The Tao of Compost#

The making of compost is not only essential for our (completely organic) vegetable garden, but one of the fundamental keys to a more sustainable way of living. It is one of the most important ways that we can cycle nutrients in our human-ecosystem, rather than throwing nutrients "away". There is, in reality, no "away" in the world, and most of the "pollution" problems facing humankind are a failure to recognise this simple fact.

Compost feeds the soil. It serves as a sponge that stores water. It serves as habitat for the billions of bacteria, yeasts and fungi that we and our plants cannot live without. Truly, we are all symbiotes with one another. The health of our soil will be reflected with complete fidelity in our own physical, mental, spiritual and social health. Societies that neglect the health of their soils have never lasted long in history. Societies that actively harm the health of their soils are deeply trapped the final spirals of their own death.

Nature does not make hot compost. Nothing in nature, other than ourselves, piles up large mounds of organic materials and fosters the correct conditions for making compost so fast that it gets hot. (Really, really hot! Our compost heaps reach temperatures in excess of 70°C during Stage 1 composting.) There are many arguments for and against hot composting, and this is neither the time nor the place to go into those, but we do make our compost by the "conventional" hot composting method. An important reason for this is the primary source of our composting materials...

Compost making demands a good source of bulk organic matter. Leaves, grass clippings, horse, cattle, goat, sheep and chicken manures, plant trimmings and kitchen "waste". All are grist for the Composting Mill. In fact, our compost requirements are so large that we grow several plants specially for feeding to the compost heaps. Cannas and Agapanthus catch our grey water and, in turn, get slashed for composting and sheet-mulch. These plants are used to add green (nitrogen-rich) matter to our bulk composting material: horse-shit. Stable sweepings, really, free for the loading from a nearby stable. They bed their horses on sawdust (locally abundant and cheap) and they don't muck-out the bedding, so we get the woody bedding richly nutrified with nitrogen in the form of urine. Pretty close to ideal compost mix all by itself. All we need do is add a bit more green matter and lots of water.

A compost heap is nothing less than an artificial ecosystem that evolves as it progresses from being a pile of leaves and manures to become a rich, nutritious soil-builder. It is a huge and complex community of (mostly invisible) organisms, each with its own "Eat, Thrive, Reproduce, Die" agenda, each serving to convert chemicals from their raw form into some other form, in a network of interactions of stunning complexity and fascination. The end result is that we start with pile of "waste" materials and end up with soil-food. The Tao of Composting is keeping these various microbiological communities happy...

Next: Composting Theory
or you may prefer to jump straight to Composting Practise