Ruud Kleinpaste: The compost gardeners science quiz

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

I’ve always thought about creating the Greatest Hits (or Greatest Myths) for gardeners. There are so many things you should and shouldn’t do when gardening and creating compost.

Starting a compost system: Do we really need a “Compost Starter” to kick it off?

The easiest way to make compost is by sticking (roughly) to a ratio of Carbon to Nitrogen of something like 30:1. If you chuck a big heap of chipped wood (C) in the bin, you will need some grass clippings (N) to fire it all off. Even a simple pee on the heap will do the trick, or some Urea fertiliser, or even some old soggy lettuce.

Crushed egg shells around your vegetables are said to stop the slugs and snails as they won’t be able to cross the sharp egg-edges with their soft and tender “foot”. Molluscs do not actually come in contact with the sharp substrate as they glide over the slime they produce themselves!

And if you put the crushed shells into the compost bin, the calcium will eventually turn into useful calcium – eventually means “a few years later at least”, so don’t bank on a quick-release fertiliser! Besides: they don’t really add a lot of value to your compost.

Ah! To speed up composting waste material, do we need to turn the heap every now and then?

Good question! Aeration will indeed help the process a bit… but so do mice and rats digging tunnels for their nests. Perhaps the question should be: how much time do you, personally, have to “turn” the compost? Every 3 or 4 weeks.

Cooked food in the compost bin?

Why not? It’s basically the same as un-cooked food, so why chuck it in the rubbish bin?

Dead Animals or left-over meat in the compost bin?

Everything that once lived is compostable – simple as that. Animals and old meat will take longer and it might start to smell somewhat, but it certainly will compost.

Can weeds be composted?

Of course! Weeds are simply plants too and when you pull them out, they will decay and form compost, just like any other organism, but should you?

That depends on the kind of weed it is and if it has set seeds or survives on a vigorous root-system.

How fast can you make compost?

Depends on what you make it from; You’ll need C and N plus support from fungal organisms and microbial life-forms. In general, it’ll go quicker when you are in a warm part of the world and slower in a cool area.

Here’s another bit of science: a compost tumbler is usually quite a bit smaller than a wooden compost bin, sitting on the soil. That means the tumbler won’t heat up as much (or at all!) as the larger bin and that may slow the process down – but it certainly will work albeit not so fast.

What can we Learn FROM Nature making its own compost?

Leaves fall down; twigs and sticks break off and join the leaves. Fruit and seeds join the party and every now and then a big branch with deliver a lot of Carbon.

“Recycling insects” and Microbes help the compost process out; worms transport the end-product to deeper layers in the soil where it’s needed by the roots… and it just carries on in its own tempo…

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