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Re: Compost!

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

On Sat, 11 Sep 1999 08:17:02 -0400, "Frank Teuton"
<fteuton@total.net> , late of Pablo Fanques Fair wrote:

>O'Brien, obviously living the life o' Riley at Pablo's, raucously wrote:
>
>>The biggest issue with compost is that you need a balance of sorts
>>between the "browns" and the "greens". Browns are the dried stuff
>>like leaves rakes from your lawn in the fall. Stuff that is dried
>>out. Greens are things like fresh grass clippings, kitchen vegetable
>>scraps, etc. Too much brown stuff and not enough green and you don't
>>get the level of bacterial action you want.
>
>So they say. But, I have found that if you keep it moist and sic worms on
>it, leaves and paper even, will get all dark and humusy fast enough, and the
>stuff that really takes time is big chunks of lignin, like large wood
>chips.....so while other composters say 1 part greens to one part browns, by
>volume, I say two bags of leaves to one bag of grass clippings, will do just
>fine---and you can do without the grass clippings if you keep them moist and
>fold them leaves into an active bin.

Oh, I quite agree. And I think the point is that you can get too
carried away with obsessively measuring all this stuff when it isn't
really necessary.

However, I did have a learning experience concerning grass
clippings. When I was trying to get my garden going I was bagging
and composting all of my grass clippings to get as much compost as
possible. As it piled up, I didn't really have "browns" to mix in.
Well, I got a very slimy stinky mess as all of that anaerobic
fermentation took place. So I got a few bales of peat moss and built
a new pile, layering the grass clippings with the peat moss, and the
odor disappeared and I got nice compost out of it instead of slimy
matted layers.

I don't have that problem any more because I don't bag my grass
clippings. I realized I was robbing one part of my yard to feed
another, and my lawn was getting very problem-filled. I was getting
rock-hard ground, little grass, lots of weeds, and a real mess. This
year I reformed my ways, and now I have raised my mower setting as
high as it will go, removed the bag and switched to "mulching" the
grass clippings. The ground is getting softer, and the grass is much
healthier, and I should be able to gradually beat back the weeds now
since the grass will outcompete the weeds.


-- 
Kevin B. O'Brien                  TANSTAAFL
kob1@ix.netcom.com
Si hoc Legere Scis Nimium Gruditionis Habes

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