If you’re a homeowner in coastal Orange County I’ll bet a nickel that you recycle. You sort out your milk bottles, soda cans, soup cans and so on, to go to a recycling facility, to be re-made into new products. Good for you, you’re doing the right thing!
Now consider this scenario. You buy colorful plastic bags of fertilizer to apply to your plants to make them grow. As soon as they grow you pay someone to come by and trim them back. These trimmings go into a big plastic bin with wheels that waits patiently by the side of your house. Once a week you roll this big plastic bin, full of trimmings and clippings, to the curb to be trucked away. Somewhere, out of sight, your plant clippings are ground up, composted and turned into organic mulches and soil amendments, which are, in turn, put back into colorful plastic bags and trucked back to your local garden center. You buy these plastic bags, open them and spread their rich ingredients around the plants in your garden.
Whoa! Stand back for a minute; the scenario is almost comical. Why do you have this plastic bin on wheels? Why are you sending your clippings, leaves and trimmings away, only to buy them back later?
Compost may be at the center of all gardening. In order for just about any plant grow properly you need to feed your soil and the invisible organisms living therein.
Almost all of the nutrients that a plant takes in are from its roots. A layer of compost on the ground provides the nutrients that nature had intended all along.
You already recycle your bottles, cans and newspapers. Why not compost your garden waste as well, or at least a portion of it? Your plants will thank you; so will the planet. Here are a few simple steps to get started. More assistance is available online or at your local garden center.
Choose A Compost Bin
There are many types of bins used to hold compost materials. Being in an urban area, most of us will use a plastic commercially made, square or round, compost bin. Bins that turn, either round or tube shaped, are increasingly popular. Each type of bin has advantages and disadvantages, but all almost all of them can be used to make great compost.
Select a Location for Your Compost Bin
Choose a site that is level and well drained. It should be easily accessible and convenient. Placing the bin over bare soil rather than concrete will ensure that worms and beneficial organisms can find their way into the compost.
Add Composting Materials
Generally, composting ingredients can be divided into two categories: Browns and Greens. Browns include materials like dry leaves, bark, sawdust and straw. Even uncolored, uncoated newspaper and cardboard egg boxes can be added to the bin. Green materials are usually abundant and include grass clippings, spent flowers, vegetable waste, coffee grounds and plant trimmings.
What Not To Add to Your Compost
Don't add meat, bones, fatty food waste, dairy products, pet feces, persistent weeds or any chemically treated products to your compost bin. Vegetable fats and dairy products will slow down the composting process. Chemically treated or pressure treated wood or sawdust, meat, animal fats or pet feces added to a compost bin may encourage disease or contamination.
Make Great Compost
Finished compost can be made by simply dumping a blend of the above ingredients into the bin and keeping it moist. But much better compost can be made in a fraction of the time by starting it off like you’re making a giant layer cake. Begin with a 4 inch layer of browns, such as dry leaves. Add a thin layer of garden soil or finished compost from a previous batch. Next, add a 4 inch layer of green material, like grass clippings or fresh plant trimmings. That’s the first layer. Keep adding similar ingredients in alternating layers until the bin is full.
Once the bin is nearly full, you should turn the pile every week or so (this is where a tumbler or round bin comes in handy). Keep the material moist, but not soggy. The more you turn the pile the faster you will have finished compost!
Congratulations! Your compost is ready to use!
It can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 12 months to produce finished compost. The time it takes depends on the materials and methods used. Shredding or cutting up the raw materials before you add them to the bin will speed things up considerably.
Next week, when trash day arrives, you’ll have one less of the big plastic bins on wheels to roll out to the curb to be taken away. Maybe it’s time to replace this bin with a compost bin.
Ron Vanderhoff is the Nursery Manager at Roger’s Gardens, Corona del Mar
Questions from Readers
November 3, 2007
Question:
What is the most non-toxic, humane and effective way to eliminate gophers in our front lawn? Everyone tells us to use poisons, but we would prefer not to kill it and are afraid we might harm the rabbits from Buck Gully.
Debbie
Corona del Mar
Answer:
That’s a challenge. There are a lot of battery operated sonic devices that supposedly annoy the gophers and drive them away, but countless studies they have proved them very ineffective. Live traps are a possibility. The Havahart #0745 or #1025 trap will catch a gopher alive, but when relocated, there is considerably doubt about whether the highly territorial gopher would survive for long.
