Those who have difficulty maintaining an outdoor compost pile can compost organic waste with red worms.
If anyone can appreciate the value of backyard composting it’s a farmer, says an expert in the field.
“It’s amazing how much richer it can make the soil that you use in your garden or what it can do for your lawn,” said Natasha Page, waste re-duction specialist with Alberta Environment and Water.
Starting and maintaining a compost bin or pile is easy. The first step is finding a well-drained and sunny area that is close to the house.
“In the winter time you’re not going to trudge to the back 40 to dump out your compost bucket from the kitchen,” she said.
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Once a location is selected, the pile can be started by creating a base of coarse material, such as twigs, to assist with drainage and aeration.
Then it’s a matter of layering the pile with brown material followed by green material and then a shovelful of garden soil.
Brown material such as dry leaves, straw or coffee filters are good sources of carbon.
Green material such as food waste, tea leaves and bags or fresh lawn clippings are good sources of nitrogen.
The microbes that do all the work in a compost pile need both.
Some household waste to avoid includes meat, bone scraps and oil, all of which can attract animals and prevent the microbes from doing their thing.
“If you put in a piece of bread that has a touch of margarine on it that is certainly forgivable but you don’t want to pour your bacon grease into the compost pile. That would be a problem,” said Page.
Any food waste should be dug down into the pile to avoid attracting animals.
Keeping the pile moist also prevents critters from setting up shop. Page learned that lesson the hard way. The lid on her bin kept the rain off of her compost pile and encouraged mice to take up residence. They were sent scurrying one day when she thoroughly watered the pile.
“The bin can make it too dry. It was just a perfect little home for them,” she said.
“Ever since then I’ve been so diligent. I have never had a problem again.”
It is important to ensure the pile is not too wet and not too dry. It needs to be as moist as a wrung-out sponge.
Compost piles require very little maintenance. Page turns her pile over once every two weeks in the summer and not at all during the winter months.
It takes about one year to convert a bin full of organic matter into one-quarter to one-half of a bin of usable compost.
A pile should be about one cubic metre in volume. Organic waste can be placed in a bin or simply heaped on the ground and covered with a plastic sheet to control the moisture.
Page said it’s best to have two piles, so one can be degrading while the other is stacked with fresh organic matter.
There is a pretty straightforward detection method for knowing when the compost is ready to be applied on the lawn or garden.
“It should be brown. It should look like dark, rich soil. And it smells fantastic. It smells like rich earth,” she said.
Another test is to fill a plastic bag with compost, squeeze out all the air and seal it. If the bag has expanded after 24 hours that is a good indication that the microbes are still working and it should not be used.
Unfinished compost can take nitrogen from the soil, compromising plant growth in a garden.
Proper composting offers a number of environmental benefits in-cluding decreasing the greenhouse gases associated with landfills, reducing the need for fertilizer and creating soil with better water-holding capacity.
Alberta Environment and Water has created a backyard composting brochure that can be found online at http://environment.alberta.ca/02985.html.
- Vermicomposting creates a fine black granular compost called castings, which provides an excellent source of slow-release soil nutrients for plants or lawn.
- Red worms eat almost everything that humans eat. They should be fed at least every few days. Food scraps placed below the surface of the bedding decompose in about two weeks.
- Every three to six months, the red worms will have converted the food wastes and their bedding into a mass of rich dark castings.
- Worms do not survive in their own waste and must have it removed.
