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With the economic situation what it is, likely there are many first-time or returning gardeners searching the internet for tips this year. That is good. But there are many sites that are long on eye-candy and conjecture and short on facts.

1) Many sites will refer to compost as ‘fertilizer’. While most of my readers know better, new gardeners might get hood-winked. With an NPK macro-nutrient rating of 1-1-1, “fertilizer” is the worst of all possible reasons for using compost. Although the actual values will vary somewhat from batch to batch, compost will NOT ‘shock’ your plants into incredible growth spurts like the bagged and commercially-hyped stuff will. Moreover, some of these sites will try to sell you some compound or other for making ‘super compost’. Ain’t no such thing. Stuff rots. Compost happens. The formula for a healthy compost pile is simple … and free. Water and air along with a 50:50 mix (by volume) of nitrogen-bearing material such as kitchen or garden refuse and any manures you might have access to and carbon-bearing material such as dried tree leaves or straw. Add enough water to make the whole thing fairly moist, toss so as to mix things up pretty well and walk away.

2) Compost is an excellent source of minerals and trace nutrients. These are needed for the major nutrients (usually present in the soil and air in sufficient quantities) to work. The neat part about it is that all of these nutrients are available in a very complex and precise ratio with no effort on our part. The trees, grasses, manures, and other plants that went into the compost already did the mixing for us, having drawn from the ground precisely what they needed … and nothing more. As they decay, they release these micronutrients again and, voila! compost!

3) Many sites will tell you not to use (fill in the blank) type of manure in your compost. These sites are full of (fill in the blank). Don’t use any manures directly in your garden; that is, don’t just toss a shovel full of cat turds on top of the soil. DO include them in your compost.* DO work them into the soil if you can completely cover them to a depth of an inch or more. Nature has effective means to deal with pathogens or mankind would have become extinct a LONG time ago. The idea in organic gardening is to work alongside the mechanisms of nature synergistically. Figure out how nature is handling things and, when beneficial, ‘turn up the volume’.

4) DO make compost and DO add it to your soil. It will work wonders for it, no matter what type of soil you have. It will loosen clay soils, bind sandy soils and will cause your drainage to become right in both cases. If, by some chance, you are able to make more than you can work into your soil, apply it as a mulch in a layer at least two inches and preferably 4 inches (5 to 10 cm) thick.

5) DO read up on compost. Get a sense of how to do it right. Then get out in your backyard and make some. Then make some more. It may take several batches before you get it just right. But that day will come and you will never look back.

6) There are a lot of ways to make compost and only a couple of them call for an obvious above-ground pile. Possibly the above ground method is not the best one for your circumstance. For instance, nosy neighbors might object to what looks like a pile of garbage in your backyard, but they wouldn’t think twice if they saw you layering straw over the ground (especially if they didn’t see you spreading out garbage and manure beforehand). The neighbors and the police are unlikely to say a word if you dig post holes during the day (and fill them with kitchen scraps, straw, grass clippings and leaves at night). There are a lot of ways to skin this cat. Find the one that works best for you.

7) DO invest in a compost thermometer if you are going to use the above ground pile methods. A good one with a 20” stem and an analog dial is roughly $20 mail order. It will last for years and, among other things, tells you if the compost pile is getting hot enough and alert you to when to turn it by letting you know when it has begun to cool off. If you turn too often, the pile won’t reach its peak temperature of +160F but if you turn too seldom, the outside layers will lose their nitrogen before they get a chance to heat up, too.

DO plant more than you think you’ll be able to eat. The critters will take some, the neighbors will appreciate your largess. ALSO plan on preserving much of what you grow … it won’t be harvest time all year.

9) Many years ago the USDA determined that a quart of home-canned vegetables or fruit cost (are you ready?) just 10 cents from planting the seed to the table. Ten cents! Using organic methods, my wife and I normally grow food that we value at over $4,000 (compared to in-season grocery store prices) from only 240 sq. ft. in our backyard. We are out the price of the seed / plants, the water and some perspiration in the spring and fall. During the summer, a few minutes in the morning, coffee cup in hand, is enough to keep the weeds down.

10) Although, as I stated in item (1) above, compost will not shock your soil into record production, it does something else even more valuable. It builds up the soil, while the commercial preparations deplete it. When a soil is converted from chemical farming to organic farming, the first year sees yields drop sharply. The second year, there is some improvement. By the third year, the organic output matches the chemical output. That’s where most of the studies of the process, funded by the chemical companies, end. In the fourth year … and every year after that … the organic soils out-produce the chemical soils. I have a 10 ft trellis in each of my garden beds. I’ve picked tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, 11 feet up in the air. I live in Michigan, so that was no ‘long season’ stunt. We’ve got about 6 good months to grow vegetables and a couple of ‘iffy’ ones. I garden organically.

If you want to know the REAL ins and outs of composting, there are lots of books you can read and I’ll list a couple of them below. But if you are really curious about what happens in a compost pile, I can recommend no better volume than The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, Third Edition by Joe Jenkins. Don’t let the title put you off – the guy not only knows his stuff, he documents it and presents it in such a way that you’ll know your stuff, too, when you’ve finished reading it.

Be safe. Have fun. Eat well. – Bill

*Cat turds can pass parasites to humans. While this is a rare occurrence, if you have any doubts about how well a particular compost pile containing them did, allow it to sit for a year. The additional exposure to temperature extremes will work wonders.