Use compost properly in my garden?

[GardenDoc]

What Should Composting be all About?

For many people, composting is just an alternative way of dealing with rubbish. It prevents the garbage bin from getting full and smelly. It’s also a way of disposing of grass clippings and leaves, which saves many trips to the garbage depot. Whilst these things are valid, they are not giving compost the full credibility it deserves. Compost can be very valuable when used in the right way.
I have a completely different way of looking at compost. To me, composting is a way of building valuable nutrients that will, one day, feed me and my family. I only use compost on my vegetable gardens. The way I manage my vegetable gardens means that composting is an integral part of the whole food production system. I create compost as a way of collecting nutrients in one form (waste), and turning them into another form (food).
The average person buys food from a shop, consumes it and then sends the waste away. This is simply buying nutrients, taking what you need for that precise moment, and disregarding the remainder. It’s a nutrient flow that only flows in one direction, like a fancy car roaring down the road. You admire the car for a moment, but after a second or two, it’s gone.
My goal is to slow down the car and then get it to do a U-turn. I want to keep the nutrients within my property where I can capitalize on them. By doing this, I am able to use the nutrients again, so I don’t have to buy them for a second time. Surely, that’s going to save me money. It may seem strange to think of nutrients in this way when we can’t even physically see them. However, all organic materials contain nutrients. My goal is to get those nutrients out of the form they are in and into a form that is useful to me and my family.
To put it in a different way; composting is a vehicle in which we are able to create a nutrient cycle within our property. We are part of that cycle because we consume the nutrients when they are, for a brief time, in a useful form. Then they return to the compost and slowly make their way into another useful form where we consume them again. This cycle can go on and on indefinitely. Of course, there will be many lost nutrients that you will never see again, but with a little diligence, you will be surprised at how much compost you can create, and hence, how many valuable nutrients you can recycle.
My composting system is large because I have a few large vegetable gardens. I believe that the size of your vegetable garden should be determined by how much compost you can create, and not merely by the amount of space you have in your backyard. To run a rich, high yielding vegetable garden you need to have some sort of soil conditioning plan, and the best thing for your soil is a generous layer of good compost on the surface a few times per year.
If you can create your own compost from the organic waste that you generate in your everyday life, then you can have a vegetable garden that is self-sustainable. Once it is set up, it will never need nutrients in the form of store-bought fertilizers. You will have established a flow of nutrients, and your nutrient-store will grow bigger and bigger, year after year. Applying compost to your garden will have a very positive effect on your soil structure and fertility. With good soil structure and plenty of organic material, you will be able to release nutrients that have been locked up and unavailable to your plants. You will be speeding up the flow of nutrients, thus increasing your yield significantly. Your soil will become alive and healthy with micro-organisms and soil bacteria that are beneficial to creating the conditions for proper plant growth. Your vegetables will contain all the essential nutrients in the correct proportions, giving your body the vitamins and minerals it needs to function at its best.
Composting is very easy once you make it part of your everyday life. A small container on your kitchen bench to collect scraps and a daily trip to the compost bin is all it takes. It’s a small effort for huge rewards. The golden rule in making compost is never to have large clumps of a single type of material. Thin layers of hot and cold materials work best. Cold materials include leaves, shredded newspaper and dried grass clippings. Hot materials include fresh grass clippings, manures, weeds, discarded soft plants and kitchen scraps.
If you make composting part of you daily routine, along with an effective method of growing food, you can literally save thousands of dollars per year. This is possible simply because you won’t have to keep buying nutrients over and over. You will buy them once, hold onto them and then convert them into useful forms again and again. It’s that simple!
Jonathan White is an Environmental Scientist

[Harasimow]

Heres some ideas of what I put into my compost heap.

Kitchen Scraps
Scraps from the office
Grass clippings
Shredded paper from the office
horse manure
urine
cut flower stems
Old pots of spent compost
Growbags from the greenhouse.
All spent crops from the allotment and garden
Anything anyone chucks on the general heap that can be composted.
Comfrey + nettles
Annual weeds.


Where I pick my horse manure up from some is fresh and some is well rotted. Which is better to add to a compost heap? I usually put well rotted straight on the ground and fresh through the compost heap.

I use compost for parsnips, carrots and mulching.

[oldjerry]

Well Garden doc I think you may be preaching to the converted here(in fact I think some here aren't just already converted,they're high priests/esses.).

[pelmetman]

I'm with Oldjerry here, we've been composting for more years than I care to remember, but nevertheless interesting anyway.

Sue

[Rosendula]

GardenDoc may be preaching to the converted, but he (she?) is doing it very well. I'd be interested to know if you have a composting toilet, GD - something I would love to have.

hello, btw

[Minnesota]

GardenDoc may be preaching to the converted, but he (she?) is doing it very well. I'd be interested to know if you have a composting toilet, GD - something I would love to have.
hello, btw

I had the very same thought. Cause if you aren't incorporating Human waste, then it's not really a cycle.
without human waste, compost is just returning any unused nutrients back into the soil...the used nutrients go to the loo.

[Green Aura]

GardenDoc just started a new thread identical to this one - complete with all the web links that I removed from this one (and after I sent a polite pm informing him of our rules). It's obviously spam so I've treated it accordingly and zapped him

I haven't removed this thread because of all the response but I can if you want me to.

[Minnesota]

Is GardenDoc sellin' gadgets or ideas ?

If he's sellin' gadgets...I Vote him off the island !

[Green Aura]

Sorry honey, can't remember - I've had a sleep since then! Like I said the new thread was identical - so I didn't look today.

[KathyLauren]

Is GardenDoc sellin' gadgets or ideas ?
If he's sellin' gadgets...I Vote him off the island !

Sorry honey, can't remember - I've had a sleep since then! Like I said the new thread was identical - so I didn't look today.

Pick a sentence from the post and Google it. You'll find the exact same text in lots of places. He's allegedly selling DVDs. But you can't find out more until you give him your email address. So what he's really selling is your email address.