Baking Up A Compost Pile

By Marion Owen

My neighbor bakes a mean banana bread. But when her creations don’t turn out quite right, she doesn’t sweat the small stuff.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” she says. “I just put it in the compost pile!”

Yes, all gardeners come across the word “compost” sooner or later. As easy as it is to say, compost has a reputation for being difficult to master. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. For example, if I can make hot, 160-degree (F) compost during an Alaska winter, you can too, no matter where you grow your lettuce. Read on, and I’ll share a recipe for success, including a list of 163 materials you can compost!

If You Can Read, You Can Cook

One day, when I was 12 and still climbing trees, Mom came into the kitchen and said, “Honey, how about making dessert for tonight?”

Having just endured months of salad-making for our family of seven, I was ready for a change. Mom pulled a 1950s edition of Gourmet from the cookbook shelf and started flipping through the pages.

Finally, she pressed her finger to a recipe and said, “Here you go, make this.”

Her finger pointed to a chocolate souffle recipe. Wide-eyed, I looked at Mom. “Don’t worry sweetie,” she said. “If you can read, you can cook.”

So began my love affair with cooking. I also learned a valuable lesson: You can do whatever you set your mind to, but if you need help in building a house, installing software, or making compost — follow a recipe!

Let’s begin this lesson by de-mystifying compost. As you’ll see, making a compost pile is a lot like making a cake.

There are three easy steps.

1. Gather up your ingredients,
2. Stir them together, and
3. Let it cook.

Even Bette Midler knows the value of compost...

In a Los Angeles Times interview, the Divine Miss M said, “My whole life has been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first compost heap. I love compost and I believe that composting can save not the entire world, but a good portion of it.”

I’m sure Bette Midler would agree that making and using compost is not only a life-changing experience, but it is the world’s best soil conditioner.

“Compost,” says Leslie Land, garden writer for the New York Times, “is the all-purpose answer to everything, and if you have enough of it you won’t need much of anything else.”

Here’s what compost can do for you:

• Compost recycles organic materials, from apple cores and coffee grounds, to dried leaves and puffed wheat cereal.
• Compost improves all soil types.
• Compost provides the basic nutrients of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) as well as dozens of micro- and macro-nutrients that are vital for healthy plants.
• Compost “gives back” nutrients that flowers, herbs and vegetables remove in their normal growth processes.
• Compost prevents nutrients from leaching away from plant roots.
• Compost protects soil against wind and rain erosion, drought, dust storms, earthquakes and other extreme conditions.
• Compost extends the life of landfills by reducing space needed for food and yard wastes.

The Compost Cake Recipe

Did you know you can have finished compost in just three to four weeks? By combining the right ingredients, your compost pile will not only heat up to 140 - 160 degrees (F), but it will “cook down” to a fluffy material that is ready to use in the garden.

Step 1: Collect Your Compost Ingredients

For a hot, active compost pile, you need to build it all at once, not over weeks or months. Imagine making a cake by sifting the flour one day, adding eggs and oil the next and then waiting a week or so before mixing everything together and getting it into the oven. It would be a flop. Start collecting ingredients.

Go on organic treasure hunts. Talk to your neighbors, ask your friends, scan the classified ads, and remember to check your own back yard. And the next time you get your hair cut, save the clippings. Did you know the hair on your head contains 30 times more nitrogen than manure?

You’re searching for a combination of ingredients that will provide the right living conditions for the microorganisms and bacteria that break down the materials in the compost pile. This tiny work force of actimomycetes (act-TIN-oh-my-SEE-tees) must have food, water and oxygen to do their job. Just like us. They need nitrogen (N) in order to use the carbohydrates or carbon (C) materials as food.

Therefore, you want to try for a nitrogen (N) to carbon (C) ratio of about one to three. Don’t get all technical about this formula. Keep it simple.

Nitrogen (N) materials include: “Stable scraps” such as horse, rabbit, goat, chicken and other manures, green grass clippings (minus any chemical fertilizers and herbicides), fish meal, bloodmeal, cottonseed meal, trimmings from grocery store produce, and garden waste, such as weeds and trimmings.

Carbon (C) materials include: Straw, dried leaves, sawdust (in small amounts), wood chips (also in small amounts), and shredded newspaper, cardboard and brown bags. One of the best and easiest combinations to come by occurs in the fall. Mix three parts dried leaves to one part green grass clippings to make a compost that is light, airy and fine. Now that’s gourmet!

Dust Bunnies and Refrigerator Lint!

Still need ideas for materials? How about paper napkins, freezer-burned vegetables, pet hair, Post-it notes, lint from behind refrigerator, popcorn and old spices? There are dozens, no, hundreds of materials that deserve to be composted. For a list you’ll want to share with your friends, visit my article, “163 Things You Can Compost” at www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

Materials you don’t want to add to a compost pile include: meat scraps, oily products such as salad dressings, peanut butter and mayonnaise, pet litter and food, branches and other large woody materials, slick magazine pages, and waxed cardboard.

If you live near a coastal community, kelp and seaweed is a must-have ingredient. Here on Kodiak Island, kelp piles on the beaches in long windrows, and is available to anyone with a truck or garbage can.

Pound per pound, kelp supplies more minerals than any other material on the planet. In the garden, it also aerates the soil and is an excellent mulch around potato plants, fruit-bearing shrubs, bulbs and perennials. And, contrary to popular belief, seaweed does not add harmful salts to the garden.

Kelp is what I call a “neutral” ingredient, in that it doesn’t fit in the nitrogen or the carbon category. Yet, it benefits every compost pile by adding fluff. So, if you live in North Dakota, either make a pilgrimage to the coast or invite your beach buddies to come visit with their suitcases packed with seaweed.

Step #2: Stir Your Compost Ingredients

Once you assemble your ingredients, you’re ready to build your compost pile.

Here are some basic guidelines:

Work with a minimum size of 3 x 3 x 5 feet (1 x 1 x 2 meters). If you live in a milder climate, then 3 x 3 x 3 feet is large enough. The key is to make a compost pile big enough to retain heat and prevent ingredients from drying out. The higher temperatures of 120 to 160 degrees (F), helps kill weed seeds and pathogens.

• Use an enclosure, either ready-built, or one make of heavy wire screen, wood pallets, etc.
• Coarse materials should be chopped or shredded.
• Build the pile in layers, like a cake, alternating nitrogen and carbon materials.
• Sprinkle the layers with water. The ingredients should feel like a damp sponge.

Step #3: Let Your Compost Cook

Turn the pile every four to seven days to aerate it and to provide the microorganisms with fresh food. With tumblers, simply give it a spin occasionally. For bin enclosures, use a pitchfork to turn the pile, moving the inside materials to the outside, and the outside materials to the inside - just like folding cake batter. This is a good upper body workout.

How do you know when the compost is done? The compost pile is done cooking when it no longer warms up within a few days of turning it.

Incidentally, the pile will shrink to about half of its original size.

Trouble-Shooting the Compost Pile

With a little practice, you’ll be able to read the symptoms and know what to do to correct the problem, just like reading a cake when it comes out of the oven and realizing the oven was too hot or you forgot the baking soda! Here are some common problems and their solutions:

PROBLEM: The compost pile doesn’t get very hot, even though it has enough materials.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: You might need to add more nitrogen ingredients such as green grass clippings or manure to correct the nitrogen to carbon ratio. Make sure the ingredients are damp. Too dry, and they won’t start cooking.

PROBLEM: The compost heap heats up and cools down like it’s supposed to, but a lot of the materials are large and not broken down.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Because the materials are big and chunky, they don’t provide enough surface area for the microorganisms to finish their work. Chop the materials as best you can. A Crocodile Dundee knife, or machete, works great for this.

PROBLEM: Whew, the compost pile has a strong odor.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: The pile is undergoing what’s called “anaerobic decomposition.” Anaerobic means “without oxygen” which is why it smells like the beach at low tide. You need to introduce oxygen back into the pile by turning it at least once a week.

PROBLEM: Animals on the loose!

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: If dogs, mice, rats, cats or raccoons are getting into to your compost pile, fence it in, cover it with wire and avoid adding meat scraps, bones, and fish waste to the pile.

Eight Ways to Use Compost

1. Apply a four to six-inch layer of compost-mulch around woody perennials in the fall to reduce damage from winter winds.
2. After the soil has warmed up in the spring, apply compost around warm season vegetable crops such as zucchini and tomatoes.
3. Spread compost on the garden a couple weeks before spring tilling.
4. Add compost to container gardens and hanging baskets.
5. During the growing season, side-dress your plants with compost to provide a slow-release source of nutrients.
6. Make compost tea. Add a couple handfuls of compost to a five-gallon bucket of water and allow it to steep for a few days. For larger quantities, add compost to a 55-gallon drum. Use the nutrient-rich tea to fertilize lawns, shrubs, perennials, containers, hanging baskets, as well as annual vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Dilute the tea for younger plants.
7. Apply a one to two-inch thick mulch around flowers, trees and shrubs in the spring to maintain soil moisture and discourage weed growth.
8. Use compost as a growing medium for seedlings and potted plants. After screening out large particles, you’ll need to pasteurize it before using it.

Remember, if you can read, you can cook, and you can compost! Composting is practiced worldwide as low-tech solutions to a global solid waste problem. The good news is that everyone can compost. It’s as easy as pie, or cake!

Marion Owen lives on Kodiak Island, Alaska where she tends over 20 raised beds of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. A master gardener and teacher, Marion conducts many workshops annually. She also developed PlanTea, the organic plant food in tea bags, and co-authored Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul. Her popular e-newsletter, the UpBeet Gardener, sent to gardeners around the world, is now a daily radio show. To download or stream the program, visit www.upbeetcommunications.com