Ned Conwell pauses in front of his straw-covered compost pile at Blue House Farm.
Photo: Rob D. Brodman
-
Veggies 101: How to start your garden
Here's how to get started growing your own fresh, delicious food in garden beds or pots
more
-
Video: how to make compost
Create nutrient-rich compost for your garden from common household leftovers
watch
-
Real-world Earth Day
Make a difference by helping bees, saving rain, building soil, and shopping smarter
more
Healthy gardens start with healthy soil. And there's no better ingredient than compost, whether you till it into beds or use it as mulch.
Ned Conwell is up to his elbows in the stuff, both as a farmer and as a teacher: He uses as much as he can make at Blue House Farm, a produce and flower farm he co-owns in Pescadero, California, and he also teaches composting at the Regenerative Design Institute, located up the coast in Bolinas.
"Once it's in the soil, compost increases fertility; adds both micro- and macronutrients; buffers pH; and improves soil structure," Conwell says. Below is his foolproof method for making compost.
COMPOST DOS AND DON'TS
Do compost
Nearly any plant material, including the following:
Brown matter
Dried leaves, hay, straw, sawdust, wood chips, and shrub and tree prunings. Ned Conwell collects his brown matter, but you
can also use straw from a feed store. He puts branches and anything thorny in a separate slow-roast pile in the corner, where
it breaks down over a much longer period of time. To hasten composting, chop or mow prunings into pieces 2 inches or smaller.
Green matter
Green weeds, fruit and vegetable scraps, cover-crop remains, and fresh grass clippings. Also coffee grounds, tea bags, and
uncomposted manure from cows, goats, horses, or poultry. Pine needles take longer to break down, while compounds in black
walnut and eucalyptus leaves can inhibit growth in other plants; compost those greens only if you combine them with lots of
other vegetative waste.
Don't compost
Animal products (bones, meat scraps, dairy products); plants with fungal diseases such as fire blight or verticillium; or
seedy or rhizomatous weeds like purslane, Bermuda grass, or bindweed.
Do turn the pile often
After the first two temperature-based turns, the more often you turn your pile, the quicker it will break down into compost.
Do heat it up
The smaller the pieces, the faster they'll compost. (Run the lawn mower over big, leathery leaves before adding them to the
pile.) To check the pile's temperature, Conwell uses a 20-inch-long compost thermometer, available at some nurseries and garden
centers and from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (from $12; 888/784-1722).
More earth-friendly garden ideas
PAGE:1
