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My shishito peppers love compost. Photo by Matt Sabo.
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Yummy compost! Photo by Matt Sabo.
When I was a kid in Oregon in the 1970s and ’80s, legendary Portland appliance and furniture salesman Tom Peterson had a famous line in his gimmicky TV commercials.
With his crewcut and folksy delivery, a grinning Peterson would look straight into the camera and nearly holler, “Free is a very good price!”
Peterson may have even undersold “free.” It’s not just a very good price, it’s a fabulous price.
Which brings us, somehow, to compost. Compost does the heavy lifting and nutrient supplementing for you and your garden. And it’s free!
Or can be.
There may be some upfront costs to composting if you want to buy a composting bin, or a composting urban worm bag. But if you truly love your garden, if your veggies and fruits of your labors are your true loves, you’ll compost.
Renowned organic farming icon and composting guru Eliot Coleman calls producing quality compost the “most important job on the organic farm.”
We’re not here to compost-shame you. But if you’re not composting, are you really gardening?
WHAT EXACTLY IS COMPOST?
For a lot of folks, gardeners included, compost may be like pornography. You might not know how to define it, but you know it when you see it.
In the most basic terms, compost is simply decomposed organic matter. Coleman describes it as brown or black and crumbly and resembles a rich chocolate fudge cake. That’s … an aggressive description. Can you tell Coleman just loves him some compost?
You get compost when vegetable peelings, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, yard waste and the like get together in a pile in a very confined space and decompose. Modern airline travel would be a word picture here.
Compost takes to heart that sharing is caring. Good soil and compost share a hearty population of organisms that feast on decaying organic matter. These gorging organisms produce nutrients that feed your garden plants with the minerals that are also in the soil.
I can vouch for the results.
COMPOST FOR THE SHISHITO PEPPERS WIN
For several years I’ve had a spot in a corner of my yard where I piled organic matter. I also bought a composting bin online a couple years ago and dumped into it my fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and other organic material like weeds and decaying garden vegetables that succumbed to the Virginia heat, humidity, disease and bugs.
Last summer, I ran an experiment with three buckets. In one I had potting soil and regular soil. In another I mixed in some compost from my composting bin. In the third bucket I had mostly compost mixed with soil.
Then I planted shishito peppers in each bucket. The results were obvious within several weeks. The compost-heavy bucket produced a bigger, greener plant with more peppers. It just looked healthier and more vibrant.
Newly emboldened, I’ve gone a bit composting mad. We’ll get to that in a few paragraphs, but first let’s cover a couple things about composting that are, let’s say, “drawbacks.”
COMPOSTING DOWNSIDES
The first downside of composting is related to odor. As you’re probably aware, dying things tend to stink, especially if you’re adding kitchen scraps. My composting bin can get quite ripe in the summer. I try to tell myself that the results are worth it.
If you get smelly compost, try adding chopped straw or shredded leaves to help dry things out and break up the muck. You’ll want to stir up or mix up the compost as well.
Another downside is the black soldier fly, particularly its larvae. They’re insanely gross as these wriggling or writhing little creatures of ick. But they’re also doing work, helping greatly with the composting. So ugly but effective wins out, at least in my book.
THE NO-DIG GARDENING METHOD
This spring, I read about Charles Dowding and his “no-dig” method of gardening in an article in The New York Times. Properly inspired, I laid down sheets of cardboard and piled on fresh compost and soil. Then I planted heirloom Costata Romanesco zucchini and yellow crookneck squash.
The early results? The young sprouts look vigorous. Vibrant even.
I’ll come back in the fall and add more mulch and compost. Add a frame to create a raised bed and keep the compost in place. Like anything in gardening, it takes a little work. Just remember, the gardener’s life is writ in grit.
