Compost

Chapter excerpt from The Best of the Barefoot Farmer, Chapter I: Elementals

What is the easiest way to create a rich humus and a garden full of life? Compost! The 'organic' in organic agriculture refers to life, and by mixing organic materials with manures to make compost piles, we use life for our fertilizer.

In olden days, a huge manure pile was a sign of wealth. To impress a prospective bride's family, peasants were known to have borrowed a neighbor's compost pile just to have it near their place and appear wealthy. These peasants understood the value of manure, as their lives depended on it. By correctly composting it and returning it to their fields, they maintained a naturally fertile humus that allowed them to grow their crops.

A good garden soil is dark brown in color with a loose, crumbly texture and it's full of living beings. When these living beings die, their remains become the ideal plant food. It is this biological activity that has fertilized plants for eons and continues to do so in organic

agriculture. All of the hungry beings quickly go to work on whatever falls to the ground, first turning it into their bodies, and then back into the soil when they excrete and die. The soil is like a big stomach, digesting whatever falls on it.

Who are these beings? We can see earthworms, literally farmers' and gardeners' best friends. Their castings and tunnels create wonderful soil. Pill bugs, springtails, centipedes, grubs and a host of other small insects inhabit a live soil, looking for food and eating each other. Above

them are mice, birds, frogs, lizards and other creatures, also hungry and always eating and pooping.

Then there are all the small microorganisms, some living only a few moments before they die and become plant food. An acre of good topsoil may have 1,000 pounds of earthworms in it but could contain up to 2,000 pounds of protozoa and another 1,000 pounds of bacteria. With about one billion bacteria per gram of soil, these guys don't weigh much. A half a ton of them is a lot of mouths to feed; add to this all of the yeasts, fungi and algae and you have a hungry crew out there.

What's for dinner? All of the plants and animals that die and start to rot. The greater the diversity and quantity of life in your garden, the healthier your plants will be.

The compost pile is the heart of the garden and fall is a great time to make one. There is plenty of garden refuse to gather and by spring planting time, you'll have the world's best fertilizer. Composting is rewarding and enlightening as we turn death into life. I prefer a shady spot for the compost pile so it doesn't dry out in the sun. It's handy to choose a place close to the garden. The ground should be well drained so the nutrients don't leach away.

A pickup truck loaded with manure, although not necessary, is a real boon to your composting operation. Manure is irreplaceable in many respects in farming and gardening. We have yet to fully understand the complexities of nature with regard to intestinal flora and microbiology. We do know that many living beings inhabit a cow's tummy. They live in the cow's four stomachs along with the cow's dinner, and special life energy is engendered there and then excreted. These live entities help things to decay and through their death create humus, which in turn promotes future life.

Many cattle farmers and horse owners will let you have a truckload of manure in return for cleaning their barn. Everybody gains when we clean barns and make compost. Manure is the nitrogen source for the compost and gets the pile warm and working. I'm a manure connoisseur, and although cow is my favorite, I like horse manure because it heats up, pig for root crops, and chicken for its high fertilizing power. I avoid manures from commercial confinement operations, because of all the chemicals they use.

Another element to consider is carbon, which grabs and keeps the nitrogen from fleeing into the air. Carbon is abundant in the garden, field or forest. First, I gather dry fibrous materials, like old corn-stalks, rotten hay and leaves, to make a bed for the pile. A foot and a half of loose carbonaceous material underneath the pile allows good access for the all-important air.

Next, shovel or fork the manure on, about three to four inches all over the pile. I like to start a pile about ten feet in diameter and build it up with sloping sides to about seven feet wide at the top. Round ones appeal to me, but if I have a large amount of compost material I'll put it into windrows eight feet wide and 20 or 30 feet long. After the manure, a sprinkling of good garden soil is a dandy way to ensure that the pile has the soil microorganisms present. They 'teach' the manure and garden refuse how to rot; in other words, how to become soil. It's like adding yeast to your bread recipe. You can make bread without it, but better bread with it.

If you're pulling weeds for the pile, you have clumps of dirt with handles. Just bang them together and the micro-buddies fly all over the pile, happy to be in such rotten company. Pile on the old tomato vines, okra stalks, pigweeds and grass clumps. After a foot or so of this, layer on another few inches of manure and keep going. Other good things we add to our pile are rotten sawdust, kitchen scraps, pond muck and leaf mold. Anything that was once alive can be turned back into life-giving soil through composting.

Often it's a good idea to water the pile at this stage, especially if the manure is dry. We all know stuff rots when it's wet, so don't build a dry compost pile. Soak it down. You want it moist like a wrung-out sponge, though too much water will drown all your little helpers. A dry, white mold will appear on a pile that feels too dry to the touch, and it's a sign to add water. Keep on layering. By crisscrossing some big hollow ragweeds or cornstalks on the pile, you create air tunnels into the center of the pile. This will allow you to avoid the big job of turning your compost pile to get air inside. A well-built pile made in the fall will be ready by next May with no turning, but you can speed up the process by forking it over in a few months or poking holes in it with a large iron bar.

Rock dusts are another good thing to add to the compost pile. Soils in the South didn't get the last glacial activity and the resulting grinding up of rocks. Spreading rock dusts is a way to compensate for this because they help remineralize the land. Besides their specific mineral content, rocks have energy in them, which may be the reason that ancient cultures built rock circles and towers. Lime is the most commonly used agricultural rock dust, but is not added to a manure based compost heap because it dissipates the nitrogen. It is excellent to use in a plant-based pile, though.

We use colloidal or rock phosphate on our farm and in our compost piles. It is made by grinding up the rock called apatite that has a small, immediately available phosphorus content and a large reserve. Sulfuric acid is sometimes added to it to make superphosphate, which has much more readily available phosphate, but organic farmers don't use it. We want our plants to get their nutrients from a stable humus, not straight out of the bag.

Rock phosphate, also called pebble phosphate, is a mined product with a higher phosphate content. Colloidal phosphate is a by-product from the settling ponds at the mine, and has a finer texture. I use about 100 pounds per pile, or 600 pounds per acre if I am spreading directly. I believe composting helps the rock dusts go through an enlivening process. Granite meal is ground granite rock containing potassium and other minerals. We get ours from a Georgia quarry where it's a native rock and given away. Basalt is from Massachusetts, and clodbuster is from New Mexico. Greensand, a good potash source, is from old seabeds. All of these are valuable when sprinkled on the layers while making compost. I've also added flood plain debris and sand. When the pile is five feet tall, I leave a depression in the center of it to catch rainwater. A 'skin' of hay or leaves will help shade it if it's in direct sun.

With the biodynamic method, which we've been practicing since 1986, small amounts of specially prepared plants are inserted into all the finished piles. I use a stick to make two-foot deep holes in the pile and put a little compost in my hand, then add a spoonful of the preparation to it, squeeze it together, and thrust it into the fresh pile. I use stinging nettle and oak bark in the center of the heap, and around the edges insert yarrow and chamomile on one side, dandelion and Valerian on the other. (The article 'Agriculture Course' has more information regarding the biodynamic preparations.)

The pile will warm up as it rots and then later cool back down; as the original materials lose their shape, earthworms and other small animals will appear. This 'second stage' compost can be used on heavy feeders like corn or squash. At the third and final stage, it will be a dark brown, friable humus where nothing original is distinguishable, and can be used on vegetables, fruits, berries, flowers, herbs, pasture, lawns or anywhere you want to bring life energy into your land.

The place where the cows eat all winter is where we make our huge compost piles. They leave some of the hay uneaten with lots of manure around, so after they feed for a few weeks I scrape it up with a front-end loader, sprinkle in soil and maybe some rock dusts, and leave it to compost in a shady spot.

How much compost do you need? I spread one to two tons per acre for hay and pasture land and up to 20 tons per acre for crops, depending on what I'm growing. Even small amounts of compost have a wonderful effect on the soil life. In a garden bed, I toss a bushel or two every 100 square feet ' more if the land is poor and less if the crop is not a heavy feeder.

Just give the invisible benefactors a chance and they will do their job. They've been doing it for eons, and all we need to do is quit poisoning them so they can get back to work. The effects will spread out over your garden and create a fertile haven for growing delicious food, and you'll have plenty of healthy weeds for next year's compost pile.

Compost happens!