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Index : Miscellaneous Gardening Topics
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- 24. Fall Clean-up and Composting - Top
- There’s always lots of clean-up to do in the fall garden. Summer flowers and vegetables have come to the end of their season and need to be removed. Grapes, apples, peaches and other deciduous fruits are dropping their leaves. And many plants that suffered from summer heat and drought have also dropped leaves and stems. So, it’s time to get all of those dead plants, leaves, twigs and other garden and landscape debris picked up, raked up and removed.
You can throw it all in the trash, but a much better way to deal with waste is to make compost out of it. Composting is a very straightforward process. It’s a matter of holding the compost material, preparing the material and turning the material. The material can be any green leafy matter, brown leaves, twigs and woody stems, kitchen fruit and vegetable scraps and horse and cattle manure.
It’s best to have a combination of materials to compost. All brown material; such as dried leaves, straw, woody stems and twigs is high in carbon. If you have a predominance of these materials, it will take a long time to turn into compost. The process is sped up by adding green matter; leaves and spent garden plants, weeds, and green kitchen scraps. These materials are high in nitrogen, an essential food source for composting microbes. Manures and lawn clippings are also great sources of nitrogen and as such are ideal for adding to the compost pile.
As for forming the compost pile, you can purchase an attractive tub or barrel composting unit. They can be obtained through a number of internet sources. Just do a search for “composting supplies”. Just make sure that the composting unit you purchase is at least 3 feet in diameter and 3 feet high. This size is best at providing the bulk needed for the composting process to occur.
You can also make your own composting unit using a section of wire fencing or stacked concrete blocks. Just be sure to form the fencing into a circle 3 feet or larger in diameter. Concrete block can be stacked 3 feet high in a three-sided form with the walls 3 feet apart. The front is left open to allow access to turn the pile. The floor of the wire or concrete block bin should be bare soil. This will allow composting microbes to move freely from the soil up into the compost material.
To make it easier for compost organisms (fungi, bacteria, small insects) to feed on the green and brown matter in the pile, chop these materials up as finely as possible. The more surface area, the easier it is for these organisms to work.
String trimmers are great for shredding up leaves and soft stems. Tree leaves and the leaves and stems of vegetable and flower plants you take out of the garden this fall, can all be shredded in this manner. The advantage of shredding your compost material is that the finer this plant matter is chopped up, the more surface area there is for composting microbes to grab hold and do there work. As a result, your composting will go faster and you’ll end up with a better finished product.
The green waste material you want to shred should be placed in the bottom of a large plastic trash container. The string trimmer can then be used to shred the material placed in the container. Because the string trimmer will kick up some debris as it cuts through the leaves and stems, always wear protective eye goggles.
This method ‘should not’ be used on woody twigs and stems, palm fronds or cacti. Machete knives are great for chopping up smaller stems and twigs. The machete can also be used in place of a string trimmer to chop up leaves and soft stems. They can be purchased at most hardware and home supply stores.
If you don’t have enough green material or manure to add to your compost, you can use a nitrogen containing fertilizer to increase the level of nitrogen. A small amount of fertilizer (one half cup) sprinkled over the pile should be sufficient.
The final ingredient in the compost pile is water. Add enough water to moisten the pile, but not too much to make it soppy wet. Keep the pile moist to speed composting.
Finally, every few weeks, turn the compost pile to rotate the outer material to the inside of the pile. The heat generated in the middle of the pile will kill weed seedlings and any fungus disease that may be present.
Written by John Begeman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Arizona, 520-626-5161.
- Updated: November 21, 2004
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