By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

Perfect Time To Start That Compost Pile

Mid-November is an excellent time to enhance your compost pile — or to make one if you don’t have one established somewhere in your yard.

There have usually been at least a few cold days in Southern Nevada by Thanksgiving so there’s often a first accumulation of leaves under trees. These make a fantastic addition to the compost pile. If you’ve ever walked in a forest in autumn and seen moist, moldy leaves under the trees, you’re witnessing Mother Nature composting in her natural environment.

Before or after the big meal on Thanksgiving, or perhaps at half time of the big football game, get everybody out in the yard raking leaves. You get stuff for the compost heap and they get to work off some extra mashed potatoes. (Hey, don’t throw rocks at me, it’s just a suggestion!)

Using manure and compost to enhance gardens has been practiced for literally thousands of years. Archeologists found clay tablets written during the Akkadian Empire 1,000 years before Moses telling readers that adding composted manure, essentially organic fertilizer, to the soil is beneficial and would enhance garden production.

Compost is an accumulation of organic waste – leaves, grass clippings, kitchen waste, sawdust, twigs and manure among a host of others – that has decomposed into rich humus and is reintroduced into the garden. To make compost, gardeners simply make a mixture of material that is generally 25 to 30 parts carbon (brown material) to one part nitrogen (green material), or 25-30:1.

Examples of brown material, the stuff that’s high in carbon, includes the leaves you raked up on Thanksgiving, shredded newspapers, pine needles, straw, sawdust, cornstalks, wood chips and old dry moldy hay among others.

Examples of green material, the stuff that’s high in nitrogen, includes manure (from livestock not pets), grass clippings, food wastes from making that huge Thanksgiving feast, coffee grounds, fresh green hay, garden waste and egg shells among others.

Once you get all this stuff mixed together in a container or in piles at the ratio listed above, add some water until the pile is like a wrung-out sponge. In no time, zillions of microscopic organisms (fungi, bacteria) will move in and begin to chow down like they’ve been supplied with a lifetime of Thanksgiving meals. They’re actually processing the stuff into compost.

You know it’s happening because the pile begins to heat up in the center and when it’s really cooking can eventually hit 130 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. The little critters inside the pile making the compost need a lot of oxygen, so it’s important to stir or turn it about once a week or so.

Probably the easiest compost construction is a three sided “box” that will contain the compost in a pile. Although almost any size will work, a 3X3X3 box is just about perfect for the home gardener. You leave the fourth side open so you can get in with a pitchfork or garden fork to turn the pile.

Three old pallets standing on end and wired together make a perfect container. If you use a barrel, you’ll want to drill holes in the sides so the pile can breathe.

Add a layer of brown material about six or seven inches deep at the bottom of the pile, then a 3 to 4-inch layer of green material. Repeat these layers watering lightly between each until your bin is full (or your pile is as high as you dare go).

After a couple of days mix everything well and then cover it to keep off the rain. Add more material as it accumulates (like kitchen scraps) and stir once a week or so to keep it aerated and in a few months you’ll have black gold for the garden.

Although Southern Nevada heat really doesn’t add to the composing effect, cold weather can drastically slow down the process so BE PATIENT.

Comments and suggestions for the Garden Spot are always welcome. It appears the first and third Wednesday’s of the month. Email ideas, observations or questions to mouse@mvdsl.com.