John Sebastian sang “Do You Believe in Magic?” in which he obviously was referring to the mystical wonders of his compost pile. Let’s say you have the shell of a defunct Maytag dishwasher and you fill it with alternating layers of leaves, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, dead flowers and whatnot, and stir it every other Tuesday. Eventually in return you get an ideal additive for your vegetable beds… waste made valuable. Name something more magical.
There are tomes on compost far more technical and chemical than we will attempt here, but the concept is to add disparate organic components – dry and damp, brown and green – and mix them up as best you can until it all breaks down into a friable soil amendment. The kicker is these ingredients are likely throw-away items such as raked-up leaves, apple cores and onion skins, freshly mown grass clippings and weeds like henbit and chickweed, so out of things you don’t want comes something useful.
Apologies to henbit and chickweed for calling them throwaways because they have their proper place in the scheme of things until I pull them up and place them neatly on top of dried oak and hickory leaves and a panful of coffee grounds, eggshells and spent lilacs. Now they have a new place.
Many cities offer curbside collection of food scraps and do the composting for their citizens. This is different from collecting branches and tree parts and chipping them into a fibrous mulch better suited for flowerbeds. Recycling of kitchen scraps and leaves not only produces a product for gardens but reduces the solid mass going into the waste stream.
How much compost you make will depend, of course, on your space constraints and how hard you want to work at it. John Sebastian also sang “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” in which he was referring to the kind of compost container you choose.
Compost will adapt to any size container, and a conscientious gardener can produce plenty of compost in a garbage can. In the past, I engineered compost boxes out of 2×4 frames with hardware cloth sides. The top opened for adding material and the front opened for removing or mixing the contents. I was impressed with myself. At my present site I have made good use of the body of an old Maytag dishwasher sitting beside a 32-gallon plastic garbage can. One is full and cooking, and the other is the active one being added to after dinner.
The strategy for compost is the same regardless of the container. You can start with a layer of brown leaves. If they are dry, dampen them a bit but not much. Add a layer of green. Each year I address the age-old question of how much chickweed can a Maytag dishwasher hold, and the answer is more than you might expect if you layer it properly.
Continue with the green on brown with kitchen scraps added when you have them. Pine straw is useful at any time because it is acidic, and when mixed properly compost heats up – you’ll be surprised.
Occasionally you will need to aggressively stir your mixture to keep the components jumbled up. Fork the whole mess into a wheelbarrow and then re-layer it back into the container with new green stuff and best wishes.
Check in next week for the rest of this plant food with dressing serial.