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RE: Composting and Compost tea in NY Times


New York Times -- April 14, 2002 -- Gardens That Survived Sept. 11 and
Drought
By ANNE RAVER -- ITH drought restrictions already imposed in New York,
New Jersey and other states, compost is emerging as the hero of water
conservation. 

"Compost is the key to what we're doing here," said Eric T. Fleisher,
the director of horticulture at the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy
in Lower Manhattan, where the 30 acres of gardens are all organic. "If
you have organic matter, you don't have to water as much."

Picture how water flows straight through sand. "A lot of turf and
athletic fields are sand-based with 2 percent organic matter," Mr.
Fleisher said. "There's nothing to hold the water, structurally."

And there are few beneficial bacteria and fungi to break down nitrogen
and make it available to plants. 

Good, crumbly soil is made out of sand, silt and clay particles held
together by the gums and gels formed by bacteria. Fungi, root hairs and
roots hold these aggregates together, and the arthropods, insects and
earthworms build the spaces that air and water can trickle through. This
is how healthy soil, full of organic matter, holds not only water, but
also the nutrients around plant roots, where they can be used
efficiently.

Mr. Fleisher's crew had to remove up to a foot of dust and debris from
the gardens after the collapse of the World Trade Center a few blocks
away, and the fallout left behind elevated salt levels, as well as
calcium and magnesium. "But adding compost and `compost tea' has been
helping," he said.

Every spring, right about now, the crew top-dresses all the garden beds
with about an inch and a half of compost. The garden supervisor, Eileen
Calvanese, said that a bucketful went into the hole with every new
perennial or shrub. The plants get such a well-balanced diet from the
compost, they don't need high-nitrogen chemical fertilizer, "which goes
straight through the soil and into your water table," Mr. Fleisher said,
along with chemical fertilizer and pesticides.

High-nitrogen fertilizer's other disadvantages include the way it speeds
the growth of plants (making them weak and subject to fungus and
disease) and disappears quickly (so plants have nothing to draw on
later).

Plants are strengthened by fungi inside and outside feeder roots. The
fungi consume carbohydrates made by the plant during photosynthesis, and
give back phosphorus, other minerals and water to the roots. They also
protect the roots from root-rot fungi and parasitic nematodes.

Bacteria, which are high in protein, are also swarming around those
roots, eating plant sugars, and being eaten in turn by protozoa and
beneficial nematodes. These organisms convert the bacteria's protein
into nitrogen, which can then be used by plants. (For more information
on how soil lives and breathes, try ww.soilfoodweb.com, a site developed
by Dr. Elaine Ingham, a soil scientist at Oregon State University.)

"When you have soil that's all sand or all clay, you don't have the
right value of life in your soil," Mr. Fleisher said.

On turf and around the roots of trees, Mr. Fleisher's crew applies a
compost tea made from fish emulsifier, peat, kelp extract and, of
course, compost. Everything else gets straight compost.

And if you use a sprayer, he warns, don't use a force greater than 50
p.s.i. Anything stonger than that will hit the blades of grass like a
Force 10 hurricane.

His gardeners compost in bins, as a home gardener would, and in a $7,000
Earthtub, which stands more than four feet high and eight feet wide. The
crew fills it full of garden cuttings, wood chips and vegetable waste
from nearby markets. As an augur turns the stuff, air is drawn through
the waste and liquid from decomposing matter is siphoned out the bottom;
every six weeks, out come three and a half cubic yards of compost. 

Though a bit over the top for the average gardener, an Earthtub would
make sense for a school or apartment building. The rest of us can
compost in bins in the backyard. Mr. Fleisher recommends a formula that
is roughly 25 percent high nitrogen material (early grass clippings,
vegetable waste or manure), 30 percent lower nitrogen (late grass
clippings, weeds, coffee grounds) and 45 percent woody material (leaves,
prunings).

To keep the material "cooking," he said, your pile should be about four
feet high. Any higher, and it will get too wet or too dry. If those
micro-organisms are doing their work, the temperature will be 130 to 155
degrees, and vegetable matter will turn into compost in about five
weeks.

For information on how to construct a compost bin, contact your local
botanical garden or community garden. Devising a good compost tea is
about as nuanced as perfecting Grandmother's potato biscuits. But I have
been experimenting with a product called SoilSoup (www .soilsoup.com),
which comes highly recommended by expert gardening friends. 

So use the drought as impetus for some serious composting this summer.
You may be surprised at how much water you can save.

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