Composting Myths and Facts You Need to Know

Composting myths that will help you make better compost.
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Composting Myths and Facts You Need to Know
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Images:
All slides and videos belong to GardenFundamentals.com or are public domain images, except for the following:

[@sandpine]

This is one of the most underrated gardening channels on KZbin.

[@henkmagnetic3103]

Thank you. Bought all your books, which serve a dual purpose, that of educating me and helping me off my addiction of phone use before going to bed.

[@potenusa1]

Dear Robert, thank you very much for the quality of your videos. I haven't found any other KZbin garden channel as good as yours. The information you share is high quality in contrast to most other channels. A big thanks!

[@azdave1422]

Interesting video. I have been constantly composting my garden and kitchen waste for a few years. Videos often mention the 4 ingredients of making compost; Greens, browns, water and air. Your video brings forth the 5 ingredient. TIME. Almost everything will compost given enough time for microorganisms to do their thing. We are just too impatient to wait for the full benefit. Thank you for your insights.

[@WhatWeDoChannel]

Great video, I love compost making! Here’s the thing, I remember reading in some book about very old walled vegetable gardens near farm houses in the northern part of England. The gardens were walled to protect the garden from the biting cold winds of early spring and late autumn. The main fertilizer used was manure, sometimes added over hundreds of years. The author said that when you went into those walled gardens you went up a few feet from the outside ground level, I always thought that was because of a gradual buildup of humus!?

[@Mastadex]

This was a fantastic talk!

[@redredwine1277]

Smart doing composing with knowledge and understanding. Thank you👌🏽

[@zztopwater8568]

I spent the entire last growing season playing around with composting methods. I was able to keep composting all throughout this winter as well. I've learned a ton in doing so. The winter pile cooked along at 130-150° for the duration of midwest winter. Kept my pile burning hot by dumping in coffee grounds, lots of them.

[@carolynsteele5116]

So basically compost isn’t ready for how long? 2 years? Longer?

[@bigrich6750]

I really don’t worry about the ratios. I pile all my summer grass clipping and leaves in my pile. After the summer, I have a pile that’s roughly 5’ x 8’. Through out the year, I add coffee grounds, kitchen waste, fish waste, and occasionally I’ll go pick up a truck load of horse manure, and mix it in. Usually by the spring of next year, I have, “finished,” compost, which I add to my raised beds. So far, I’ve not had any problems. I do use synthetic fertilizer, both granular and the Miracle Grow water soluble type. Every spring until this year, I’ve added alfalfa pellets and crushed oyster shells (chicken feed that’s supposedly high in calcium) directly into my beds. I have no idea if this is actually helping to give my plants nutrients especially the oyster shells, and I’ve never heard anyone comment on using it, but I saw it at Tractor Supply, and said, what the heck. Alfalfa pellets on the other hand are very popular on KZbin. I would love to hear you comment on the use of these in the garden. Thanks for your content. It’s my go to source to get beyond the gardening myths.

[@kumatmebro315]

I compost everything in a big bin full of water, it breaks down anaerobically all fall and winter then i let it dry out in spring before using it. Seems to work fine.

[@matthewphares4588]

Excellent material.

[@judymckerrow6720]

Thank you Robert ! ❄️💚🙃

[@tobruz]

Thank you Robert! I look forward to reading the new book and know that it will be as good or better than your last (read it through twice already) !

[@Flora-Interior]

Amazing

[@mtm101designs9]

Still waiting out the snow cover on my garden, but this year my composting will be knowledge based rather than the haphazard creations of past years.

[@AJWGBFX]

Yes, this is generally my intention at my allotment garden, but in practice I have too many browns at time A, then too many greens at time B. So, I end up chucking it all in for a few months, then turn it, trying to add whatever I think is deficient 😂 Impossible task really when doing composting small scale, but it gets there eventually, but obviously the quality varies (as does commercial composts!)

[@rudimentalgardening]

Humus...another marketing ploy in the garden industry.

[@robertreznik9330]

Do you ever add N in the ionic state to bring grass cuttings or crop residue to a ratio of less than it's 50:1 ratio? Soil SOM is about 10:1.

[@tomfisher3117]

May I ask what your feelings are about using alfalfa meal in the garden? I don't have enough room to make compost enough compost for my garden.

[@user-ju7dx8mu6d]

The understanding of composting has changed over time. There is nothing that happens in a compost pile that wouldn't happen in the soil, for example, large molecules are broken down into small molecules in the soil. That is what soil does. So why compost? The answer is weeds, disease and high C/N ratio. High temperature composting kills many diseases, most weed seeds and it burns off the most readily available carbon. The microbes that break down the organic matter (mostly actinobacteria) release a pulse of relatively readily available nutrient when they lyse when the compost is allowed to get hot enough which offsets a highish C/N ratio when the fresh compost is added to the soil. Most of what passes for composting now results in the loss of too much of the energy that fresh organic matter brings to the soil as well as much of the nitrogen and sulphur compounds. The cold kind of composting described here is better achieved by just burying your fresh organic matter in the soil by which you can avoid the time wasted with pretending your cold compost is doing something magic. Many garden pathogens are killed by proper compositing like damping off, Armillaria (which you discussed in another video but didn't adequately discuss), Phytophthora and several others. Weed seeds may or may not be an issue, but if you are lucky enough to have access to horse manure, weed seeds are a big issue. Anyway, composting is one of the topics severely messed up by the interweb. If you want your organic matter to slowly rot away without the benefits of real composting, dig a trench in the garden and dump your organic matter in and cover it up. Earthworms and other soil organisms will thank you. We do both, bury sloppy organic debris and hot (real) compost material that goes into our commercial beds.

[@wmpx34]

Eggshells are supposedly good for earthworm grit, but they can probably get that from other sources also.

[@Warwck24]

Wow molecules ....😮

[@digicandy70]

Does adding weights to compress the mass speed up composting?

[@peter913]

Air is an important part of the composting process. Compressing a compost pile would reduce the amount of air and as such the pile may go anaerobic - so adding weight to a compost pile would slow the process. In large commercial composting facilities they turn the piles so they can aerate the pile - which heats up the pile and accelerates the process. Recently I had left one of my compost bins alone for a few months. It started to smell a little when I checked it, mainly due to the contents of this compost bin being compressed. I then used a pitch folk to turn the contents once or twice a week to get air throughout the bin right down to the bottom of the bin. If I had not turned the contents many of the contents at the bottom of the bin would not have broken down much at all.

[@SeascapeStl]

Redfield ratio?

[@hannaolsson3445]

👍

[@rowenadinsmore1]

Pet waste are not good because of the toxoplasma, tapeworms etc

[@tacticalcenter8658]

If the plants can use it, can the soil?

[@xuyahfish]

I did 3:1 with greens, but it didn't work, it didn't heat up. I think I need to add manure, but I don't have any on hand.

[@shawnsg]

You probably didn't have a large enough pile. You don't need manure.

[@davegaskell7680]

Compost only gets properly hot if it's a big enough pile. I use 330 litre 'dalek' style compost bins and these aren't really big enough to do proper "hot composting" but they still do get quite warm. The thing that best gets a bin heating up is the addition of fresh, dry, grass clippings. Indeed, just leave your grass clippings in your mower's collection 'bag' for just a few minutes and put your hand in and feel how hot it is already!

[@AJWGBFX]

I laughed when you said “I started digging into humus”. And, actually, not! In my 70 years, people have always referred to any dark soil as humus. I’ve always thought it just means it has more organic matter than clay or sandy soils.

[@sbffsbrarbrr]

Same here. Just thought it was very airy soil like that amazing stuff in an old forest.

[@annekincannon-kf3hx]

Compostable plastic bags are the joke I thought they would be. Worthless.