Composting

The typical reason for compost bins or piles is for gardening. Rather than depositing compostable materials in a landfill, they can be composted to serve a useful purpose. For the average home gardener, a compost bin might suffice.

I use my compost to build up the level of the soil on my property, however. Millinocket was a paper mill before it was a town. Before the town was built, the paper mill deposited coal ash, its waste material, throughout the area, filling in small ponds and wetlands. This was back in the late 1800s. Great Northern Paper Company was once the largest pulp and paper mill in the world. Most of its early buildings were constructed by the mill owners for the purpose of housing its employees. Mine and the house across the street from me were boarding houses, meant to house single workers. I have an old post card of Millinocket that shows my street with only two houses on it -- mine and the one across the street.

Old maps show a pond where my house is, as is the case with much of the older area of the town. My house and yard site on a bed of coal ash deposited by the mill, which was then covered over with a few inches of soil. You can't plant just any tree native to Maine here because only those that root laterally, or which are able to produce roots strong enough to drive through the coal ash, will survive. We had a cherry tree in our back yard when we bought the house. Once it grew to a large height, it fell over. We still have cherries because new trees have grown from the roots.

In order to plant root crops here, I have to use raised bedding. I have been planting potatoes in bags made for yard leaves, and that works fine. Carrots would grow a couple of inches and then bend, unable to get through the coal ash.

The town maintains a compost pile which produces very good compost that is free for the taking, for residents. When I first bought the house, I mad several trips to the compost pile, hauling enough compost to build up one side of my front yard. Millinocket doesn't have trash pickup services. We haul our own trash to a transfer station, so I was making three or four trips to the transfer station each week, hauling trash, often coming back with a some compost from the town's compost yard. By producing my own compost, I can limit the trips to the transfer station to about one a week, or less, and I don't have to haul compost anymore. That's a little harder to do with my Chevrolet Tracker, as opposed to the Chevrolet S-10 pickup that I had when I first moved here. So I spread my compost onto my yard, filling up some areas that tend to be wet, and gradually building up the level of the soil.

There are several methods of composting, but there are two general ones:

1. Bacteria
2. Worms

If you leave it sit long enough, everything compostable will compost. But in order to create compost in a reasonable amount of time, you have to create conditions where there are suitable mixtures of air, moisture, carbon, nitrogen, and warmth. You won't see them but if you are not using worms to create your compost, you will be using bacteria. Actually, even if you are using worms (vermicomposting), you will also be using bacteria. Worms speed things up.

Bacteria are the unseen inhabitants of whatever materials you include in your compost, but more diverse the ingredients that you add to your compost pile, the more likely you are to have a healthy balance of bacteria. To get a compost pile started, some people will sprinkle a coating of good topsoil or finished compost (from another batch) over each layer of materials they add. I'm not quite so organized, but I add some in every now and then.

With a large compost pile, as I have, it is possible to create conditions in the center of the pile where the action of composting will heat up the material enough that it will continue composting in the middle throughout a Maine winter. Otherwise, bacteria becomes dormant when temperatures drop below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. My new pile, pictured here, was started too late in the season, so it is unlikely to do much over the winter, other than breaking down due to moisture and the fluctuations of temperature. That's okay though, because I have another active pile, and this one will kick in as soon as spring comes.

I use worms in my compost. The first few years that I composted, the worms that I had were volunteers who simply found their way into my compost pile. Last spring, however, I bought a few batches of red worms to add to my active compost pile, not the new one, since I hadn't built that one yet. When the ice and snow melted in the spring, my compost pile was so high that I had trouble dumping new stuff onto it so I decided to bring in some reinforcements.

That really helped. Although I was dumping new stuff onto that pile throughout the spring and summer, it kept getting smaller. That's what I will do with my new pile in the spring. One thing to keep in mind though, when adding worms to an active pile is that they can't survive the heat in the center of the pile, so I dumped the red worms away from the center, and toward the edges of the pile.

My new compost pile is the only one with a foundation, but I expect that I'll still get volunteers coming in from the sides, as the foundation isn't raised up far from ground level. I'll be introducing worms, too.

With a large compost pile, as I have, the center of the pile is being composted largely through aerobic and bacterial actions. Although you can compost anaerobically, it takes a long time. Since I am too lazy to turn my piles over as most people do, I create air pockets in the pile by introducing closed cardboard boxes and such, which will compost at a much slower pace than the stuff inside and around them. This works very well.

The edges of the pile are being composted largely by worms, although bacteria is active there as well, as long as it's not too cold. In the winter, the cold weather will drive the worms more to the center of the pile, where there is some warmth from bacterial action, so they will help to compost that part of the pile. When everything goes well, composting continues throughout the winter.

City gardeners won't want a large pile of composting garbage in their back yard, so they may use other methods, such as rotating compost cylinders or tumblers.

 

Since winter has held off here this year, it looks like this pile might actually begin composting before it gets too cold for it to do so. More from dampening and crushing than anything else, but the pile is not much higher than it was a month ago, and all of our compostables have gone into it during this time.

 

Since most of the snow if gone, I was able to add another layer of leaves.

 

Unless we can get at least one more melt, it looks like I'm going to have to resort to my older compost pile for this winter. A lot of my new one is filled with snow and ice, and I fear that I built it too late in the season for any composting to be going on in the cold weather that we now have. That's kind of what I expected, so it's not a big deal, but when winter was so slow in getting here, I thought maybe I'd have a working compost pile for the winter. As opposed to the wooden sides of my old compost, the wire sides will aid the compost process in warmer weather but it might be keeping things too cool for it to continue through the winter. Next winter, there will be enough active compost there that it'll continue, however.

 

After 24 hours of rain, a great deal of our snow is gone. Eventually, as the boxes become saturated, they will begin to crush, giving me more room in the compost bin. There may be some composting going on inside of the boxes, each of which are filled, or at least partially filled, with compostable materials, but probably not a lot, given the cool temperatures. However, once spring comes, it will compost quickly.

 

This one might fit the remainder of my compostables for the winter but, by spring, it is going to be pretty high. Once the fear of frost and freezing is over, I'll buy some worms to help things along. Probably, I'll get some red wigglers, because they feed primarily on the organic material that I am trying to compost. Red wrigglers do not burrow, however; they move laterally within the first few inches of the compost pile. Of course, where I have created pathways with boxes and the like, they will move further into the pile. They are the best kind of worm for composting because of their eating habits, and because they reproduce quickly and can live from two to five years.

I'll probably also get some European nightcrawlers, which are larger, burrows more deeply, and can remain active throughout a Maine winter. They may not have survived this winter because there wasn't enough stuff in there, but next winter they should do well.

Pretty much anything that will eat the stuff that you want to compost will play a part in the composting process. It's just that some of them, such as raccoons and rodents may not be desirable for other reasons. With this pile, I haven't had much of a problem with them but my last pile had raccoons in it, as well as stray cats. Although they could certainly get into this one, I think it's just not quite as convenient.

However, there will be a lot of other things that are actively working in the compost process, including mites, millipedes, centipedes, sow bugs, snails, slugs, spiders, ants, flies, and various kinds of beetles.

Those are just the critters. Apart from them are the invisible things that are at work, such as bacteria, actinomycetes, protozoa, and fungi, some of which may be quite prominent in the compost. In order to speed things along during the summer, I cover my compost pile with a tarp for a week or so. When I uncover it, there will be fungus all over the top of it, but it mostly disappears within a few hours after the tarp is removed.

Light, temperatures, moisture, and air all play a part too. Although all of these things are not necessary for a successful compost, they can all play a part.

 

There are a lot of different ways to compost. Someone who lives in a city probably wouldn't want to use their patio in order to build a compost pile like mine and, in most places, they would probably be in violation of city codes or, in the very list, they'd have neighbors upset with them. For composting in a city, there are several commercial composters available, as well as plans for those who want to make their own. In looking at the various ways of making compost, it become clear that people need to ask themselves if their purpose is to create compost as a product that they need, or if they are mostly interested in a more sensible way of disposing of waste products that they already have.

Some of the methods that I come across discuss compostable materials as ingredients that will have to be obtained in order to create compost. For me, if all I wanted was the compost, I'd simply buy compost and save the space that it uses up in my yard. No, while I certainly have a use for the compost, my main interest is in a sensible way of disposing of compostable wastes that I would have anyhow. I'm not going to go out and buy compostable ingredients, but I will spend a reasonable amount of money on the things that can help me more efficiently compost the stuff that I would already have, such as the materials that went into creating the compost bin and some composting worms in the spring. Other than that, I might add a little bit of peat moss to the pile once in a while, but only if I have some left over from another project.

Here's a way of composting that doesn't require a lot of space, although it does require a few ingredients.

Compost in a Bag

This method of composting can be used to compost kitchen wastes into fertilizer that can be used for houseplants, but it won't create a large volume of compost.

Start with a medium-sized plastic bag and an twist tie, or a watertight, self-sealing bag.

Place a cup of shredded organic material in the bag. Things that might work include coffee grounds, tea leaves, fruit peels, leaves, grass clippings, apple cores without seeds, carrot or potato peels, wood ashes, or any organic material that you might otherwise discard in the trash. The more finely you can chop these items up, the shorter the composting time.

Add a cup of garden soil. Don't use sterile potting soil because that is missing the necessary living microorganisms that will do the composting work. Well-composed leaf mold or finished compost can be used here, as well.

Add one tablespoon of alfalfa meal or alfalfa pellets, such as might be found in certain types of cat box filler or rabbit or hamster foods.

Add an ounce of water, then seal the bag. Shake the bag to mix the contents. Squeeze the bag once or twice a day in order to mix the compost. This serves the same purpose as turning a compost pile.

Every other day, leave the bag open for the day in order to let air in. Compostable materials will compost anaerobically but it takes a lot longer and might smell bad, so its best to let air in every other day. Close the bag up at night, and for the following day. If the contents of the bag smell bad, it might be too wet or in need of more mixing. Otherwise, the compost should be finished in a month or a month and a half as long as the temperatures are 50 degrees or above. In temperatures below fifty degrees but above freezing, composting may take longer. Below freezing, the compost process will stop until the temperatures rise.

 

Perhaps I can give a name to my type of composting, since I am looking at a book on composting that includes dozens of methods of composting, but none that are the same as my own. I'll call it the Anderson Method of Composting.

There is a method of anaerobic composting known as the Selby Enclosed Method, which is very similar but, because the pile is not turned over, it is described as mostly anaerobic, and sometimes criticized because anaerobic methods sometimes lead to putrefaction rather than composting. The drawbacks to that method of composting are that air is not available to compostable materials, other than those that are at the top or the edges, and that it encourages compaction. However, I believe that by adding several cardboard boxes full of compostable materials, I am to a large extend alleviating this problem. Each box is a compost bin in itself and since the boxes aren't filled to brim, air is introduced into the pile. Additionally, for much of the compost time, these boxes allow new air to filter into the recesses of the pile. At the very end, there is some compaction of material at the very bottom but, because the material inside the boxes composts more rapidly than the boxes themselves, this material is pretty well composted already.

What I have found is that when it comes time to harvest my compost, I might have to pull a few pieces of cardboard from the pile that hasn't been fully composted, but that can easily be added to the subsequent pile. In my last pile, I found wads of uncomposted paper towels in my compost but I think that I have corrected that problem by spreading it around rather than adding boxes full of paper towels.

 

A layer of leaves following a layer of boxes is much better, as far as composting goes, but leaves are hard to come by in Maine during the winter, so I substitute a layer of shredded paper and cardboard, along with some paper towels. Once the snow melts in the spring (or on the off chance that we have a full melt yet this winter), I'll add leaves and it should start composting quickly, at least once the worms are in place.

 

The weather is nice today, 44 degrees before 10 am, and our snow is melting. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be below freezing, but barely, and then it will warm again Wednesday and Thursday. Although I still don't expect to see a lot of composting going on before springs, at least the bottom boxes are starting to crush, so I'll have some more room here.

 

It looks like I might be able to make it through the winter. With the several freezes and thaws, and the alternating rains and snows that we've had this winter, the bottom boxes are crushing, which leaves more room at the top. Once spring comes and the worms enter the scene, we'll see some rapid composting. By the way, all the post office boxes you see are of a size that the post office no longer accepts through its priority mail system, so our postmaster gave us several packs of them. Then, as anyone who shops at Amazon.com knows, they frequently ship small things in two or more much larger boxes.