My finished compost pile; built in the fall, it will hopefully heat up and stay warm during the winter.
So here we are in the second week of November with the sod stripped off a 5 foot by 20 foot patch of lawn for my new garden. And winter is coming on. I need to cover up this dirt so that it will stay warmer as long as possible into the winter, giving the worms and soil microorganisms some extra working time.
Later in the week I’ll cover the garden with a thick mulch of straw, but today the only thing I’m thinking about is compost. Compost is the single most important ingredient for a good garden, period. OK, so water is helpful as well, but you get my point. You can buy compost by the bag or the truckload, of course, but with the sod I’ve removed from the garden patch, a big pile of lawn clippings, an even bigger pile of leaves, a couple of buckets of kitchen vegetable waste and apple peelings, and plant trimming from around my yard, I’ve got enough to make a compost pile.
Thick twiggy coarse dry stuff for the bottom layer of the pile.
We’ll talk in more detail about compost in the coming months, so for today, trust me: you need to build a compost pile if you’ve got the time and the materials.
Here are the basic Revealed Truths about making a compost pile:
Structure of the Pile: The minimum size for a new compost pile is about 3-4 ft.tall and wide (at least a cubic yard). The bigger the pile, the more chance for success during a cold New England winter, because the composting process generates its own heat, and if the pile is too small, it will freeze solid and stop working. (Not to worry! If your pile freezes up you can get it going again in the spring.) You’ll need some sort of rear and side supports for the pile such as old wire fencing or anything else to keep the pile from spreading while you build it. You can even drive 2-3 four-foot stakes on each side and prop broad sheets of cardboard up as temporary walls. Whatever. After you’ve built the pile you can remove whatever you used to prop it up.
Compostable Materials: We’re going to make a compost lasagne of around 30-35 alternating layers of brown (dry or dead) vegetation, green (fresh cut) vegetation, and soil or mature compost or composted manure. (If you don’t have any compost, or can’t borrow some from a neighbor, you should buy a bag or two of unsterilized compost and mix it 50/50 with soil. Active compost contains the microorganisms that will help start the process. No compost? Not to worry! Use the soil from your new garden…it will have the microbes and fungus you need…just not as many as are in compost).
You should have at least as much brown vegetation as green (by volume), somewhere between 1 part brown to 1 part green and 3 parts brown to 1 part green. Brown vegetation means any plant matter that is dry or dead. Avoid weeds with seeds, resinous leaves like pine or eucalyptus, poisonous plants, and grasses or vines that can regrow from their own roots. The green vegetation is just about any plant material that isn’t dry: kitchen wastes (even paper towels, coffee grounds, the newspaper from your bird’s cage), trimmings from your flower garden, grass clippings and the like.
This year I’m cutting down the old, but still green, peony plants, and pulling up some large (but still green) borage plants, and cutting the leaves from all my day lilies. I’ve also got quite a bit of sod which is natural pre-mix of brown, green, and dirt. Size doesn’t matter for any of the compost material as long as you break, cut or chop as much as you can into 2-4 inch long pieces. If you don’t own a garden machete, buy yourself an early holiday gift. You can chop each layer right on the compost pile. (Um…do I need to remind you that a machete is a tool which should only be used by a responsible…and reasonably coordinated…teenager or adult?)
Layer 4--leaves and greens
Building the Pile: I’m building my compost pile on one end of my new garden patch. The soil beneath the pile will benefit from the nutrients that leach from the pile, and my worms and soil microorganisms will be thrilled to find a nearby, more or less warm, pile of nourishment to move into as the composting process breaks the vegetation down. When I lifted the sod and took soil samples, I found that the northern 3-4 feet of the garden has pretty thin, very sandy soil. Obviously the worst soil in the garden, so it’s here that I’ll place the compost pile.
Face the front, or open, side of the pile to the south to pick up as much of the sun…when it’s there…as possible through the coming months.
Begin by loosening the soil under the pile by simply spading it up. Then put a 4-6 inch layer of rough, dead twigs, big tough vegetation with woody stalks and the like to make let some air get to the bottom of the pile. And now, begin the lasagne. three to four inches of brown vegetation, two to four inches of green vegetation, and about an inch of soil or compost sprinkled on top. Water the layer well, but don’t soak it. Now, keep building, layer by layer. Don’t get too obsessive about following the directions! But do try to keep the layers thin and varied. Use all the sod that you’ve removed, of course. Chop the sod up on the ground with your spading shovel or machete, and make a layer by scattering it thinly on the pile…don’t make a solid thick layer.
Layer 9: About an inch of compost
A Caution about Leaves and Grass Trimmings: A solid layer of deciduous tree leaves (like maple) or grass trimmings will almost certainly stay true to form. Six months from now you’ll dig into your compost pile and find a compact, but uncomposted stratum, sort of like the sediment of an ancient seabed but without the fascinating fossils. These are both great materials for composting, but either use very thin (no more than two inches) layers, or mix the leaves and grass together, or mix the grass trimmings with soil or rougher green stuff, or run a mower over the leaves to chop them up. But don’t worry about it. If you find an uncomposted layers of leaves, they’ll disappear within weeks if you turn the pile in the spring.
Layer 25: more chopped sod
Finishing the Pile: Put as much stuff on the pile as you have…don’t stop at three feet just because you want to follow the rules. For the final layer put a good covering of dirt on the top, and some lovely fall decoration to remind yourself that you’ve just domesticated part of the cycle of life, but also to show your humility and respect for the forces of degeneration, recombination and regeneration which are the ceaseless (we hope) endings and beginnings of life here on good ole planet Earth. Then, if you’ve got extra leaves, pile them as thick as you can against the back and sides of the pile and on top…leave the south-facing front open to the sun.
