Shades of Green: Composting

Green meter: medium green

I recently happened across this excellent article that lists 163+ items that you can compost in your home composted at PlanTea, Inc. There are some items on the list that surprised me! Did you know that you can compost small amounts of animal hair and the lint from your dryer? I've started tossing my dog's after-brushing undercoat and my dryer lint in my compost bin.

Setting up a small compost bin is cheap and easy. My first compost bin was merely four stakes rounded with one-inch chicken wire. I lined the bottom of the bin with several inches of dead leaves and started my bin with a bagful of grass clippings and some weeds from my flowerbeds. I added leaves as they fell, my household compostable waste and a handful of blood meal, and with a few months, I had an excellent garden fertilizer.

One key in encouraging quick compost is to add all your materials in a short period of time. When I stared my first pile, the leaves were falling from our trees, our grass was still growing heartily, and it rained regularly. To balance out the lack of nitrogen in the dead leaves, I added a high nitrogen additive: bloodmeal. Other high nitrogen products include stable scraps (chicken, horse, cow, goat and other manures), cotton meal, grass clippings, and other green scraps from the garden or kitchen. In order to hasten breakdown, your ratio of nitrogen to carbon (as found in newspapers, straw, and dead leaves and other brown material) should be around 3:1. Adding human hair and diluted urine can also increase your nitrogen load.

Wait a minute…did she just say URINE? Yes, I did! Urine is our number one way to rid our bodies of nitrogen. Urine is sterile and has been used for centuries as a fertilizer. For direct application or for use in your compost bin, urine should be diluted at least 10 parts waster to 1 part urine due to its high nitrogen content.

Back to composting… Turning is another essential ingredient to creating sufficient compost; you should turn your compost pile every four to seven days for best results. You want the core of your compost pile to heat up to around 140 degrees Fahrenheit, so you don’t want to turn too often. Regular turning will keep your pile from developing an unpleasant stench. Your pile also needs to feel damp in order to breakdown quickly. You should not need to water it after it is established, but you may need to water down your layers as you are setting it up.

Your newly acquired compost can be used anywhere in your garden or yard. When transplanting plants, I always line the hole with a thick layer of compost. I till it into my garden between planting seasons, and toss a shovel-full atop my nitrogen-hungry plants during their heavy growth season.