Meagan DeGaia
Topics Define Composting Compost as Solution to Environmental Degradation locally and globally Landfills Topsoil loss and desertification The Food Web of your Compost Pile The Benefits of Humus Composting Methods What to Compost and How What Not to Compost Composting for Busy People Hot vs. Cold Composting Compost Tea
Raise Your Hand If: You re just now hearing about composting for the first time.
Raise Your Hand If: You know some things about composting and you re thinking of trying it for yourself.
Raise Your Hand If: You ve composted before or you re composting at home now and you want to reignite your love of composting.
What do you want to gain today?
Composting: A Love Story For the first 18 years of my life, I had never heard of composting. First learned about composting at Antioch College in our cafeteria. Later, I experienced it WWOOFING on the Big Island and Maui. Organic farming, living off the grid and composting food, using composting toilets, woke me up to my ecological & spiritual identity in a whole new way. Green Street project to increase awareness about composting. I m not an expert but I do love it!
What is Compost? Composting happens naturally when plant matter falls to the ground. It s then eaten & digested by mammals, birds, insects, invertebrates, fungi and billions of microorganisms. The result is compost: soft, nutrient rich, soil.
Nutrients are returned to the soil where they can be then reabsorbed by other plants & enter the food web once more.
Why Compost? Composting at home allows you to transform your food scraps, yard waste and other biodegradables into nutrient rich soil, called Humus. Positive environmental impact. The #1 Reason to Compost
Positive Impact on Maui Reduces the amount of trash sent to the landfill by 80% when coupled with recycling. Reduces methane gas and leachate formulation in landfills. Reduces the need for habitat conversion to landfill. Epa.gov
Composting Creates Topsoil Half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the last 150 years. Loss of Topsoil leads to desertification. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification addresses desertification as a global problem. Poverty linked to environmental degradation. Desertification: "land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas, resulting from various factors, including climate variations and human activity. Over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification and one billion people in over 100 countries are at risk.
Why are we losing top soil? Deforestation: Exposes soil, dries out topsoil & erosion washes it away.
Overgrazing Land is converted to pastureland and causes erosion.
Agrochemicals Kills soil life, stimulates harmful bacteria growth.
Will You Solve All the Worlds Problems? Positive impact on our watershed. Positive impact on our landfills. Positive impact on the nutrient cycle. Fun & Feels good!
Composting Creates Top Soil Worms, insects, fungi and microorganisms in nature & in your compost bin creates top soil. 1 acre of living soil may contain 2 tons of worms and another 2 tons of bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates like millipedes. Great if your yard has lots of sand or clay.
Food Web of Your Compost Pile
#1 Reason to Compost: Humus is the end of the road for organic matter- by the time [it] has reached the humus stage, decomposition has slowed to a snails pace. - Gaia s Garden: A Guide to Homescale Permaculture Humus is beneficial for 4 main reasons: Prevents erosion increased nutrients to your plants Protects your plants from diseases Making humus yourself saves money. Humus
Benefits of Humus Water your garden less through increased water absorption and long term retention. Absorbs 4x its weight in water. Swells & expands when it rains. Then shrinks when it dries, which aerates the soil naturally. Organisms can easily move deeper through this aerated soil, their paths aerate the soil further and create more humus. Water can easily penetrate the soil more deeply, for increased water retention in deeper layers of the soil.
Benefits of Humus Eliminates need for chemical fertilizers: Humus excels at holding nutrients because its molecule is chock full of oxygen atoms that have a negative charge. They attract positively charged elements, which have celebrity status according to plants and soil animals. Potassium, calcium, magnesium, ammonium, copper, zinc, manganese and others. Plant roots secrete mild acids which break the bonds that hold the nutrients to the humus and can then absorb them.
Benefits of Humus Many fungi and microbes in healthy soil secrete antibiotics that protect plants from disease. Save money by not needing to buy imported potting soil, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and compost in the store.
Two Ways of Composting Exposed Piles Enclosed containers
Exposed Compost Piles Exposed piles can be fully exposed or made from wood, chicken wire, or recycled plastic with a large opening.
Pros & Cons of Exposed Piles Pros: Easily collect rain water Convenient for adding and utilizing materials Cons: Can attract rodents or flies if waste isn t buried properly. May become too wet, if not covered Open bins may be an eyesore to your neighbors
Enclosed Compost Bins Enclosed containers for composting consist a few designs: upright box-like containers, rotating drums and worm composting bins.
Pros and Cons of Enclosed Bins Pros: Rarely attract pests May be more aesthetically appealing Rotating drums are easier to mix or turn Rotating drums are easy to unload Cons: Enclosed containers usually require you to add water Difficult to mix or turn Can be challenging to utilize compost from bin.
Worm Composting Worm composting is the process of using worms in a container to digest kitchen vegetable scraps. Red wigglers eat kitchen scraps and poop out castings which are rich in nutrients. Great for apartments or if you can t compost in your yard. Keep your worm bin indoors or outside in a cool, covered place. Prepare your worm bin before adding worms to create a good habitat for them to reproduce. Add small quantities of food at a time until your worm population grows. Avoid putting spicy foods and citrus which will burn the worms skin.
What can you compost?
You Can t Just Dump Your Food Scraps in A Bin Compost is created when you provide the right mixture of key ingredients for the millions of microorganisms in your compost pile. Ingredients: food, water, and air.
How to Layer your Pile Food for decomposers consists of two types of materials: Greens and Browns.
Green materials are high in nitrogen and provide protein. Fresh grass clippings & weeds Fresh manure: horse, chicken, rabbit, cow Kitchen scraps: fruit, vegetables, coffee grounds, tea bags Green leaves Greens
Browns Brown materials are high in carbon and provide energy. Brown, dry leaves Paper products Cardboard egg cartons, toilet paper rolls Dried grass Straw & Sticks Sawdust (in moderation) The best combination of browns and greens is about 4 parts of browns to one part greens by volume. If you have more browns, you ll still get compost. It ll just take a little longer.
Don t Add This Stuff Meat, Fish, animal fats Unless you can completely bury them, you run the risk of attracting rodents. You can add them in small quantities but keep this in mind when you mix your compost. Processed Foods & Candy: They aren t real food. Shredded Newspapers or Office Paper Recycle them instead. The paper very likely contains chemicals that are not good for your compost. Ashes from Your BBQ Grill Wood ashes can be very useful in small quantities. But, store-bought charcoal contains additives. Dog and Cat Feces Risk of adding nasty diseases and creates fowl smell.
Hot vs. Cold Composting Decomposition occurs naturally. But, decomposition doesn t necessarily occur efficiently. By providing the right ratio of browns, greens, water and air, decomposition can be quick. This is known as hot composting. Allows microbes to eat and reproduce quickly. The compost pile can attain temperatures as high as 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Kills some weeds and makes most microbes very active. Hot composting can fully decompose in several weeks. "Cold" composting is slower. This is the form of composting that almost always occurs in the forest. It will decompose over time, but the temperature never gets very high, and the process can take years.
Turn your Compost Turning re-heats the pile to keep it in an aerobic state Air is important to the decomposition process.. The mix of carbon (BROWN) and nitrogen (GREEN) organic material in your compost bin/pile is like a fire; air is necessary to keep it going. Turning creates new passageways for air and moisture before the pile compresses As material decomposes your pile will compress and shrink in size. This will naturally cool down the pile sooner than the material is fully decomposed. Turning exposes more particles of material. It fluffs it all up, thereby allowing the mix of air, moisture and heat to continue the decomposition process.
Composting for Busy People
Using Your Compost Wait until your compost is mature to use it. Flower beds & as Potting Soil Vegetable Garden Trees (Ornamental & Fruit bearing) Establishing your lawn Used under landscaping mulch Amounts, mixtures and methods vary.
Compost Tea Compost tea is soaking a bag full of compost in a bucket full of water for an hour or so. The water soluble nutrients and beneficial microorganisms leach out of the compost, resulting in a brown liquid that can be used to water houseplants, your lawn, or garden plants. Compost tea will give your plants a boost of needed nutrients and help to prevent a lot of plant diseases. Doesn t do much to improve the soil structure like using fully decomposed compost.
Thank You
Resources Gaia s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway The Garden of Oz http://thegardenofoz.org/ Worldwildlifefund.org International Fund for Agricultural Development http://www.ifad.org/ Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/compost/
Be Careful When Adding These Ingredients! Sawdust Because of it's very high carbon content, and its very small particle size, sawdust can overwhelm a compost pile. But, it can also be quite useful if you have an overload of green material. I add some from my woodworking shop when I have a lot of extra fruit in my pile at the end of the season. Avoid using sawdust that came from Black Walnut wood, as it contains a chemical that will stunt or prevent the growth of some plants, tomatoes in particular. Wood Shavings, Chips, and Bark Like sawdust, the carbon content can overwhelm, and shut down, an otherwise good compost mix. Set them aside, if possible, and let them decompose the old fashioned way, over time ("cold" decomposition).