Down and dirty dabbling, part 2

The compost conundrum

Three months from now the garden will look something like this

All gardeners, even novices, are aware of the importance of compost. It adds nutrients to soil, improves both drainage and moisture retention, and supports all sorts of living creatures that assist in growing healthy plants. In short, it’s considered really great stuff, and information about how to make it and use can be found in nearly every gardening book.

Compost is considered so integral to home gardening that those not making it are often looked at askance. There are compelling reasons not to compost in the traditional way, however, and to view the process as sometimes appropriate rather than always necessary. Not only is it sometimes acceptable to ignore your plants, it is also just fine to not build compost piles.

To make good decisions it helps to understand the processes we are encouraging. Many of us are concerned with carbon emissions, yet we make compost piles and actively work to get them to shrink. Much of this reduced volume represents carbon dioxide that returns to the atmosphere. As plants grow, they take in CO2 from the air and integrate the carbon into their tissues, releasing O2. When they decay the process is reversed. This return of CO2 is inevitable, but why speed the process simply to get a crumbly product that can pass through a sifter? It makes more sense to slow it down, capture the leaching nutrients, and harness the power of all that organic matter for a better use than just taking up space. Foregoing a backyard compost pile might not solve global warming, but it could make gardening easier and more efficient.

Goals

Folks starting new gardens often believe they have terrible soil, and usually want to jump in with maximum amounts of compost, which they often till in for quick results. Many swear by this practice because short term yields are impressive. But each pass of the tiller furthers the process of decay, burning more organic matter out of the soil, meaning more must be added next year, in a wasteful cycle of never-ending work.

Soil is rarely as bad as new gardeners believe, but rather merely incomplete, and can be vastly improved with additions of organic matter. This doesn't have to be large amounts of perfectly finished compost. Smaller amounts of organic matter, judiciously applied, can go a long way, as long as practices like tilling are avoided.

If you have the raw ingredients to make compost, you're lucky. As organic matter decomposes in a compost pile, it reduces in volume by at least half, and often by much more in my experience. This means you need to start out with large amounts of raw materials in order to obtain enough finished product to make it worthwhile. Also, if you wish for hot compost, your original pile must be of a critical mass and proper portions of brown (carbon) and green (nitrogen) to heat up to temperatures that will kill weed seeds.

Unless you live on a farm with livestock or have farmer friends nearby who will donate manure, it can be challenging to acquire enough good quality materials. I remember watching TV with my dad, who would ridicule commercials for those black plastic compost tumblers popular with suburban gardeners. “Perfect compost in 14 days!” the announcer crowed as the door was opened and an actor reached in to fondle mounds of dark, crumbly soil. A veteran gardener, my father questioned where these suburbanites would find enough raw material every two weeks to get those heaping piles of black gold. He was right to question, as I found out when I started building my own compost piles.

Hay-burning manure extruders

Creative ways to source materials exist, but they require some commitment of time and physical labor. Scavenging the neighborhood for bagged leaves in the fall and having wood chips delivered using ChipDrop are possiblities. You can also collect food waste from restaurants, used grounds from coffee shops, or spent hops from breweries. These are environmentally-positive solutions to acquiring raw materials, but they are best suited for those with time to forge the necessary relationships and commit to regular a pick up schedule.

The typical busy gardener will be challenged to continually find enough raw material to achieve hot compost success. Cold piles that are added to over time are an alternative. You just toss whatever material you have in the pile, not worrying about proper percentages of green and brown components. These piles don't get hot enough to kill seeds and take much longer to break down, but they also don’t require turning, which cuts down on work immensely.

I'm here to tell you it is perfectly acceptable to give up on hot composting. Not only can gathering sufficient ingredients all at once can be difficult, but the time spent trying to get the perfect blend of stuff, turned at just the right time, while maintaining proper moisture levels, often just isn't worth it. As for weeds, I'd have them even if I consistently achieved hot compost because seeds are continually arriving on the wind. It makes more sense to accept their presence and deal with them as necessary rather than constantly finicking over compost turning schedules.

Not only is it okay to give up on hot composting, it’s also acceptable to abandon compost piles altogether. Part of reducing work is stacking functions, which means having each component of a system do multiple jobs. While a compost pile is working, it just sits there taking up space and leaching valuable nutrients. Organic matter just sitting around can be put to work simply by switching to mulching, or placing it directly on beds. During the time the material is breaking down it protects soil from drying out, while moderating temperature extremes and encouraging microbes and arthropods. As it decomposes in place, any nutrients that are flushed out go directly in the root zone instead of washing away.

Long pile of poop and bedding

Many things that often go into compost piles work well as mulch: Leaves, wood chips, grass clippings, weeds that haven't gone to seed, and pine needles can all be placed on top on the soil. Material is moved once, from source to garden bed, putting it to work immediately and saving labor. It is not essential to gather a very large amount at once in order to build a complete pile, so you can just collect stuff as it becomes available.

So is it really possible to simply skip composting altogether in favor of mulching to save hours of work and reap innumerable benefits? Much of the time it is feasible, but not in every situation. Kitchen waste and manure present problems. Egg shells and banana peels don't make good mulch, and fresh poop can be unpleasant and burn plants with excess nitrogen. If you have large amounts of these materials, composting is probably the best option.

Alternatives for dealing with small amounts of kitchen waste include setting up a worm tower or worm bin, or simply burying it in the garden. If you have the space, manure and other materials not appropriate for immediate mulching can be sheet composted on a fallow bed (spread out in layers rather than piled up.) They decay in place, and in a year or two you can safely plant in the bed.

A few inches of compost cover the beds

Beyond continually adding mulch to the soil surface and allowing it to slowly break down, there are other ways get organic matter into the soil if we let go of preconceived notions of best practices. Lately I've become a big fan of unfinished compost. Because I have two hay-burning manure extruders, I have lots of dung sitting around in piles. It’s not raw material I lack, but rather space to hold it all and the energy to turn it. Consequently, I let it sit just long enough to make it safe, then put it to use. I’ve spent the mild days this winter spreading it on beds. A few turds are still recognizable, and it definitely wouldn't fit through a sifter, but it's perfectly fine to use.

Another good alternative for partially rotted compost is to put it in the hole when you plant out tomatoes, eggplants, broccoli, and other garden annuals that are usually sprouted inside to get a head start in the season. These heavy feeders will grow like crazy when their roots reach this rich layer. The goal is to get organic matter into the soil and avoid practices like tilling that remove organic matter. Your first year's garden might not look as impressive as your neighbor's who tills in loads of compost, but your soil will gradually improve each year.

The garden in June

Stepping back to get the wide view can reveal that many of what we take to be essential garden practices often have alternatives that can reduce work significantly. If you've been devoted to composting, but found it to be frustrating and very labor intensive, it might be time to reconsider the process. If you're just starting out, I hope you feel you have options besides the traditional pile.

If you’re like me and many other garden dabblers, you’re already swamped with job and personal responsibilities, so why take on unnecessary work? You will be much more likely to stick with home food production if you don't feel overwhelmed with tasks. As we approach spring, I'll continue to share my thoughts on getting maximum satisfaction — and delicious fruits and veggies — with minimum inputs.