Become ‘part of the cycle of life’ by composting
Igrew up on a small dairy farm in the Midwest. We had a big garden and grew most of our food, but did not compost. What vegetable scraps the pigs did not gobble up, the chickens relished. Table scraps and bones went to the dog. My ingenious mother even boiled up potato peels to add to the dog’s dinner.
I learned about composting in the late 1960s when Rodale Press popularized organic gardening. Composting was the eleventh commandment. It was effortless. Then I moved to the desert.
Our soils are poor here. To garden, you often need to create new soil, which you can continually supplement by composting. But that is not the only reason to compost. If you toss your yard and food waste into the garbage, and it ends up in the landfill, it will produce methane, emit carbon and add to global warming. Methane is 28% more potent than carbon dioxide. It is responsible for at least 6% of all global emissions.
European countries are much better at composting than we are. According to Paul Hawken, editor of Drawdown, which is still the world’s best guide to reversing global warming, if higher income countries like us reached the level of composting of our European counterparts, we could avoid methane emissions from landfills “equivalent to 2.3 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050.”
Vermont recently mandated composting. No more food scraps can go in the trash; they go in the compost bin. If you don’t compost at home, those scraps and yard waste go to the municipality’s composter or are fed to animals.
So how do you make a compost pile?
A good guide is available at the Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency’s website: www.sfswma.org/green-waste/. They suggest three basic ingredients: browns, greens and water. The fourth essential ingredient is oxygen, which is why you turn your pile often. Browns provide the carbon, greens the nitrogen and water is essential for the mixture to break down to organic matter. Greens can be veggie and fruit waste, coffee grounds, weeds and plant thinnings. Browns can be leaves, chopped up twigs, animal bedding, shredded paper or junk mail.
Others may disagree, but we do it differently. We don’t put paper in our compost, nor do we add bread, pasta or meat. You may want to grind up eggshells so they break down more easily. We do add some manure to generate heat. We also add some soil to cover the top of the mixture and we keep layering. We have learned to water a lot and turn it often. Every few months or so, we harvest beautiful compost that is a terrific supplement to our entire garden.
Compost piles can attract pests such as skunks or raccoons who are looking for a free meal. It helps to have a fenced yard and an enclosed compost pile. We have both, but something was getting into our compost. It was a mystery until we saw our dog Pacha jump the low enclosure and have a little snack. A dog-proof fence solved that problem.
Your compost pile should smell earthy like the forest floor, but not like garbage. Microorganisms and invertebrates and fungi convert organic matter into compost. A good compost pile gets up to 140-160 degrees and will kill all weed seeds and plant diseases.
Trevor Ortiz is the Operations Manager at Reunity Resources of Santa Fe, the largest commercial composter in the region. Their compost piles are huge — a half-block by 30 feet. I asked where they get all their material.
“Prior to COVID, the food waste came mostly from schools and restaurants, but now it comes primarily from Santa Fe and Albuquerque food banks, and from residents who either drop it off or arrange for pickup,” Trevor explained. “Their brown material comes from wood waste ground up at Buckman Transfer Station.”
They do not turn their piles, but use aerators made of large perforated pipes that pump in oxygen. They wet the entire piles to 68% moisture level. Then, the microorganisms take over and turn the waste into rich compost.
“We produce about 155 cubic yards a month,” Trevor said.
Reunity sells compost and mulch in bulk and by the bag.
I asked Trevor why people should compost. We know it reduces methane and sequesters carbon, and creates soil. But Trevor said that the most important reason is “it’s returning to the Earth the bounty she has given in a healthy way that reinvigorates the soil — it’s part of the cycle of life.”