Grow Your Own
(Page 10 of 13)
May/June 1970
By Jeanie Darlington
Pine needles and seaweed are good additions to the pile. Lumber yards have plenty of sawdust free for the hauling. The wineries in Napa, especially Charles Krug, give away grape residue free. (They also use it as fertilizer for their vines.) You can get a truck load of manure, not well-rotted, but perfect for composting, at Grizzly Peak Stables in Tilden Park (Berkeley) for $1.50 a truckload, bring your own truck.
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I called the Steam Beer Brewery in San Francisco and they will give you spent hops. Here's how. Take a plastic garbage can with a tight fitting lid over to them. They will fill it when they do the next brewing, but you must pick it up promptly. Forget about Hamm's Brewery. They use extract of hops.
You don't need all these ingredients of course, only what's handy for you.
Cover the pile with black plastic. This helps soak up the sun's heat, keeps the rain from leaching out nutrients, and holds the moisture in. After a few days, the pile should heat up to 130-160 degrees, which indicates that bacterial action is happening. If the pile is not heating up, you need to add more nitrogen. If it should smell, add some natural ground limestone.
1. Water each layer - the order of layers is not important.
2. Cover with black plastic.
3. Leaves tend to mat unless they are shredded, so don't put them down in thick layers.
4. Add your garbage every few days by digging into the pile, adding the garbage and covering it.
5. Turn the pile after a few weeks.
The speed of the breakdown of compost depends upon the amount of nitrogen available. Nitrogen is necessary as a source of energy for the bacteria and fungi which do the composting work. This is why you add manure. Alternatives to manure are: bloodmeal, bone meal, tankage or sewage sludge. I have stopped recommending cottonseed meal as a nitrogen source because of the widespread use of DDT and other pesticides on the cotton crop. If you put sawdust in the pile, be sure to put in extra nitrogen.
Don't bother with commercial "bacterial compost activators." You will have plenty of bacteria naturally in the compost materials. Just b-- sure to feed them nitrogen.
You may want to turn the pile after 2 or 3 weeks to check on the amount of moisture and degree of decay. Add water if it needs it and add nitrogen in any form if the center of the pile is not finished. Turn it so that the top and side materials become the center.
By now the earthworms will have made their way to your pile. Word travels fast. Or you can buy some red wrigglers to put in the pile. Red worms like partially decayed humus, whereas blue worms like it more completely decayed. The earthworms and soil bacteria release the minerals, making them more readily available to the plants. The more earthworms you have, the faster humus is digested; and the more humus, the more worms.
I seem to have plenty of worms without having to buy any, but you can get them from various places. See page 85 for addresses.
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