ORGANIC GARDENING

Growing Vegetables Organically: In Praise of Cold Composting by Peter Bray (April 2002)

A survey of Organic Gardening magazine readers (January/February 2002 edition, at page 40) showed that 4% turned their compost daily, 41% weekly, 28% monthly, 10% annually, and 18% never.

Cold Composting Method
Last December, I covered my compost pile with soil. This is the pile that had been building for a year and contains a year's worth of crop residues. This pile will be opened up next fall to fertilize the vegetable beds as they are harvested. A new pile (for the fall of 2003) was started in December as well. It contains, among other things, the stalks of Brussels sprouts harvested on Christmas Day. So this is a two-year cycle. Consequently there are two piles all the time: one building and one cooking. The purpose of the soil cover on the completed pile is to ensure the top layer will decompose; without it, the top layer would dry out and would itself become the cover. Furthermore, the top should be concave so that the rainwater drains into the pile rather than off down the side.
Now the crucial part: I don't turn the compost, and it never really heats up. Which puts me in with those "18% never" people. But there are several benefits to cold composting, as I shall suggest later. In addition, cold composting blows away some of the mystique that enters into compost teaching. The idea is to put the material in a pile and leave it to decompose. Staggeringly simple!

Problems With Hot Composting
To make quality compost using the hot composting method, it is necessary to turn the pile every time the oxygen in the interior is exhausted. In practical terms, this means weekly. This is what it takes to produce compost in 6 to 8 weeks. Therein are my problems with hot composting. Number [1] is turning every week, or indeed turning at all, which just isn't on for us bad-back crowd. Problem number [2] is that a good hot composting system requires batch production, i.e. getting all your compostable material ready up front and not adding to the pile once started. But my idea of composting is a pile that I can add to at any time - any time I pull some weeds or prune some trees. Problem number [3] is the heat. But, you say, the heat kills weed seeds. True enough, but it also kills the fungi in the pile. Soil fungi are the best defense against plant diseases because beneficial fungi, when they are present in sufficient numbers, suppress disease-causing fungi.

Fungi in Compost Puts Fungi Into the Soil
I will readily trade off killing weed seeds for building up the population of soil fungi. There are other organic ways to deal with weeds, but no simpler way to deal with fungal diseases. As with pest control, the best control for fungal pathogens is beneficial fungi. Compost made with garden or farm crop residues tends to be dominated by bacteria. In order to create a more beneficial balance of fungi and bacteria, it is necessary to include lots of tree material in your compost. Another benefit of tree material is that it provides lignin, the building block for humus. Annual plants provide cellulose, which decomposes too rapidly to build humus. Tree material includes leaves of course, but also chopped-up tree trimmings and bark. Woody material will not decompose completely in two years. One has the choice of sieving out incompletely decomposed wood or putting it into the soil as part of the compost. Sawdust from untreated wood decomposes readily and is excellent food for fungi. It can be worked directly into the soil, but sparsely, as well as composted. In all fairness, hot composting provides more complete decomposition of woody material.

Hot And Cold Composting Pros And Cons
To summarize, hot composting is much quicker, kills weed seeds, and provides more complete decomposition. On the other hand, cold composting requires much less effort, builds up fungal popu lations which suppress plant diseases, and is better for accommodating continuous additions of material to the compost pile.

Composting Basics
Whether hot or cold, the composting basics remain the same. First and foremost, the pile needs to be in the shade. Shade is crucial because the number one reason for composting failure is having the material dry out. Under a tree is best; it has the added advantage that the pile is likely to pick up more fungal spores. Also "two parts brown stuff, one part green stuff, and mix" applies equally to hot or cold composting. Finally, the pile should never be more than 4 feet high. Any higher and the weight of the material tends to squeeze oxygen out of the pile.

Extension Service Bulletin
Cold/Passive Composting (Extension Service Bulletin OC-0353) is a useful reference. Also it is a good reminder that even a cold compost pile is not the most effortless method. It summarizes sheet composting, trench composting, pit composting, natural mulches, grasscycling, and cover crops. All of which are low-effort ways of increasing soil organic matter, which, after all, is the most basic of the organic gardening basics.

Is It Possible To Develop Disease- and Insect-Resistant Plants By Seed-Saving?

Organic growers and others who want to reduce their use of pesticides should have a preference for plants that are resistant to diseases and insects. How did farmers manage before pesticides became available? Did they accept huge crop losses as a cost of doing business? Surely crop losses to disease and insects couldn¹t have been so huge, otherwise farming wouldn¹t have developed as an economic endeavor. Farmers used rotation of crops and picking by hand to deal with disease and insects to be sure, but perhaps it was seed saving that produced the added edge of disease- and insect-resistant plants.

Farmers always saved seed for next year¹s crop. Obviously they didn¹t save seeds from plants that had succumbed to disease or insect attack. They save seed from their healthiest and most robust plants as any seed saver does. The gene pool of each plant species has in it genes for resistance to many of the diseases that attack that species and genes for the production of toxins that repel many of its insect pests. If a farmer¹s crop were challenged by specific diseases or insect pests, then seed saving would cause seeds containing the beneficial genes to become more numerous with each succeeding generation. Otherwise put, plants lacking the beneficial gene would tend to fail and become less numerous.

With the growth of specialized seed companies, seed saving has become uncommon where once it was general, at least in this country. Furthermore, the widespread availability of fungicides and insecticides starting in about 1950 has meant that application of chemicals has become the usual response to diseases and insects rather than in-built resistance. The result, one imagines, is that genes for resistance have ceased to be ³standard equipment² and have faded into the genetic background. They are still in the gene pool, but at lower levels. This is because they are no longer selected- in the Darwinian sense- by the challenge of diseases and insects. This is untrue for hybrids bred for specific disease resistance, such as VFNT tomatoes. Resistance in hybrids, however, is only good for one generation.

If all the foregoing is correct, then the backyard gardener should be able to develop plants that have improved resistance to the diseases and insect pests that are common in his/her garden- by seed saving. It seems to me that this is just one aspect of the general principle that seed saving will, over time, produce plants that are better adapted to all the conditions in the seed saver¹s garden. One would follow our ancestors¹ procedure- select seed from several plants, those that are most robust and free from insect damage. It would be essential not to use fungicides (including coated seeds) and insecticides, of course, in order to allow pests to challenge the plants. A way to start would be with a sampling of old varieties and any non-hybrid resistant varieties you can find. And buy new seed from time to time to mix in with your saved seed in order to provide genetic variety. Who knows? You might just provide yourself with another defense against disease and insects, and another reason to avoid using pesticides.

Kitchen Scraps-A Recycling Proposal by Peter Bray

Can we agree that recycling still has a long way to go? Certainly, what has been accomplished already is excellent- the 10 cent bottle deposit, blue boxes, and composting yardwaste, encouraged by excluding yardwaste from landfills. But we are still throwing away resources that should be recovered and recycled. One modest candidate is kitchen scraps. Let me propose four different ways for recycling kitchen scraps that will add to the fertility of your garden while reducing pressure on landfills- if you presently put them in the trash can- or on waste water treatment plants and clean water- if you presently use the garbage grinder.

Back Door Compost Bin:
Position a compost bin and a bag of leaves outside the kitchen door, and set a large bowl on your kitchen work top. Your kitchen scraps go in the bowl- just vegetable matter, no meat or fish scraps. When the bowl is full, empty the scraps into the compost bin, together with a handful of leaves. There’s no need to turn the compost, although a little turning would mix the leaves better and would speed decomposition. Take finished compost from the bottom of the bin; fall is a good time for sprinkling compost on the lawn or adding it to garden soil.

Trench Composting:
This is an old-fashioned, more direct method of composting kitchen scraps. Dig a trench in your vegetable garden, as deep and as wide as the blade of your spade. Starting at one end, cover the bottom of the trench with garden scraps day by day, covering them with soil, to fill in the trench as you go. The following year you will have a fertile strip ready for planting.

Worm Composting:
Worm composting in the basement or under the kitchen sink is quicker than composting outside the kitchen door because it isn’t stopped by winter weather. It is also fascinating to children. You will need a $5 plastic storage box. Dimensions don’t matter a lot, but one foot deep and 1 1/2 to 3 feet wide and long would suit well. Prick holes in the lid and also the bottom; this is to prevent a build up of moisture. Tear newspaper into strips as narrow as you can tear them, enough to fill the box. This is for bedding. Then soak the bedding with water; wet it thoroughly, but not so much that water drips out. Place kitchen scraps under the bedding, but not on top of the bedding or you will cause a fruit fly infestation.

Now all you need is worms. The best source is someone who has a worm box. They will never miss a hundred worms because they multiply so quickly. Alternatively, look for them in your compost pile. You are looking for the small “red wrigglers” or “manure worms” and you will find them in the warm places in the compost. You don’t want the large grayish earthworms; they like cool soil, a house is too warm for them, and they would crawl away. Red wrigglers won’t crawl away- even through the holes in the bottom of a worm box- so long as you feed them. Separating out the compost (worm castings) is the trickiest part of worm composting. One way is to turn the box over on its lid and remove the box. Allow several hours for the worms to burrow downwards, then scoop off the castings. A good reference is Mary Apelhof’s Worms Eat My Garbage, which is likely to be in your library.

Blender:
Probably the most direct way to recycle kitchen scraps is to run them through the kitchen blender and pour the results on the garden. It works; try it.