In The Garden: A Word About The Compost Used In The New Garden
By AMY MUNCY
Advanced Master Gardener
WARSAW — My new garden will be made from a compost I will have been ‘brewing’ for a year. I have talked before about the small trailer of horse manure that I mixed with leaves and gravelly dirt from a mound we have in the “back 40” of our property. I intend to work the compost into the sod I have in the yard to make the new garden.
The last picture of the covered compost is before I added more leaves this fall while turning them in as I turned the entire pile with a shovel. Before I added the fresh batch of leaves this fall, I made sure I ran over them several times with a lawn mower. As I turned the compost, I watched for large chunks of vegetation that are just not going to compost fast enough for me to leave in it. I threw them in another place that I keep the larger debris to compost on its own.
Sometimes I burn the larger vegetation that is hard to decompose quick enough to use in the compost. Such as cat tails, cut dried ornamental grasses, large chunks of wood and stems. If you have a chipper, that is the ideal way to rid yourself of these pesky items. Chip them up and incorporate the chips into your compost. I still try to burn all weeds that have gone to seed and any diseased plants. In order to kill all the bad things in compost, your heap needs to reach an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees F. Indiana residents find that hard to accomplish.
In order to acquire adequate conditions for your compost, you should follow these golden rules of composting. The perfect size of a compost pile is 3-foot by 3-foot by 3-foot.
Keep the pile moist but not sopping wet. For example, keep the surface as damp as a wrung out sponge. Compost piles that are in the sun will usually work faster with the additional heat, but they can work just about as well in shade also. Turning the pile more often will help give you soil sooner but a rule of thumb is once a week. The minimum would be once a month except when the ground and heap are frozen. Or you can leave it set for a year and do nothing to the heap and it will still turn to soil in that year. Keeping it covered helps with wash off and keeps the heat in.
If you don’t have your carbon (brown stuff)/nitrogen (green stuff) ratio right, it can hurt also. Starting the pile is easy: mix 50:50 browns with greens. The best tip I can give you is if the compost stinks, add more Carbon. Shredding large items or cutting them up will help speed the process also.
Browns are shredded newspapers, paper napkins, paper towels, cardboard, bird seed hulls, stale bread (not moldy), old cold coffee with no cream or sugar in it, leaves, straw, small twigs, soil. All of these items are high in Carbon.
Greens are fruit and veggie scraps, houseplant cuttings, coffee grounds, urine, rice and pasta, bread, egg shells, loose tea or tea bags with staples removed, flowers, plant/garden trimmings, hedge clippings, stinging nettles, seaweed and grass. All of these items are high in Nitrogen.
Amy Muncy was born in Wabash County and lived there for close to 40 years. Muncy grew up in the country, has always enjoyed gardening and mowing the lawn. She has been gardening since a small girl. She moved to Kosciusko County in 2000. She is a master gardener intern at this point, but will be a full master gardener before long.