Composting basics
by Jane Elder Wulff
Linda Rectanus looks exactly like a gardener: sheathed head to foot in mudproof gear, fitted with just the right tools, moving ahead with a dedicated stoop. Whereas the human presence often appears out of place in the natural world, she is perfectly at home here.
Rectanus is a Master Gardener, professional gardener and one of a corps of volunteers associated with Columbia Springs, the environmental education center in Vancouver, Washington. She is an expert when it comes to composting.
A dual benefit
The question arose when I saw how much kitchen waste ends up in the dumpsters at my little apartment complex. I’m no gardener, but my neighbors are. Why are we putting all this vegetable waste in the trash when we could be using it to enrich the soil?
The question applies on a broader scale, far beyond my neighborhood. “As a society, we can’t afford to fill up our landfills with organic matter,” Rectanus says, explaining that cabbage trimmings and apple peels from Vancouver, for instance, are barged 130 miles upriver and sealed in a landfill where they can take years or even decades to decompose.
To her, the common excuses for not composting are no match for the two main reasons why everyone, even non-gardeners, should do it: it keeps organic matter out of the landfills, and it makes wonderful soil. She explains that Northwest clay soils, while nutritious, tend to be wet and sticky in winter, dry and hard in summer.
“The solution is to add organic matter,” she says, meaning fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves, lawn clippings, weeds without ripening seeds. She layers these high-nitrogen “greens” with high-carbon “browns”—fallen leaves, brushy debris, pine needles, straw, shredded paper-and adds some rabbit manure from her own animals.
Citrus peelings and processed foods can cause problems and are best left out. Also, says Rectanus, “You don’t want to use meat, dairy, fats, oils, or bones in home compost piles. It’s organic—anything that is or once was living is organic-and it would decompose, but it can attract flies, rats, raccoons. And it would smell terrible.”
A plain mixture of greens and browns, on the other hand, has a clean earthy smell and does not attract pests. Collected in five-gallon (or smaller) containers, cut in two-inch pieces with pruning shears, and layered about half and half on the ground, it can become compost in as little as eight weeks if the pile is contained, aerated now and again by turning, and kept about as damp as a wrung-out sponge.
Left unturned, the pile will decompose at a slower rate. Either way, the finished compost—rich, dark, and crumbly—can be used as a medium for house plants and annuals or a top dressing for gardens, your own or a neighbor’s.
Time well spent
This is something even I could do. Better yet, instead of building separate piles, households in small communities like mine could layer their greens and browns at a common site. The gardeners among us could tend the pile and use the product to improve their soil. Why not?
People come up with all kinds of reasons. Too much work, they say-but according to Rectanus and her colleagues at Columbia Springs, composting can be almost no work at all, and it makes life easier for committed gardeners by what it does for their ground.
She tells of one of her customers who has been composting on the same residential lot for 40 years. “She doesn’t turn her piles. She basically just puts everything into the bins. She has 15 bins on less than an acre, and she has turned that clay into beautiful rich soil. It’s fantastic-you can put your hand right down into it.”
Complaints of pests or odor are unfounded if the pile is managed as described above. Rectanus dismisses the notion that composting encourages slugs.
“There may be some slugs on it, but it’s not a major attraction for them,” she says. “That shouldn’t deter anyone-in fact, it’s handy, because they’re outside the pile and you can pick them off.” Her least violent method of dispatching slugs involves a bucket of water with a touch of soap.
