Composting - Improve your soil, and recycle, too.

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Composting
Every back yard should have one. No, not a swimming pool or spa. A compost pile or bin. They're good for the environment, and they're good for your garden. Don't believe your neighbor if he or she complains "It smells bad, looks ugly and draws flies!"

With the help of moisture, our warm climate, and the millions of microorganisms found in the soil, your yard, kitchen and vegetable garden waste can be decomposed into rich, useful organic matter. Good stuff for improving the quality of soil because it helps hold moisture, supplies nutrients and helps modify the soil.

What's really nice about compost is that anyone can brew up a batch in their back yard. But, like anything, compost needs a little tender loving care for the best results.

This isn't a compost pile. This is where someone has illegally dumped trash in a neighborhood. Cut into small pieces or run through a chipper/shredder it could be added to a compost bin or pile.

A heap of organic matter on the ground is an inexpensive way to get started. Preferably it should be located in a shaded area away from your house but close to a source of water.

Certainly a purchased bin, expensive composter-tumbler, or self constructed compost bin is more aesthetically pleasing than the misconstrued pile of trash that a heap on the ground might seem to be. No matter how you do it - heaped on the ground or placed in a container - it's all compost in the end.

Your biggest concern might be finding enough material to compost if you happen to have a low maintenance landscape and no vegetable garden. Kitchen scraps like wilted lettuce leaves, potato skins, apple cores, carrot peelings, used coffee grounds, etc. are all perfect for the compost pile.

	A homemade, two bin composter. The front slats slide out for turning and removing the finished compost.
	Grubs: good bugs in the compost, bad bugs in the garden soil.

A good compost pile has a mix of green, moist materials and brown, dry stuff. The green stuff is nitrogen-rich and the dry is considered carbon-rich. The green stuff is what helps cook or break down the brown. Straw, twigs, and dry leaves are brown. If the dry stuff is hard to come by you can purchase bails of straw for garden mulch and to add to the compost bin.

Occasionally, to keep things cooking, add an inexpensive bag of steer manure. You need moisture, air and organisms to get everything working together. A cooking, well working compost pile is hot in the center. Be brave and stick your hand down into the compost at least once so you can get an idea of what's going on. If there's no heat the compost pile will need some attention.

	Three bin compost display at the Tucson Botanical Gardens.
	Visitors to the Tucson Botanical Gardens compost demonstration purchase inexpensive compost bins from a Tucson Organic Gardeners club member.

Pretty soon you'll have earth worms, ants, grubs and other insects working in your compost bin to help break down the organic matter. The grubs shouldn't be added to your garden when you go to use the compost. They like to munch on young plant roots.

Prone to a leisurely approach many of us are apt to start a compost pile and gradually add in garden and kitchen waste. During the lulls in adding to the pile it dries out, gets matted down and becomes neglected. Eventually everything will decompose but it takes a lot longer than a pile that's taken care of and treated as a single batch of compost - one that's turned regularly and kept moist. With the right attitude toward your composting a summer batch of the black gold can be ready to use in a matter or weeks.

If you're new to composting, start small. Small quantities of kitchen scraps added to dry leaves or straw mixed with some steer manure and wetted down will start the compost. If you've got some good rich garden soil you might want to add a little of that as well because the organisms in the soil will help the composting process get started. Keep in mind the smaller the chunks of matter you're decomposing the faster the process. Twigs, branches and large objects take more time to break down. But a mix of materials, both large and small, in the compost pile will help you get needed air to work with the other ingredients of the composting formula.

Composting isn't magic but like most gardening activities, it takes a little work to get the best results. As one Tucson Gardener reader suggested, you might want to invest in a compost or soil thermometer that can get down into the heart of the pile or bin. With good composting temperatures in the 95 to 130 degree range you'll know when it's time to turn your pile or add moisture to keep your compost working.

To see several different styles of compost bins in action you can visit the Tucson Botanical Gardens at 2150 N. Alvernon. (1998)