Compost: A Short Rundown on Rot

In short, compost is–rotten stuff that’s broken down so that it becomes extra nutritious dirt. It’s often made up of either foods, vegetation, paper/wood products, manure, or all of it. For some new to the gardening game compost and mulch can be confused. They are similar except mulch is usually more like a top dressing or blanket for plants. Compost is normally mixed with existing soil before planting or sowing to enrich the soil and make the consistency better. There are several ways to get compost with the easiest way being to buy it. But if you’re wanting to make your own and have the patience there are several methods:

Worm Composting

Worm composting kits/composters are available online and elsewhere. The worms can be ordered as well. These aren’t the standard worms you find in your garden. These are special red worms. The two most widely used are Lumbricus rubellus and Eisenia fetida. How does it work? Worms eat food scraps you put into their bin and then the worms excrete stuff the gentry call vermicompost and most of the rest of us call worm poop.

There are drawbacks aside from the special equipment and special worms. Just like most composting it takes time. You have to apply the scraps in layers because the worms need a special temperature. The amount of compost usually isn’t a whole lot and you also need to be able to deal with the grossness of worms.

Trench Composting

It’s exactly how it sounds. You dig a trench or hole, throw food scraps like vegetables and fruits, coffee, egg shells, or other green vegetation in, and bury it. This is a long process. It can take up to a year for many things to fully decompose in the ground. It is easy and some people dig various holes and turn the soil the following year, The disadvantages are the time it takes, the space needed, and if you deal with animals (especially those on the wild side like raccoons) you need a hole deep enough that they won’t dig the rotting stuff up.

Open Air Composting

This is a big heap of stuff like garden waste, food scraps, brown materials like dried leaves or paper, etc. The heap could over time decompose on its own but to get proper compost and avoid the smells you have to turn every so often to provide oxygen which helps break the materials down. It can take up to 18 weeks to have a finished product. It’s dependent on your area’s climate and how much time you put into it. There are obvious drawbacks–it’s going to be smelly so it’s best to have a large property to place your heap away from your home. Then there’s the problem of animals being attracted to the stink of it. On top of that, it can be pretty labor-intensive. So if live in a small place, have a stomach easily turned by smells, or hate physical activity you may want to take a pass on this one.

Bin Composting

Works like open air just in a tidy bin or tumbler. Bins usually have to be stirred around every once in a while so tumblers are handy since all you have to do is turn the handle. Also like open air it can take up to 18 weeks to a year to compost if you do nothing. But, like open-air composting, if you’re attentive and your weather behaves it can take around 8 weeks to have usable compost

Bokashi

I know–it sounds cool already, right? Bokashi came about in the early 1980s developed by Teruo Higa at the University of the Ryukyus in Kyoto. It’s a process in which kitchen scraps including meat and dairy are put into a specific kind of air-tight container that is “inoculated” (it just means stuff is added to it) like wheat germ or what they call Bokashi Bran which in turn creates microorganisms that help break down your pile of trash into a fermented pile of stink. After that it can be added to other compost, buried, or whatever else to help it decompose more. So yeah, you don’t get a ready pile of compost but some swear by it for healthy soil. The downsides are stink, special equipment, and again, you don’t get a finished product.

Electric Composting

Yeah, they exist if you haven’t been keeping up. Electric composters that can sit in your kitchen and make compost in a day. These contraptions are timesavers and cost a pretty penny. They’re also pretty cool.

Compost Toilets

They’re pretty expensive, mostly high maintenance, and often downright gross. There might be some compost toilet enthusiasts out there who would like to argue about this.. but I stand by what I wrote.