Thursday, 04 June 2009 10:53

These days, we all hear the terms “sustainable” or “sustainability” on almost a daily basis.  Most of us try to be green in any way that we can whether it’s as simple as recycling cans and newspapers or carpooling, to buying hybrid vehicles and installing solar panels.  We gardeners can do our part by composting some of our home waste materials and recycling them as soil amendments or mulches for use in our yards.  

Denver Solid Waste Management has found that one-third to one-half of residential waste collection is plant yard waste, depending on the time of year. This amounts to thousands of tons of yard waste going to the landfill every year.  I’d imagine that other landfills, including our local ones, experience similar statistics.  

Composting home waste materials not only reduces the amount of material that ends up in the landfill, but it can be used to improve the soil in our yards and gardens.  Organic matter improves drainage and soil aeration in clay soils, which most of us have here in the Roaring Fork Valley.  It increases the activity of earthworms and other natural soil organisms that are beneficial to plant growth, and nutrients are recycled back into the soil.

There are several methods of composting, all of which have their own benefits.  One of the most convenient methods is the use of compost tumblers.  The advantages to using compost tumblers are that they can be used in small yards, their design deters rodents and other pests, they’re easy to aerate (which speeds up decomposition), the container acts as an insulator (heat is also necessary for decomposition), and you can control the amount of moisture in the compost since it’s an enclosed system.  Depending on the model that you have, composting can be achieved in as little as 14 days compared to using a compost bin which generally takes a minimum of a month with optimum conditions and summer temperatures – much longer when conditions aren’t optimum.  The only downside to tumblers, if you can even consider it one, is that once the tumbler is full and the composting process begins, you have to wait until composting is completed and the tumbler emptied before you can add new material.  It really isn’t too bad of a situation, though, as you can keep an extra container to hold the material to be composted until the batch in the tumbler is done.  Kitchen wastes should be stored in plastic buckets with tight fitting lids, and use sawdust or similarly absorbent materials to minimize odors.

Items that can be composted are: grass clippings, hay, straw, leaves, wood chips and sawdust, weeds and other garden wastes, and kitchen wastes including fruit and vegetable peels, tea bags, coffee grounds, and eggshells.  If you compost weeds, avoid plants that have begun to go to seed, as it’s possible for seeds to survive all but the hottest temperatures.  Items that should not be composted are: chemically treated wood products, diseased plants, human or pet wastes, meat, bones or fatty food wastes, and pernicious weeds.  You should also avoid composting any plant material on which heavy amounts of pesticides or herbicides have been applied…they break down at various rates and you would really have to know that thorough decomposition has taken place.  Plants that have been treated with weed killers that are soil inactive, such as glyphosate products, shouldn’t be a problem when composted in small quantities.

This spring, at Eagle Crest, we are excited to have compost tumblers available for sale.  We’ll also have kitchen scrap containers to help make it more convenient for you to compost your kitchen scraps… less frequent small trips out to the compost container.  For those who prefer to compost the good old-fashioned way, we carry a product called Hi-Yield Compost Maker, which helps speed up the composting process and ensures quality compost.  Some of us really don’t have the room for even a small compost tumbler.  Fear not, we always carry a great selection of soil amendments that are either bagged or sold in bulk.  Composting truly is one more way in which we can do our part to ensure a healthier planet for future generations… and make our gardens prettier for our own enjoyment.

 

 The Caucus thanks the folks at Eagle Crest Nursery for its gardening articles.

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