Many years ago when my husband was courting me from a far-away land, he sent me first a bouquet of flowers. Next, a ticket to Tuscany. Wow! I was pretty excited on the third day when a huge brown box arrived at my front door! I eagerly ripped the box to shreds and imagine my face when I saw… a… compost bin, some assembly required… And this was just the beginning. Next time I’ll tell you about the box of red wrigglers he sent me — after we were officially engaged. Do you have a compost story to share? Please go to http://www.facebook.com/practicallygreen and post it, or comment at the bottom of this post!

One of the first realizations of a beginning gardener is something mysterious called Compost. The beginner is quickly aware that compost is essential, not optional; that it’s got something to do with food, and dirt, and rot. In the words of Dr. Eric Sideman of the Maine Organic Framers and Gardeners Association: “Composting is a natural, biological process in which microorganisms use organic materials as food and leave a residue of digested organic matter that is almost completely decomposed. Composting is the same as the decomposition that happens to all living things when they die, except that you control composting in order to provide optimum conditions for the microbes, and the process takes place in a specific location so that you can collect the product.”

Ok, so what does it look like? Here’s a picture of star-quality British compost in Winter taken by my friend Dominique, who knows a thing or two about gardening. (She sent it to me with the subject line: compost porn.)

I suppose it’s possible to garden without compost, but you wouldn’t want to: not only might your veggies be limpid and your flowers stunted, you’d be missing the whole point, which is that gardening is all about conditioning the soil. And conditioning the soil is all about COMPOST.

Simply put, compost is the black gold that makes your garden grow. Compost is a substance that improves the garden soil with key nutrients. It is ideally composed of a balanced combination of wet-and-dry, airy-and-heavy, with a carbon:nitrogen ration of 15:1. Sound way too complicated? It really isn’t.

Most household composters I know collect their kitchen scraps as they go through the day, and dump them into their outdoor bin when the kitchen container is full. Food scraps begin to decompose in the outdoor bin when compatible ingredients such as leaves, manure, seaweed, grass clippings, or sawdust, are added.

You need two containers: one on your kitchen counter to collect scraps, and one outside near your garden. Both need secure lids. Gardeners Supply Company sells lots of decent buckets and bins, as well as accessories, such as the BioBags I’m using this year (see photo at top).

Note: as you shop for compost gear, you’ll begin to notice bizarre-sounding items such as “Super Hot Compost Starter” and “Red Wiggler Worms.” Yes, a $20 sack of blood meal and bone char to heat up your compost hot. Yes, live worms arriving at your door. You see, you want your compost to process, to break down, to cook, to heat up. Worms speed the process. Turning the mixture helps; you’ll need a dedicated long-handled shovel (or pitch-fork, or aerator, depending who you talk to).

You’ll discover that experienced composters are quite opinionated. This one swears by worms, that one relies on chicken poop. This one poo-poos meat scraps, that one flings entire lasagnas and chicken carcasses into the bin. Intervale Compost in Burlington, Vermont — a leader in the space for years — tends toward the inclusive end of the range. Got flies? My local compost guru says to throw in a few shovels of dirt. (Gardeners Supply sells fly traps.)

Investigate a few of the excellent online resources (a smattering is listed below), talk with your favorite local gardening experts, and dig in!

  • The Intervale’s reading list on Composting: http://www.intervalecompost.org/articles.htm
  • Organic Gardening offers a rich resource on composting ingredients, and on how to achieve the optimal balance of carbon and nitrogen.
  • The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s web site is teeming with information; downloadable Fact sheet #5, “Composting in the Back Yard or on a Small Farm” is an especially invaluable backgrounder. Amid the sometimes clattering advice on composting, MOGFA is a kindly neighbor in faded overalls; they’ve been at it for years. Who but MOFGA would have this post-war quote on their home page: “The soil is, as a matter of fact, full of live organisms. It is essential to conceive of it as something pulsating with life, not as a dead or inert mass.” — Albert Howard, The Soil and Health, 1947
  • As I write, the Gardener’s Supply website has eighteen articles on composting.

Do you have a favorite compost ingredient? Technique? Have you given up on composting? Just started? Let us know how it’s going, and if you have questions, we’ll do our best to answer them.