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Re: Compost!

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

On Sat, 11 Sep 1999 03:08:33 EDT, CynMob@aol.com , late of Pablo
Fanques Fair wrote:

>Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html
>
>Okay, brown v. green.  Is the discriminator what color it is when you put it 
>in OR the original source of the material?  Fresh grass is green but the old 
>dry stuff is a brown?  And old horse manure is brown, while the more recent 
>gleanings are a different color -- not even getting into the problem with new 
>manure burning -- and how new is new anyway? -- is horse manure either brown 
>or green depending on age?

The biochemical basis for this is whether the material is a carbon
source or a nitrogen source. Fresh grass clippings, fresh kitchen
vegetable scraps, and fresh horse manure are all sources of
nitrogen, hence they can be considered "green" (even though the
horse manure is probably quite brown <g>). Dried leaves, coffee
grounds (and filters!), wood chips, straw, and shredded paper are
mostly carbon, hence are considered "brown" material.

This explains why the substitutions work. If you are short of
"greens", you need a nitrogen source, so using a little fertilizer
can make up for that. If you are short of "browns", some peat moss
or some hay could make a good substitute. As a rule of thumb, any
"fresh" vegetative material is a "green", and any dried vegetative
material is a "brown".

 

-- 
Kevin B. O'Brien                  TANSTAAFL
kob1@ix.netcom.com
Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour. " 
    -- Gioacchino Rossini 

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