Join the
green revolution right in your own kitchen by composting! Table
scraps, apple rinds, banana peels, and even crushed eggshells can
be
transformed into rich compost at home.
Did You Know? Vermicomposting is a
method of composting where worms known as red wigglers are the main
agents in the composting process.
Who is Compost BOB?
Hi, my
name is Bob and I'm a farmer. I also compost. Here on the farm, we raise
corn, tomatoes, and lettuce along with pigs, sheep and
chickens. We sell a lot of what we produce in our fields but
there's a lot of waste as well. What's the solution for
removing all that waste from our farm?
Composting!
Nature is a wonderful creator as well as a destroyer - ever see a
cucumber seedling break out of the ground and strive for the
sun? That's the creation portion of Mother Nature's grand
design where new
life is spawned in the ground every Spring after the last
vestiges of Winter have disappeared. In the autumn after the
cucumber seedling has grown into a sprawling plant which
bears hundreds of cucumbers, the plant dies as Winter
approaches. Every year, the cycle of life and death begins
anew and composting is part of this essential cycle of
birth, life, and death. When plants die and fall to the
ground, nature's little workers including bacteria and
insects start the process of breaking the plant material
down into what we know as compost. I've scrounged
up a photo of what compost looks like below:
Although the mass upon the shovel looks like plain old dirt,
gardeners and farmers recognize compost as a rich soil
amendment which improves the overall quality of the soil.
Compost contains nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous but it isn't a
replacement for fertilizer - compost can however extend
fertilizers that are used in the soil. Since farms produce a
large amount of agricultural waste, we make compost for use
on the farm but we also sell it to gardeners and other
farmers who buy compost to improve the soil quality in their
own
plots of land. I believe in using compost because it's a
natural solution to improving soil quality and Mother Nature
has had millions of years to hone her handiwork. I'll quote
Lady Eve Balfour below whose words I live by:
- "The criteria for a sustainable agriculture can be
summed up in one word -- permanence, which means adopting
techniques that maintain soil fertility indefinitely."
-- Lady Eve Balfour, "Towards a Sustainable Agriculture --
The Living Soil"
Sir Albert Howard also had some wise words which are quoted
below:
- "The maintenance of the fertility of the soil is the
first condition of any permanent system of agriculture."
-- Sir Albert Howard, "An Agricultural Testament"
Compost is the ultimate result of a natural recycling
process that has been at work on the Earth since plants
first came into existence. Why not use nature's own methods
which are perfect in execution to recycle foliage, dead
vegetation, and potato peels?
The
sheer volume of raw waste material that we produce on the farm
requires that we have a composting system in place that's
different from what a gardener or an apartment dweller might
be used to. To speed up composting, we employ the "The
Berkeley Rapid Composting Method" which was developed by
Robert D. Raabe, Professor of Plant Pathology at UC
Berkeley.
Since time is precious on a farm, the rapid composting
method reduces the amount of time compost is produced to 2-3
weeks as opposed to months with traditional composting
method. On
CompostBOB, we'll mention some of the aspects of the system
that we use on the farm but the focus will primarily be on small
scale composting solutions that anyone can use. That means
home owners, cooperatives, and even condo owners can
compost!
