2016 a Vintage Compost Year
Composting is a science nature has been using since the earth was created. It has only been in the last five decades that we have begun to understand what it does and how. I remain constantly amazed that such a simple process can be so complex. Understanding the process is the key to producing a quality compost that will benefit the soil in your garden in numerous ways.
If you make your compost in open bins, you have no doubt made your best compost ever. The compost bins that I filled with last fall’s leaves and on-going vegetable waste from the garden and the kitchen is ready to use. Vegetable kitchen waste added to the compost the last week in July decomposed in less than two weeks.
Credit the abundance of rain in June and July.
I make it a practice to wet down my compost bins weekly during the spring and summer, but the downpours did a better job of keeping the composting piles wet than we can.
In mid-June, I shoveled the composting waste from a large bin into a medium bin, filling it to the brim. By the first week in August, the medium bin had already shrunk to half the volume.
This rapid rate of decomposition is a prime example of the importance in keeping decomposing organic waste moist. While the composting piles were shrinking rapidly, I measured temperatures of 140 degrees and above. This is an ideal temperature for composting, generating a final product that is nearly free of weed seeds and disease-causing organisms. As the composting materials began to cool in late July, the beneficial organisms that are accumulated on the surface enter the pile.
When temperatures in the compost are close to the temperature of ambient air, the compost is not capable of providing nutrients because they are being absorbed by organisms active in composting. Most of the nutrients from the compost are not released until those organisms start dying out.
Beware the Harlequin Beetle
With temperatures in the 90s, weather conditions have been perfect for the harlequin beetle to reproduce and attack plants in the vegetable garden. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and even horseradish plants have been its prime source of food. This hungry, colorful insect can vary in size from the head of a straight pin to slightly larger than a pencil eraser. It actively feeds all day and lays its eggs in the fold of leaves. Any insect that can devour the leaves of a healthy planting of horseradish in a matter of weeks demands immediate attention. Garden books recommend controlling them by hand-picking, but 39-plus days of 90-degree temperature must have shifted their reproductive capability into high gear, because large colonies of pin-sized hatchlings seem to appear daily.
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