Compost!

 



     If healthy soil makes healthy people - what makes healthy soil? Compost! That's right kiddos; stuff rotting is awesome for our food and eventually works to make us super strong! Cool, huh? And isn't every little boy somehow born with this instinctive knowledge?

     There are two main kinds of compost: hot and cold. Cold is the kind with worms in it. This is very awesome stuff, but there are certain materials you can't put in it or it will get too hot and kill your worms (chicken scraps, organic poo, etc.), it can also take several months to have your cold compost ready to use in the garden. Hot compost is ready a lot quicker (sometimes in only 21 days!) and can absorb about any carbon-based material.

     Some important things to consider about where you place your compost pile: In the Northern climates of the 48 states, you want your compost pile to get plenty of heat and sun, so you need a direct Southern-exposure placement (preferably one that doesn't get shade at any point in the day). In the Southern climates, your compost should be in mostly shade, but with some sun. We built using the back of our barn as our wind-break from the Northern wind and have full Southern exposure.
     Here are the directions to build a very basic and more than adequate compost pile container. Total process took us about 2 hours.
     Although I know many people may not have pallets lying around, it really can be just about anything that is strong - in fact you could easily build it out of wire made rigid with posts, just try to make sure there aren't any toxic chemicals in what you use that might wind-up in your compost, and thus your soil and finally your body!
     You may be thinking to yourself "but I only have a small garden, I don't need anything this big." Maybe that's true, but remember that the compost will break down a lot and in the end you will only be taking out a fraction of what went in, so it will look like a lot at first. Also, there are a lot of uses for compost besides just putting it directly in the soil. A great use of compost is compost tea, which serves not only as a fertilizer - but an organic pesticide!

 

Step One: Gather solid-ish big flat pieces that can act as the sides of your compost pile. You will need 3 for one pile, 5 for two piles, 7 for three piles, etc. Also needed are some nails and a hammer (or screws and a drill), we had some galvanized 16d, ring-shank nails lying around from a previous project and they are great for this.





Step Two: Nail the top and bottom of the sides together. Voila!





Step Three: Grab some left over wire and cut it to length. Our 'hinge' side is secured with bent-over 6d galvanized nails to hold it securely in place and the 'open' side has 8d trim nails half-way bent-over so that the wire can be secured close by tension.

 

Step Four: Put in stuff you want to see rot! We added our brown material (twigs at the bottom help it to have some air flow), green material and (organic) kitchen waste. Finally we watered it and shut the gate! We will stir and water it everyday until it is ready for our garden.