Compost for Gardening on a Budget

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
January 8th, 2009
Filed in Compost
Tags: cold, Compost, composting

So, this whole compost pile activity is going to mesh well with my family New Year’s Resolution to also trim money from the budget and trim our waistlines.  I like to garden, and to eat fresh fruits and veggies from my own yard.  Our own compost pile will help our garden thrive.  Which type of compost is going to be right for us, though? Remember our gardening profile?  We are enthusiastic in spurts, and otherwise enjoy, well, relaxing and enjoying the garden–either in it or from the window.  (We have a lot of mosquitos in our garden during the summer.)  Today, I’m going to examine compost piles.  Next, I will look at compost bins, and lastly, I will look at compost “machines.”  And hopefully, after all of that, I will be able to select a composting method that will actually work well for me!

Compost Piles

I like the idea of a compost pile.  To me, a pile means “no extra stuff needed.”  I am consulting my book The Rodale Book of Composting, of which I used to have two (not sure why), about the various types of compost, but I welcome the comments of veteran composters for help.

Hot vs Cool Compost

If I want to go with a pile, I need to decide if it will be a hot compost pile or a cold compost pile. Here are the pros and cons of each, according to the master composting book:

Hot Pros: Composts quickly, can be done in small spaces, kills weed seeds and pathogens

Hot Cons:  Labor intensive, requires careful monitoring of C/N ratio and moisture level, must be built at one time, kills disease-suppressing microbes

Cool Pros:  Low-maintenance, keeps disease-suppressing microbes alive, can be built a little at a time

Cool Cons:  Nutrient loss through extended exposure to elements, can take 6 months to 1 year to finish, does not kill weed seeds, includes more un-decomposed bits of high-carbon materials.

But what does all of that mean to me?  Well, in the hot corner, I could probably deal with the monitoring and labor, as I am a little bit obsessive-compulsive.  I also like fast results.  In the cool corner–it seems like it would be pretty easy to build as I go, and add my kitchen scraps to the pile as they accumulate.

Further Investigation of Piles

The more I read about piles, the better a bin or composting tumbler or machine looks to me.  There are about ten different highly specific ways to build a compost pile.  Most pile types advocate adding green and brown materials in layers.  (Green materials are fresh–like fresh leaves or kitchen scraps.  Brown materials are dried leaves, sticks and wood chips.)

Why do I have to feed the compost?

I get the point of microorganisms to break down the compost. That is how soil is made.  I do think it is odd that I might have to feed my compost pile hamster food in order to get it started.  That is just odd.

My Pile of Leaves is Composting itself

I have this pile of leaves at the end of my driveway.  I put it there because I thought the city would pick it up for its compost pile.  The city has not picked them up, though, and the pile is steadily growing smaller as it decomposes.  So, now I am wondering why all of the fuss about compost piles and ratios and stuff.  When I was at Fort Ticonderoga, we used a cold-composting row method that I learned from a Hungarian gardener with whom I worked while in Delaware.  It worked fine without a bunch of temperature taking and such.  I’m not sure I can deal with the pile thing.  Tomorrow I’ll look at compost bins.