10/30/07 Composting Part 2

Composting Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Yesterday we started a conversation about composting. There are a number of benefits to composting including cutting down on garbage that goes to the landfill and it makes a wonderful fertilizer&oh, and it's free. Gathering up your biodegradable scraps and tossing them into a pile, what could be easier? Gail Everett, Environmental Education Coordinator in Richland, Washington says composting is one of those things that can be either very easy or time-consuming. EVERETT: Well that's the passive way of composting and that's kind of my favorite way of doing it but if you would like to hurry up the process there are certain things you can do. It's like a recipe, there are shortcuts you can take and there's the longer version you can take that will actually get you a better project. Of course the end result is a very dark, nutrient rich fertilizer that is wonderful for everything from flowers to vegetables in the garden. There has always seemed to be a sort of mystique to composting. Everett does 2 seminars a year to help people understand really how easy it is. EVERETT: Composting is simply taking organic material and you place them in a pile and better yet if you could add a carbon source underneath the green source and have the right moisture content then your product is going to decay quicker. We used to just toss all our peelings and apple cores into the garbage can but last weekend I started collecting them and was very surprised by how quickly the pile started to grow. EVERETT: Once you get the hang of it, it's really simple and easy. Gardeners as well as folks trying to reduce trash are just finding it incredibly reduces garbage and then you get a bonus at the end when its degraded you get this free fertilizer that's better than anything on the market. There are numerous ways to start composting from small containers in the kitchen to collect the food scraps to a big pile in the back yard and pretty much anything that is natural can go into the compost pile like all those fall leaves you have been raking up. EVERETT: That's where the chicken wire comes in handy or you can make one out of pallets because those have a lot of air flow through it. I've seen people do it out of a lot of those screening materials and you just circle the screen to the size you want it; a small circle or a large circle. Be careful of where you put the pile since they do really generate a considerable amount of heat, Everett suggests having the pile located away from buildings. There have actually been instances where a compost pile catches on fire! For more information on starting your compost pile, call your local county extension office. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.