Composting Organic
Right everyone, now let's all welcome today's very important guest, Gaby Leone. Gaby is an expert in indigenous landscaping and eco-gardening techniques. Today she is going to teach us about compost. No, little Johnny, compost is NOT yucky! You have been brainwashed into believing that compost is yucky by the multinational conglomerates who use covert manipulation strategies to subjugate us into living dependent, subservient lives instead of allowing us to reach the natural, self sufficient potential that we all possess. Now, welcome Gaby! Let's talk compost.
Please begin by telling us how we should till the soil so that the compost can mix properly...Contrary to popular belief, there are no pixie gardening teams armed with spades that come out at night to dig over the soil around plants in nature. Why on earth did we get into that habit in our gardens? Digging over the soil literally turns the habitats of beneficial soil micro-organisms upside down and leaves a new section of soil exposed to the elements. If you mulch, your soil will be kept naturally well-drained, soft and fed. The hardest part of this will be to persuade your gardener that he no longer needs to get stuck into the beds with that dreaded fork because to him, loosened and dug over beds show you that he hasn’t been snoozing in the garden shed all day. Patience! Persuade him to use the extra time to build and maintain a compost heap for you instead.
What exactly is compost?Compost is pure organic soil food without added chemicals whatsoever. It consists of a variety of decomposed rock, plant and animal matter which is important to healthy soil and a healthy soil means a healthy plant. Compost is to plants what a balanced diet is to us. Our plants will grow without it, but they will feel much like we would on a diet of bread and water. It makes no sense – if you think about it – to pay to throw away our organic waste and then buy it again in the form of compost. Make your own! At least you know what’s in it! Besides feeding the plants, compost is the number one soil miracle cure. Use it to improve drainage in clay soil and improve water - holding capacity in sandy soil. Here’s how – the lazy way.
Is it yucky?Most people don't like compost because the thought of having a rubbish dump in your backyard puts them off. In fact, a proper compost heap ADDS to the fresh smell of your garden, it attracts more bird life and saves a fortune on buying chemicals that can only harm you in the long run. Compost heaps are usually kept in a corner of the garden furthest away from the house owing to their unsightliness. If possible, keep them at least 5m away from doors and windows. If you need the heap to look neat or to hide it from view, erect a fence about 1m high around it. Compost heaps usually don’t smell and if yours does, it is a sign that it is too wet and lacking in oxygen. Add more dry material such as leaves and shredded newspaper and turn it once every few weeks for aeration.
How do you go about starting one?Designate a semi-shade to shady area in your garden about 1 – 2m square depending on the size of your garden and the size of your family. Leave one side open for access with a wheelbarrow. Now start using this as your rubbish bin for:
How do you keep birds and creepy crawlies from coming into your house?Compost heaps develop quite high internal temperatures during the decomposing process, so in general, they don’t attract creepy crawlies to the degree that it becomes a problem. If you want to steer clear of rodents, rather keep those fruit peels and pits aside for the worm bin.
What if you just want to buy a compost – any recommendations?If you’re going to buy your compost – which may be necessary for the first season until your heap has gotten going, make sure that its ingredients are as natural as possible. ‘Earth to Earth’ compost bags are a good start. For those of you interested in the packet jargon we will discuss under fertilizers, the earthworm castings (retailing as Fertilis) are classified as a 2:2:1 slow release fertilizer. The staff of my herb grower call them black gold and I would not plant one of my gardens without adding some to the soil.
How often should you compost?Unfortunately, our traditional gardening methods of digging over and raking the soil leaves it depleted, making regular composting a necessity. Water your heap about once a week to speed up the decomposition process and after about 6 months, you should be able to start using the compost from the bottom of the heap. It’s ready when it’s black and sweet-smelling. If you’d like speedier results, grow some comfrey or borage and add the leaves regularly as compost activators. To use your compost, apply it to your soil about twice a year: Spread it 5cm thick on top of your soil, dig in ever so slightly and replace the mulch over that. When you introduce new plants to the soil, plant them into a mixture of one part compost and two parts soil.
How does compost differ to fertilizer?I always like to compare plant care with ‘human care’. A plant in poor soil feels like you would feel on a diet of dry bread and water. Add mulch and compost and we’re talking a balanced diet, leaving you feeling far better as do plants and they show it! Organic fertilizer to plants is what added vitamins and minerals are to us – we feel and therefore look and perform at our best. If the diet of compost and soil quality is extremely good, then fertilizer becomes unnecessary. However, in reality this is very difficult to do and it is recommended that you use an organic fertilizer for the first year or two, especially if you grow in pots. Never use anything other than organic fertilizer because artificial fertilizers help plants extract nutrients from the soil, but do not enrich it. Your soil will therefore be in bad condition after a few seasons. I personally like to use a mix of half Talborne organic granular fertilizer (2:3:2 or 3:1:5 depending on the season) and half organic earthworm castings (2:2:1 (SR)) which you can either make yourself by means of a worm farm or buy in Fertilis bags – more about that later in this article. Organic fertilizers are environmentally friendly, don’t burn the plants or leave harmful residues in the soil. Here’s a quick guide to the mysterious jargon on the packet:
Those that don't have gardens can use pots. Is this a good idea?Yes, but an important note on pots: Please don’t condemn your plants to a slow death by confining them to pots with little space for soil and no fertilizer!! I see this happening so often. In a pot, the roots of a plant have no way of finding more food once that in their immediate vicinity is used up. Plants in pots need fertilizer about every 6 to 12 weeks depending on the size of the plant compared to the pot and they should be re-potted into new potting soil and often a larger pot once a year.
And if you have NO garden, what can you do?If you live in a flat, either buy a small sealable composting unit available from gardening shops or start a worm farm instead. Scott assures me that an article dediciated to indoor planting is coming soon.
You mentioned earthworms a few times...If you’re going to make your own compost, you may as well add another ice-cream tub to your kitchen counter décor (next to the tub for the compost heap) – marked worm bin! to make your own fertilizer. The beauty of a worm bin is that it provides a way for you to recycle cooked food which is, as you hopefully remember, not suitable for the compost heap. Your earth worms will happily eat their way through your mouldy bread, refrigerator leftovers and even last night’s pizza – they consume up to their own body weight in one day! What you have coming out the other end are their castings and urine – the latter referred to as compost tea in polite company. (Now don't start your "yucky" business again - if I told you what was in your own body you would be even more grossed out!) The ‘compost tea,’ when diluted with water, is an excellent liquid fertilizer and the castings are a concentrated form of plant food. This plant food has many benefits and does not contain weed seeds, is naturally ph balanced, contains natural vitamins and minerals, improves soil water-holding capacity and soil structure and is more plant-ready than ordinary compost or fertilizer. The castings have the consistency, smell and colour of very fine potting soil – not at all unpleasant to work with. If you’d like more information on worm bins or would like to obtain one, get in touch with me. I sell a good-sized tray system for R850 including 250g worms and instruction booklet. If you live in a flat, chances are that you will have more kitchen waste than plant waste and your worms will eat your cooked food leftovers not suitable for the compost heap as well. The castings provide excellent pot plant fertilizer and the worm tea a perfect foliar feed spray. Examples of indoor composters.Worm bins are also available. Soil enriched with earthworm castings is more likely to attract other earthworms back into your garden. These will then produce their own castings and thus fertilize your soil on the spot. Remember to give them plenty to munch on by mulching your soil. "Mulching" - is that a rugby term?Have you ever wondered how plants manage to thrive and flower in the wild where there is no water and fertilizing regime or loosening and clearing of the soil? It’s incredible how nature takes care of itself, but it’s actually very simple – think about it: every leaf, twig or withered piece of plant material stays exactly where it has fallen, undisturbed - except by possibly a gust of wind - eventually forming a blanket on the soil surface which we call mulch. This blanket keeps the good in and the bad out:
Please begin by telling us how we should till the soil so that the compost can mix properly...Contrary to popular belief, there are no pixie gardening teams armed with spades that come out at night to dig over the soil around plants in nature. Why on earth did we get into that habit in our gardens? Digging over the soil literally turns the habitats of beneficial soil micro-organisms upside down and leaves a new section of soil exposed to the elements. If you mulch, your soil will be kept naturally well-drained, soft and fed. The hardest part of this will be to persuade your gardener that he no longer needs to get stuck into the beds with that dreaded fork because to him, loosened and dug over beds show you that he hasn’t been snoozing in the garden shed all day. Patience! Persuade him to use the extra time to build and maintain a compost heap for you instead.
What exactly is compost?Compost is pure organic soil food without added chemicals whatsoever. It consists of a variety of decomposed rock, plant and animal matter which is important to healthy soil and a healthy soil means a healthy plant. Compost is to plants what a balanced diet is to us. Our plants will grow without it, but they will feel much like we would on a diet of bread and water. It makes no sense – if you think about it – to pay to throw away our organic waste and then buy it again in the form of compost. Make your own! At least you know what’s in it! Besides feeding the plants, compost is the number one soil miracle cure. Use it to improve drainage in clay soil and improve water - holding capacity in sandy soil. Here’s how – the lazy way.
Is it yucky?Most people don't like compost because the thought of having a rubbish dump in your backyard puts them off. In fact, a proper compost heap ADDS to the fresh smell of your garden, it attracts more bird life and saves a fortune on buying chemicals that can only harm you in the long run. Compost heaps are usually kept in a corner of the garden furthest away from the house owing to their unsightliness. If possible, keep them at least 5m away from doors and windows. If you need the heap to look neat or to hide it from view, erect a fence about 1m high around it. Compost heaps usually don’t smell and if yours does, it is a sign that it is too wet and lacking in oxygen. Add more dry material such as leaves and shredded newspaper and turn it once every few weeks for aeration.
How do you go about starting one?Designate a semi-shade to shady area in your garden about 1 – 2m square depending on the size of your garden and the size of your family. Leave one side open for access with a wheelbarrow. Now start using this as your rubbish bin for:
- All dead plant material from the garden including lawn clippings and weeds,
- Fruit peels (remember to put some on the bird table!),
- Vegetable peels and waste material
- Coffee grinds and filters, tea bags and contents, egg shells, ash from the fire grate and shredded newspaper. Easy!
- Weeds and lawn clippings can be included because the temperatures generated in the heap in the decomposition process are high enough to destroy most weed or lawn seeds before they can come wreak havoc in your flower beds
How do you keep birds and creepy crawlies from coming into your house?Compost heaps develop quite high internal temperatures during the decomposing process, so in general, they don’t attract creepy crawlies to the degree that it becomes a problem. If you want to steer clear of rodents, rather keep those fruit peels and pits aside for the worm bin.
What if you just want to buy a compost – any recommendations?If you’re going to buy your compost – which may be necessary for the first season until your heap has gotten going, make sure that its ingredients are as natural as possible. ‘Earth to Earth’ compost bags are a good start. For those of you interested in the packet jargon we will discuss under fertilizers, the earthworm castings (retailing as Fertilis) are classified as a 2:2:1 slow release fertilizer. The staff of my herb grower call them black gold and I would not plant one of my gardens without adding some to the soil.
How often should you compost?Unfortunately, our traditional gardening methods of digging over and raking the soil leaves it depleted, making regular composting a necessity. Water your heap about once a week to speed up the decomposition process and after about 6 months, you should be able to start using the compost from the bottom of the heap. It’s ready when it’s black and sweet-smelling. If you’d like speedier results, grow some comfrey or borage and add the leaves regularly as compost activators. To use your compost, apply it to your soil about twice a year: Spread it 5cm thick on top of your soil, dig in ever so slightly and replace the mulch over that. When you introduce new plants to the soil, plant them into a mixture of one part compost and two parts soil.
How does compost differ to fertilizer?I always like to compare plant care with ‘human care’. A plant in poor soil feels like you would feel on a diet of dry bread and water. Add mulch and compost and we’re talking a balanced diet, leaving you feeling far better as do plants and they show it! Organic fertilizer to plants is what added vitamins and minerals are to us – we feel and therefore look and perform at our best. If the diet of compost and soil quality is extremely good, then fertilizer becomes unnecessary. However, in reality this is very difficult to do and it is recommended that you use an organic fertilizer for the first year or two, especially if you grow in pots. Never use anything other than organic fertilizer because artificial fertilizers help plants extract nutrients from the soil, but do not enrich it. Your soil will therefore be in bad condition after a few seasons. I personally like to use a mix of half Talborne organic granular fertilizer (2:3:2 or 3:1:5 depending on the season) and half organic earthworm castings (2:2:1 (SR)) which you can either make yourself by means of a worm farm or buy in Fertilis bags – more about that later in this article. Organic fertilizers are environmentally friendly, don’t burn the plants or leave harmful residues in the soil. Here’s a quick guide to the mysterious jargon on the packet:
- The three numbers on the packet (eg 3:1:5) refer to in order from left to right the portion of food available for specifically leaves and shoots (nitrogen), stems and roots (phosphorous), flowers and fruit (potassium)
- SR means slow release so the fertilizer dissolves slowly, releasing the nutrients to the plant in a steady, manageable stream over an extended period of time.
Those that don't have gardens can use pots. Is this a good idea?Yes, but an important note on pots: Please don’t condemn your plants to a slow death by confining them to pots with little space for soil and no fertilizer!! I see this happening so often. In a pot, the roots of a plant have no way of finding more food once that in their immediate vicinity is used up. Plants in pots need fertilizer about every 6 to 12 weeks depending on the size of the plant compared to the pot and they should be re-potted into new potting soil and often a larger pot once a year.
And if you have NO garden, what can you do?If you live in a flat, either buy a small sealable composting unit available from gardening shops or start a worm farm instead. Scott assures me that an article dediciated to indoor planting is coming soon.
You mentioned earthworms a few times...If you’re going to make your own compost, you may as well add another ice-cream tub to your kitchen counter décor (next to the tub for the compost heap) – marked worm bin! to make your own fertilizer. The beauty of a worm bin is that it provides a way for you to recycle cooked food which is, as you hopefully remember, not suitable for the compost heap. Your earth worms will happily eat their way through your mouldy bread, refrigerator leftovers and even last night’s pizza – they consume up to their own body weight in one day! What you have coming out the other end are their castings and urine – the latter referred to as compost tea in polite company. (Now don't start your "yucky" business again - if I told you what was in your own body you would be even more grossed out!) The ‘compost tea,’ when diluted with water, is an excellent liquid fertilizer and the castings are a concentrated form of plant food. This plant food has many benefits and does not contain weed seeds, is naturally ph balanced, contains natural vitamins and minerals, improves soil water-holding capacity and soil structure and is more plant-ready than ordinary compost or fertilizer. The castings have the consistency, smell and colour of very fine potting soil – not at all unpleasant to work with. If you’d like more information on worm bins or would like to obtain one, get in touch with me. I sell a good-sized tray system for R850 including 250g worms and instruction booklet. If you live in a flat, chances are that you will have more kitchen waste than plant waste and your worms will eat your cooked food leftovers not suitable for the compost heap as well. The castings provide excellent pot plant fertilizer and the worm tea a perfect foliar feed spray. Examples of indoor composters.Worm bins are also available. Soil enriched with earthworm castings is more likely to attract other earthworms back into your garden. These will then produce their own castings and thus fertilize your soil on the spot. Remember to give them plenty to munch on by mulching your soil. "Mulching" - is that a rugby term?Have you ever wondered how plants manage to thrive and flower in the wild where there is no water and fertilizing regime or loosening and clearing of the soil? It’s incredible how nature takes care of itself, but it’s actually very simple – think about it: every leaf, twig or withered piece of plant material stays exactly where it has fallen, undisturbed - except by possibly a gust of wind - eventually forming a blanket on the soil surface which we call mulch. This blanket keeps the good in and the bad out:
- It regulates soil temperature, protecting plant roots from extremely hot summer sun and winter cold and frost
- It stabilizes the soil, preventing soil erosion caused by rain
- It keeps the sun from leaching out soil nutrients
- It keeps moisture in the soil by decreasing evaporation
- It enriches the soil because as it breaks down, it turns to compost
- It provides food for earthworms who draw it into the soil through their digestive processes providing the plants with what is arguably the best natural fertilizer around
- It stops weeds from growing by depriving them both of space and sunlight
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySW_ZA5yrfU – Good basic compost making visuals and info
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFsSlS7IHBg&feature=fvw – How to prepare the beds using ready-made compost and also via a method called sheet mulching – making compost in situ so to speak – preparing the beds the lazy way
