Courtesy of Bryon Hall, SPIN Apprentice, Saskatoon SK
I attended a weekend course to become a compost coach in my city. It was full of useful tidbits I will be using on my compost pile this summer. I’d like to share some of that information in this post!
One of the main points was how uncomplicated and easy composting can be. Let nature do what it does best! Although there is a lot you can do to help this process. To remember what a compost pile needs you can use your hand. It consists of 5 things: air (your pile needs to have even equal aeration), Water (your pile should be very moist, to the point you can squeeze drops of water out of a handful), Browns (these are your high carbon ingredients, usually dead, dry, brown vegetation/wood), greens (high nitrogen, fresh, greens such as kitchen scraps & yard clippings) and finally a shovel full or two of garden soil (to kick start the beneficial microbial activity that is responsible for decomposing your pile).
I use pallets to construct my compost bins, which makes turning them rather difficult with the high pallet walls. To address this, I am going to use a technique I learned at the workshop. To create passive airflow I will be purchasing a length of PVC pipe to insert vertically in the middle of my compost pile. Before insertion I will drill four lines of holes into the pipe to allow air movement into the compost. I am hoping this will speed the process without me having to do additionally manual turning.
Since winters are long here in Saskatoon, I was eager to learn what my options are during that time. There are a few indoor composting methods, but they are more complicated/delicate than a simple outdoors compost pile. The two methods described were Vermicomposting and Bokashi fermentation. The most exciting thing I learned about winter compost is that the process of freezing actually improves decomposition time in the spring! This is amazing! The freezing actually affects the cellular structure of the material causing all the materials to soften when thawed. That changing of the structure makes the food much more accessible to all the microorganisms which will heat up and decompose our compost!
For all the backyard farmers out there who have to deal with complaining neighbors we also touched on concealing compost piles. You can either conceal the pile with plants or incorporating the composting into the design and spaces of your plots. Using plants can be done in two ways, either with a plant growing directly in the compost pile (squash absolutely love volunteering for this) or with trellised plants growing around the structure of your compost pile.
I haven’t had any personal experience with composting in the plot , but am interested in trying this in the future. There are a few common techniques such as the lasagna bed, trenching, keyhole gardens and various ways of doing this that are built into permaculture design.
I am excited to try out some new things this season with my compost pile. I hope you can do some tinkering as well and find success!
DO YOU HAVE ANY COMPOSTING QUESTIONS OR TIPS? POST THEM IN THE FORUM >
