Composting

Compost, what is compost and why do you need compost? Compost is simply the decomposition of organic matter and by organic in the sense I mean natural carbon compounds. Don't get confused with organic as it applies to natural materials and organic as it applies to a method of growing. Ideally it is best to use organic - natural materials in your compost. The main reason for this is it tends to eliminate other types of compounds that are added in the production of food. This is mostly synthetic herbicides and pesticides and other strange things that people put in to their fields to facilitate the growing of food. When plants and animals die mother nature basically breaks them down back into their original building blocks. These building blocks are then recycled by new life and the cycle starts over again. When you compost on the farm, if it's an organic farm the starting materials for decomposition are basically pretty clean. If you compost materials from the market or reclaimed materials that you obtain from some other source you may not be sure that there are not detrimental items in your compost. Although compost can break down many detrimental items just may take a little longer and many biodegradable products are not exactly healthy for you.

On the farm I try to keep all the materials I use as synthetic free as possible although this is not always easy. Many items added to produce and foods that you buy locally and at the supermarket are not necessarily bad but they are used to accelerate growth or make the material more presentable, but the quality of the food is questionable. By definition compost is a mixture of decayed and decaying organic materials which improve soil structure and provide nutrients for plants. The material you obtain from this process is compost. Hopefully by making your own compost and adding minerals, which by the way in themselves are inorganic, you incorporate it all into your compost allowing you to grow nutrient rich food.

Here on the farm, since I have chickens I feed all of my kitchen scraps directly to the chickens. So there is very little kitchen scraps in my compost. The chickens do the initial decomposition for me and then I add wood chips to the hen house and when I clean the hen house this becomes starting material for my compost. When this material is composted I take and spread this material on my garden allowing some time so that the sunlight and air can facilitate the cleanup of the chicken manure. There are several pathogens associated with chicken manure so you need to make sure that you give sunlight and air a chance to eliminate these materials. At this point I will incorporate the compost into the garden and let it set for a period of time. I like to put my compost into the ground in the wintertime and then allow it to set over the winter. You don't want to let you compost set for too long because part of the decomposition process is the material will break down and return nitrogen back to the air. This is part of the cycle of life.

In the part of the country where I live it is dry and we do not get very much rain. The days are hot and the nights are cold so I have to make sure that my compost stays damp and I cover it with a tarp to ensure that it does not dry out. Many people believe that you should not cover your compost but is dependent on where you live so you do what you have to do. Once I have my pile large enough and moist enough I will cover and periodically I will check the pile temperature and moisture. I will also use a pitchfork to turn it to ensure that the pile is well aired. Decomposition can occur by several methods, aerobic and anaerobic. I turn the compost to ensure that my process is aerobic. Meat and bone may require an anaerobic process to break down that's why mixing vegetable matter and meat is not recommended. Although I have read that some people combine all of the material together and that it works just fine. I don't mix it because I do not want to mix the two different processes together so that I can ensure that my material is broken down completely and that I don't inadvertently obtain pathogens in my compost that I do not want.

There are many books written on composting and I would recommend that you read them or at least some. They spell out the pros and cons and you will find that many people disagree in the philosophy of composting. I recommend that you experiment and you do what works for you. Your success with composting may depend on many variables like your starting material, location, temperature, moisture, and the type of creatures that may come to visit your compost pile. It is a little disheartening to do a lot of work on your composting, having everything going really well but you left a piece of meat in the compost and the raccoons came in the night and took your pile part to find a little morsel to eat.

Carbon: Nitrogen ratio (C:N) of compost materials