anaerobic decomposition. Having a high water content can be looked upon as an advantage. Dry hay and sawdust can be hard to moisten thoroughly; these hydrate rapidly when mixed with fruit pulp. Fermenting fruit pulp attracts yellow jackets so it is sensible to incorporate it quickly into a pile and cover well with vegetation or soil. The watery pulp of fruits is not particularly rich in nutrients but apple, grape, and pear pulps are generously endowed with soft, decomposable seeds. Most seeds contain large quantities of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other plant nutrients. It is generally true that plants locate much of their entire yearly nutrient assimilation into their seeds to provide the next generation with the best possible start. Animals fed on seeds (such as chickens) produce the richest manures. Older books about composting warn about metallic pesticide residues adhering to fruit skins. However, it has been nearly half a century since arsenic and lead arsenate were used as pesticides and mercury is no longer used in fungicides. _Bagasse_ is the voluminous waste product from extracting cane sugar. Its C/N is extremely high, similar to wheat straw or sawdust, and it contains very little in the way of plant nutrients. However, its coarse, strong, fibrous structure helps build lightness into a pile and improve air flow. Most sugar mills burn bagasse as their heat source to evaporate water out of the sugary juice squeezed from the canes. At one time there was far more bagasse produced than the mills needed to burn and bagasse often became an environmental pollutant. Then, bagasse was available for nothing or next to nothing. These days, larger, modern mills generate electricity with bagasse and sell their surplus to the local power grid. Bagasse is also used to make construction fiberboard for subwall and insulation. _Banana skins _and stalks are soft and lack strong fiber. They are moderately rich in phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen. Consequently they rot quickly. Like other kitchen garbage, banana waste should be put into the core of a compost pile to avoid attracting and breeding flies. See also: _Garbage._ _Basic slag_ is an industrial waste from smelting iron. Ore is refined by heating it with limestone and dolomite. The impurities combine with calcium and magnesium, rise to the surface of the molten metal, and are skimmed off. Basic slag contains quite a bit of calcium plus a variety of useful plant nutrients not usually found in limestone. Its exact composition varies greatly depending on the type of ore used. Slag is pulverized and sold in sacks as a substitute for agricultural lime. The intense biological activity of a compost pile releases more of slag's other mineral content and converts its nutrients to organic substances that become rapidly available once the compost is incorporated into soil. Other forms of powdered mineralized rock can be similarly added to a compost pile to accelerate nutrient release. Rodale Press, publisher of _Organic Gardening_ magazine is located in Pennsylvania where steel mills abound. Having more experience with slag, Rodale advises the user to be alert to the fact that some contain little in the way of useful nutrients and/or may contain excessive amounts of sulfur. Large quantities of sulfur can acidify soil. Read the analysis on the label. Agriculturally useful slag has an average composition of 40 percent calcium and 5 percent magnesium. It must also be very finely ground to be effective. See also: _Lime_ and _Rock dust._ _Beet wastes,_ like bagasse, are a residue of extracting sugar. They have commercial value as livestock feed and are sold as dry pulp in feed stores located near regions where sugar beets are grown. Their C/N is in the vicinity of 20:1 and they may contain high levels of potassium, reaching as much as 4 percent. _Brewery wastes._ Both spent hops (dried flowers and leaves) and malt (sprouted barley and often other grains) are potent nutrient sources with low C/N ratios. Spent malt is especially potent because brewers extract all the starches and convert them to sugar, but consider the proteins as waste because proteins in the brew make it cloudy and opaque. Hops may be easier to get. Malt has uses as animal feed and may be contracted for by some local feedlot or farmer. These materials will be wet, heavy and frutily odoriferous (though not unpleasantly so) and you will want to incorporate them into your compost pile immediately. _Buckwheat hulls._ Buckwheat is a grain grown in the northeastern United States and Canada. Adapted to poor, droughty soils, the crop is often grown as a green manure. The seeds are enclosed in a thin-walled, brown to black fibrous hulls that are removed at a groat mill. Buckwheat hulls are light, springy, and airy. They'll help fluff up a compost heap. Buckwheat hulls are popular as a mulch because they adsorb moisture easily, look attractive, and stay in place. Their C/N is high. Oat and rice hulls are similar products. _Canola meal._ See: _Cottonseed meal._ _Castor pomace_ is pulp left after castor oil has been squeezed from castor bean seeds. Like other oil seed residues it is very high in nitrogen, rich in other plant nutrients, particularly phosphorus, Castor pomace may be available in the deep South; it makes a fine substitute for animal manure. _Citrus wastes_ may be available to gardeners living near industrial processors of orange, lemon, and grapefruit. In those regions, dried citrus pulp may also be available in feed stores. Dried orange skins contain about 3 percent phosphorus and 27 percent potassium. Lemons are a little higher in phosphorus but lower in potassium. Fruit culls would have a similar nutrient ratio on a dry weight basis, but they are largely water. Large quantities of culls could be useful to hydrate stubbornly dry materials like straw or sawdust. Like other byproducts of industrial farming, citrus wastes may contain significant amounts of pesticide residues. The composting process will break down and eliminate most toxic organic residues, especially if the pile gets really hot through and through. (See also: _Leaves) _The effect of such high levels of potassium on the nutritional qualities of my food would also concern me if the compost I was making from these wastes were used for vegetable gardening. _Coffee grounds_ are nutrient-rich like other seed meals. Even after brewing they can contain up to 2 percent nitrogen, about 1/2 percent phosphorus and varying amounts of potassium usually well below 1 percent. Its C/N runs around 12:1. Coffee roasters and packers need to dispose of coffee chaff, similar in nutrient value to used grounds and may occasionally have a load of overly roasted beans. Coffee grounds seem the earthworm's food of choice. In worm bins, used grounds are more vigorously devoured than any other substance. If slight odor is a consideration, especially if doing in-the-home vermicomposting, coffee grounds should be incorporated promptly into a pile to avoid the souring that results from vinegar-producing bacteria. Fermenting grounds may also attract harmless fruit flies. Paper filters used to make drip coffee may be put into the heap or worm box where they contribute to the bedding. See also: _Paper._ _Corncobs_ are no longer available as an agricultural waste product because modern harvesting equipment shreds them and spits the residue right back into the field. However, home gardeners who fancy sweet corn may produce large quantities of cobs. Whole cobs will aerate compost heaps but are slow to decompose. If you want your pile ready within one year, it is better to dry and then grind the cobs before composting them. _Cottonseed meal_ is one of this country's major oil seed residues. The seed is ginned out of the cotton fiber, ground, and then its oil content is chemically extracted. The residue, sometimes called oil cake or seed cake, is very high in protein and rich in NPK. Its C/N runs around 5:1, making it an excellent way to balance a compost pile containing a lot of carboniferous materials. Most cottonseed meal is used as animal feed, especially for beef and dairy cattle. Purchased in garden stores in small containers it is very expensive; bought by the 50-to 80-pound sack from feed stores or farm coops, cottonseed meal and other oil seed meals are quite inexpensive. Though prices of these types of commodities vary from year to year, oil cakes of all kinds usually cost between $200 to $400 per ton and only slightly higher purchased sacked in less-than-ton lots. The price of any seed meal is strongly influenced by freight costs. Cottonseed meal is cheapest in the south and the southwest where cotton is widely grown. Soybean meal may be more available and priced better in the midwest. Canadian gardeners are discovering canola meal, a byproduct from producing canola (or rapeseed) oil. When I took a sabbatical in Fiji, I advised local gardeners to use coconut meal, an inexpensive "waste" from extracting coconut oil. And I would not be at all surprised to discover gardeners in South Dakota using sunflower meal. Sesame seed, safflower seed, peanut and oil-seed corn meals may also be available in certain localities. Seed meals make an ideal starting point for compounding complete organic fertilizer mixes. The average NPK analysis of most seed meals is around 6-4-2. Considered as a fertilizer, oil cakes are somewhat lacking in phosphorus and sometimes in trace minerals. By supplementing them with materials like bone meal, phosphate rock, kelp meal, sometimes potassium-rich rock dusts and lime or gypsum, a single, wide-spectrum slow-release trace-mineral-rich organic fertilizer source can be blended at home having an analysis of about 5-5-5. Cottonseed meal is particularly excellent for this purpose because it is a dry, flowing, odorless material that stores well. I suspect that cottonseed meal from the southwest may be better endowed with trace minerals than that from leached-out southeastern soils or soy meal from depleted midwestern farms. See the last section of Chapter Eight. Some organic certification bureaucracies foolishly prohibit or discourage the use of cottonseed meal as a fertilizer. The rationale behind this rigid self-righteousness is that cotton, being a nonfood crop, is sprayed with heavy applications of pesticides and/or herbicides that are so hazardous that they not permitted on food crops. These chemicals are usually dissolved in an emulsified oil-based carrier and the cotton plant naturally concentrates pesticide residues and breakdown products into the oily seed. I believe that this concern is accurate as far as pesticide residues being translocated into the seed. However, the chemical process used to extract cottonseed oil is very efficient The ground seeds are mixed with a volatile solvent similar to ether and heated under pressure in giant retorts. I reason that when the solvent is squeezed from the seed, it takes with it all not only the oil, but, I believe, virtually all of the pesticide residues. Besides, any remaining organic toxins will be further destroyed by the biological activity of the soil and especially by the intense heat of a compost pile. What I _personally_ worry about is cottonseed oil. I avoid prepared salad dressings that may contain cottonseed oil, as well as many types of corn and potato chips, tinned oysters, and other prepared food products. I also suggest that you peek into the back of your favorite Oriental and fast food restaurants and see if there aren't stacks of ten gallon cottonseed oil cans waiting to fill the deep-fat fryer. I fear this sort of meal as dangerous to my health. If you still fear that cottonseed meal is also a dangerous product then you certainly won't want to be eating feedlot beef or drinking milk or using other dairy products from cattle fed on cottonseed meal. _Blood meal_ runs 10-12 percent nitrogen and contains significant amounts of phosphorus. It is the only organic fertilizer that is naturally water soluble. Blood meal, like other slaughterhouse wastes, may be too expensive for use as a compost activator. Sprinkled atop soil as a side-dressing, dried blood usually provokes a powerful and immediate growth response. Blood meal is so potent that it is capable of burning plants; when applied you must avoid getting it on leaves or stems. Although principally a source of nitrogen, I reason that there are other nutritional substances like growth hormones or complex organic "phytamins" in blood meal. British glasshouse lettuce growers widely agree that lettuce sidedressed with blood meal about three weeks before harvest has a better "finish," a much longer shelf-life, and a reduced tendency to "brown butt" compared to lettuce similarly fertilized with urea or chemical nitrate sources. _Feathers_ are the birds' equivalent of hair on animals and have similar properties. See _Hair_