Seasons of the Garden
Maintaining a hot compost pile in a home greenhouse doesn't have to be a chore and can increase the yield and vigor of the plants, also includes research briefs, gleanings.
January/February 1987
By Greg and Pat Williams
Heated With Compost
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A fresh compost pile in a home greenhouse can provide heat and CO 2 , increasing both the yield and vigor of indoor plants. And maintaining a hot heap doesn't have to be a grueling chore.
Bob Kornegay worked out the secrets of greenhousing with compost in two winters of gardening in the multipurpose green-house/bioshelter at MOTHER'S Eco-Village. In Bob's design, compost bins were built directly under his plant beds, so that the pile's heat would warm soil instead of air. That way the plants kept growing well even on the coldest winter days.
The carbon dioxide given off by the pile removed a common limitation on greenhouse plant growth—lack of atmospheric carbon for photosynthesis. (An unvented greenhouse can use up all available CO 2 , by midmorning.) The end result: Bob's crops produced more prolifically than ever and were so healthy they had no pest problems. If you've ever raised crops in a greenhouse yourself, you'll appreciate what an achievement a nobug greenhouse is!
Having to start a new compost pile every time an old one cools down is a big chore. But Bob soon learned that if he mixed fresh manure or calcium nitrate into a cooling pile, the extra nitrogen would boost bacterial activity. The pile would "kickstart" itself and give off lots of heat for a couple more weeks.
Bob solved another problem: ammonia. When a pile first heats up, it releases ammonia gas, which can wipe out crops in a closed-in greenhouse. Bob's answer was to build only one new compost pile every winter (his kickstart technique was the key to that), and to construct it before the weather got cold so he could vent the greenhouse thoroughly during the ammonia stage. With those problems licked, Bob found indoor composting to be a key to indoor growing success.— PS.
Research Briefs
Treat roots right. A Third World horticultural worker used an innovative technique to transport over 300 bare-root fruit trees from the U.S. to Africa with no losses. He dipped the roots in water to remove dirt, sprayed them with a 1:1 mix of hydrogen peroxide and water, and covered the roots (not the tops) with plastic bags for shipping. The peroxide apparently released oxygen for root use and might help increase the survival rate of any bare-root transplants.
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