Why Compost?

by Michelle Higgins

• It saves money. By separating your kitchen wastes and throwing them in the compost bin, wet materials are kept out of the green (landfill) bag. In turn, this cuts down on methane emissions at the landfill and lowers the weight of the trash bag. All haulage companies charge the Town or County by weight.

• You get something back. Composting is easy and food is expensive. There are two types of composting, active and passive. Active composting means you will turn the compost to make it disintegrate more quickly so it is ready to put on the garden sooner. Passive composting means you throw in the kitchen waste, add wood chips, leaves and lawn clippings and wait for it to ‘cook’. The result is free fertilizer for the garden.

• It’s organic fertilizer and after using compost, you’ll never go back to chemicals again. The taste of an organic carrot is unparalleled and you and your family will be healthy.

How Do We Compost?

• Decide what sort of bin you will use by figuring our how much compost you generate each week. Designate an old casserole crock or something similar with a lid and each time it is full, weigh it. The average is 7 lbs. per person per week of kitchen waste but it varies e.g. in sweet corn season it will be a lot more. Once you weigh the waste, say it’s 20 lbs per week, you have two choices; get at least a 40 gallon bin or build a 4’ x 4’ x 4’ bin out of wood, pallets, bricks or TREX. For 10 lbs a week, a 33 gallon bin should do. Conversely, you can buy two 22 gallon burn barrels with the holes in the sides that are the same size as a small garbage bin. This way, you can fill one up and then let it sit while the second one is filling.

• Once you have the bin in mind, read up a bit on composting on one of the websites listed below. The ratio is generally a third kitchen waste to a third green and two thirds brown woodchips or leaves. Keep piles or bins all this and in fall, build a wire circle and put all the leaves into it, water them down and then ask your neighbor for more! This can be achieved in a small garden. In winter, I keep bins in the garage or basement and when the lawn clippings run out, just use the brown for a couple of months, it will still work.

Try an experiment

To observe just how marvelous composting is, try this experiment:

Dig a garden bed 4’ x 2’, or larger and plant garlic cloves, roots down, 4 inches apart in 2 rows 1 foot apart. For this size that would be 24 cloves or about 4 heads of garlic from the store. Add in compost to the left half of the bed but not to the right half. If you compost in summer, start this in fall when you plant the garlic (September – November) and keep adding compost in the spring. In May, when the garlic starts to sprout in the Town of Esopus, you will immediately notice how much taller are the composted garlic smelts on the left side; and when you harvest in August, how much bigger and more aromatic are the new garlic heads. If you plant garlic in spring, dig the bed and add the compost to the left side after planting the garlic cloves and in August the difference will also be remarkable.

Some invaluable Web sites

www.ucrra.org Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency. Includes composting information, bin sales and County specific information.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/8799.html The Department of Conservation hosts this Composting at Home page that gives easy composting directions.

http://www.epa.gov/compost/ The Environmental Protection Agency sets national guidelines and is extremely helpful.

http://www.epa.gov/compost/ (EPA Waste wise program- free program for businesses, municipalities, etc. to implement waste reduction program)

Books available through Town of Esopus Library

Ball, Jeff. Easy Guide To Composting (1992). Ortho Books.

Minnich, Jerry, & the Editors of Organic Gardening. Rodale Guide to Composting. (1979). Rodale Press: Emmaus. PA

Pleasant, Barbara, & Martin, Deborah L. The Complete Compost gardening Guide (2008). Storey Publishing: MA.