GardenLine | Yard & Garden | Hints for Composting

As many of the readers of this column will know, composting is a process that allows you to recycle household and garden wastes to creative an additive that will improve the texture and fertility of your soil.. During the composting process micro-organisms break down, or decompose, the vegetable wastes so that the nutrients in them become available in a form that plants can use. To provide these micro-organisms, you must add garden soil or a commercial compost accelerator to your compost pile. Detailed information about creating a compost pile is available in a free booklet you can order from our Garden Information serivce - see the end of this article. For those who have been bitten by the environmental 'bug' and are just getting into compost, so to speak, here are a few tips.

Where do I get a composter?

First of all you must build or buy a container in which to put your compostable material. This container could be made of wire, wood, brick, block, metal or plastic. The costs can be as little as a few dollars and as high as $1000 for the 'higher-tech' models.

What can I put in my composter?

The most common materials used in a composter are house and yard wastes. The vegetable wastes such as grass clippings and peelings are all good to compost

What problems might I encounter?

Under certain conditions, your composte pile might give off a bad odor. This is often the result of including meat and dairy wastes in your compost; such wastes can also attract animals. .

Grass and other vegetative material, however, also can smell if you are composting if you fail to stir your pile to allow air into the breaking-down material. You must stir the pile every 2 or 3 days to avoid odor.

Dryness is also a problem with Saskatchewan compost. Our dry air and low precipitation often inhibit the composting process. You must have plenty of moisture in your compost mixture for it to decompose properly. It is very important to check for moisture, and in dry weather add water once or twice a week. A composter that dries out may sit all summer and not get your garden waste a bit closer to being compost than it was the day you put it out!

Another problem that you may experience in composting is that of a low-energy compost mixture. Low-energy mixtures are produced when you use too much straw, sawdust or dry leaves in the mix. These high-carbon items take a very long time to compost unless a nitrogen source is added. The nitrogen source could be grass clippings and household vegetablewaste, or, if you are not a purist adding a commercial nitrogen fertilizer will help to get compositing activity underway.

Remember then that is important to water, aerate and feed your compost enough nitrogen.

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Sustainable horticultural information, offered free of charge to the public with the support of the University of Saskatchewan Extension Division, the Department of Plant Sciences and the Provincial Government.