Compost and Composting

 

Compost and composting is a subject that often comes up when gardeners get together to discuss gardening strategies. Composting is a process in which organic substances are reduced from large volumes of rapidly decomposable materials to small volumes of material which are more stable but do continue to decompose slowly. In this process, the ratio of carbon to other elements is brought into balance, thus avoiding temporary immobilization of nutrients. One of the many benefits of adding compost to soil is that the nutrients in it are released slowly. Thus are less likely to be leached from the root zone and are available for plant use over a longer period of time. Compost also improves the water holding capacity of sandy soils and helps improve the drainage in clay soils. Therefore, compost is a good amendment to any garden soil and should help improve plant growth.

 

To make good compost is an art as well as a science. And a good compost pile is not thrown together and neglected but is actively cared for and managed. There are several important factors essential to making good compost, and none should be omitted from the process of composting.

 

Material will be easier to handle and compost best if it is half to one and a half inches in size. Soft, succulent tissues need not be chopped. However, woody materials should be chopped or ground up into small pieces.

 

At the start of the process the carbon (C) to nitrogen (N) ratio should be 30 to 1. This cannot be measured easily, but experience has shown that mixing equal parts of green plant material (grass clippings, fresh garbage, vegetable waste, fresh leaves) with the same volume of dry plant material (wood chips, dry leaves, straw, newspaper, cardboard) will produce a pile with approximately a 30 to 1 C/N ratio.

Composting works best if the pile is kept at about 50 percent moisture. Dry plant material will not compost, and too wet a pile will also interfere with the decomposition.