The fine art of composting in the desert Southwest, Part 2
Composting. To begin with, when possible, select a site away from your house and in the shade. The beautiful sunshine that we all love can overheat your pile, and that kills the organisms that are making your compost! Add a tarp over the top to provide shade, keeping things a little cooler and it will help retain any moisture that is in the pile.
What can I compost? That answer can be complicated with proponents and opponents of different methods etc. but the short answer is, what ever will break down! We all know about putting our weeds in and throwing in some kind of manure, but once you start looking around for things to feed your compost, you won’t believe how much household garbage is actually compostable. Cardboard, newspaper, paper towels, pizza boxes, toilet paper roll centers, packaging, refrigerator rejects, hair, coffee grounds, house plants that have served their purpose, straw hats, etc. etc. You do need to think about how organic you want to keep your pile and think about inks, pesticides, and such.
There are some that claim that here in the Southwest, you should avoid manure because it will add salts to the mixture and our soil is already heavy with salt. Rabbit and chicken litter are better alternatives but also harder to source.
Some swear you should leave out kitchen scraps like dairy and bread to help prevent vermin taking up residence in your pile. That one doesn’t make as much sense to me as the vermin will eat potato peels and left-over carrots as much as any other tasty morsels.
One of the principals of keeping a good, working pile is to layer your materials. There is green plant material, for nitrogen and nutrients, and brown to provide humus which helps with moisture retention and soil structure. Many talk of a ratio of 2:1, brown:green. But there isn’t any reason to get out your calculator. Use what you have.
Your pile needs to be about three feet across or more so that it can have enough material to work with. Bigger is fine, smaller you may have trouble getting the microbes to stay active. The smaller the pieces of compostable stuff are, the faster it breaks down. The only exception being grass clippings. They can get too compact and suffocate the life out of a pile. Mix them in with other stuff to keep air in it.
And of course, in our lovely dessert environment, you must add water.
There are many ways to do it. Unless there is rain, it will need to be monitored as evaporation will soon dry the pile out. You can water the pile any way that is easily done for you.
Some set their sprinkler on top of the pile, some like drip tape, or drip irrigation. Easy is the key. Or like me, it will get neglected and your pile will dry out.
With compost being in the “not so much” success category for me, it would be easy to just abandon the whole thing. But, I’m not giving up! Especially since I found some guys on Youtube that are teaching methods for gardening (and composting) in the desert.
The video I watched was called “5 Tips for Desert Composting” and put out by the Southwest Victory Gardens. There is also material from the New Mexico Recycling Coalition that has a lot of very practical advice.
One last thing. Brandon in the “5 Tips’ video really warned against using commercial bins and tumblers. They make things way too hot. You want your pile to simmer not boil.
Keep in mind that everything compostable will eventually break down. We can try to speed up the process by giving it favorable conditions, or just wait for nature to take its course.
Happy composting.