A Great Summer For Compost

It's a reach, I know.  But this was the only good thing about Houston summer weather that I could wholeheartedly affirm.

Looks pretty good, right?

It's been a wonderful summer for making compost.  The perfect conditions were present:  lots of hot, sunny weather, followed by lots of rain.  Down here in Fort Bend County, the rain came at the correct intervals and I never had to actually go out and water my compost.  I always feel silly doing that. 

I am a lazy cold composter, so I don't get very scientific about it.  Sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly energetic in the fall, I take the family on evening jaunts to gather leaves.  The Chief Engineer drives the van, my daughter keeps her head low so no one from school will recognize her, and I hop out and grab bags of leaves on the night before garbage day.  I like the clear plastic bags the best: that way I know exactly what I'm getting.  The idea is to alternate the dry brown leaves (carbon) with the lawn clippings (green).  I figure we cut the grass from about late February through October, so I try to get about 40 big bags.  Of course, then I have to stack them all behind the garage (but not against the garage!), which causes its own difficulties.

No leaves this summer.

My compost bin is built from a wonderful bracket set that I got from the Lee Valley catalog.  It can accommodate sides up to four feet long, but I will tell you -- that's too big.  I made some mistakes when I built mine, so you don't have to!  First, don't place it right up against the fence, especially not in a corner.  It's good to be able to get at it from all four sides.  Second, don't plan on making your bin 4 feet by 4 feet.  It's difficult to manage and difficult to fill entirely.  Make it 3 feet by 3 feet.  Third, don't cut your boards to fit exactly.  Make them as long as they can be without knocking into the boards on the adjoining sides.  When the bin is full, the compost presses outward, and boards cut too close will fall out of the slots.

My routine is simple:  I fill a metal bin in the kitchen with food wastes (plant material only).  When it's full, I dig a hole in the compost outside, stirring the big pile as best I can.  I bury the fresh trimmings.  In the summer, by the time the kitchen bin is full, the previous batch is already pretty far advanced.  I try to bury each batch in a different spot in the big pile. When I have leaves, I spread them in a layer just before I add that week's grass clippings. Because I am cold-composting, I don't put weeds in my bin, or any sort of animal products or oils.  We do get some critters in there, most notably the green fruit beetle, whose grub is big enough to have a license plate on it.  The wren family teaches insect retrieval classes out there too, but they are too cagey for me to photograph well.

Green Fruit Beetle.  Photo: Ron Hemberger

I usually stop adding vegetable wastes to the pile when the weather turns cool.  The compost sits quietly throughout our short winter and is ready for me to use each spring.  And no, I don't sift it.  It goes back to the garden as is.

Should you compost your tomato plants?

Yes, compost everything -- you want to return all possible nutrients to your soil.  No, composting tomatoes spreads disease and weeds.

I'm ambivalent.  One the one hand, I don't usually have much trouble with diseased tomato plants.  I struggle mightily with insects, but haven't had much tomato blight or viral problems.  On the other hand, the old vines take forever to break down in my compost pile.  And I know for a fact that my compost doesn't get hot enough.

If I were trying to grow tomatoes from seeds, I'd never have any success.  But they are always popping up in the compost, after I've diligently spread it all around my garden.  Picture those huge, sprawling cherry tomato plants all over the garden!

Experts say you can safely compost tomato plants, even diseased ones, if you're confident that your compost pile reaches temperatures of 150 degrees, and you cure it long enough for all the plant material to completely die.  The worst of the tomato diseases, like late blight, cannot survive without a living host.  So in theory, if your compost-making process is perfect, disease won't be a problem.

If, like me, you don't have disease problems, go ahead and compost your old tomato plants.  My seedlings are as likely to come from kitchen waste as they are from garden debris.

Here's a good explanation of the tomato-composting issue.

Update on the Straw Bale Garden

Well I was so excited back in March to set up my straw bale garden. It seemed like such a neat and tidy way to create a raised, well-draining garden without all the trouble.  I arranged four bales of hay (I couldn't find straw) in a square pattern with a hole in the middle.  Then I poured one bag of compost into the middle, and spread three more on the surface of the hay bales.  For ten days, I watered with a dilute solution of fish-emulsion fertilizer, to "begin the decomposition process."  Here's how it looked before the fertilizing started, on March 28:

Don't you love it?  It's very neat and tidy.  Ten days later, I planted seeds, 'Purple Queen' bush beans in the back and 'Cocozelle' summer squash in the front.  I figured it might be hard to keep them watered.  The instructions I read said to use a soaker hose, so I installed one and crossed my fingers.

April warmed up nicely here, and I had good germination.  Both the beans and the squash began to flower well. It's true I had to water every single day, though.  When the seedlings were small, the soaker hose wasn't ideal.  The water would run right through the hay bales, straight down, and never really spread out.  Unless the hose were almost touching the seedling, it didn't get watered.  But I persevered.

As April drifted into May, the plants got bigger and bigger.  The soaker hose was essential, and even still, it was hard to keep the plants well-watered.  May was one of the warmest on record here in the Houston area, and it will show up on my water bill.  I believe it rained once during the month, over a weekend. 

All that water, though, had a terrible side effect on the straw bale garden.  The hay that formed the foundation began to rot and collapse but unevenly.  The top surface of the garden was no longer level, and watering became even more problematic.  Even using the soaker hose wouldn't work:  water ran to the low areas, causing them to sink even more, and leaving the high areas completely dry.  The picture below doesn't really show the collapse in progress, but it's the best one I took.

I think I harvested a grand total of 9 beans.  Although I had lots  of flowers, I can only find one squash in that mess.  I believe this experiment is rapidly headed for the compost heap! 


Note to self:  even bush beans would be better with a trellis or some sort of support.

Virtue Has Its Rewards

It's almost as good as jogging! (Right?) Composting, that is.  This morning I pulled three wheelbarrows-full of new compost from one side of the pile, and mixed it all up again.  Aerated it, watered it, and even gave it a dose of Medina Soil Activator.  And I got it done before it was time to put the new grass clippings in!  I have to confess that I did not screen the compost, though I did pull out all the huge grubs, larvae of the Green Fruit Beetle.  Sometimes I toss them back into the compost pile and sometimes the blue jays get them.

Either way, I am feeling quite virtuous this morning and am off to have a celebratory Mexican lunch in honor of Cinco de Mayo!

By the way, I got this compost kit from Lee Valley Tools.  It was easy to put together but I should have located it where I could reach it from all four sides.