compost Archives - Page 3 of 4

Fungi growing on wood chips. Used for making fungal-dominant compost.

Fungal Wood Pile for Compost

If you have issues like powdery mildew and blight in your garden, chances are you need more good fungi in your soil to combat the bad fungi. Our latest YouTube video shows you one easy and free way to inoculate wood chips, which can be used later in your compost bin to create fungal-dominant compost for your garden. Fungal is good! Dr. Elaine Ingham, who coined the phrase, "Soil Food Web," recommended this trick, so we tested it out last…

Post author:Christy
Post published:March 9, 2016
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:1 Comment

Compost ingredients

Soil Food Web Intensive – Part 2

In our last episode, we shared the wonders of Dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web Intensive course. Today, we'll continue with more tidbits and tricks that will help you build better compost (and compost tea) for a healthier garden. In my opinion, every gardener should have a compost bin. It's not only the best way to reduce what goes in the garbage, it's the best way to improve your soil for all eternity. What is compost? I've said it before,…

Post author:Christy
Post published:June 30, 2015
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:10 Comments

YouTube: Harvesting Compost

We've been busy making instructional videos, and the latest one is all about harvesting compost. Here you'll learn simple tricks and tools to get your compost from the bin to the garden bed in an efficient way. We've event added a few tips on what to do with the grubs you find in there, and a bit about compostable cutlery. As you probably know, compost is the most important ingredient in a healthy garden. You'll enrich your soil and enhance…

Post author:Christy
Post published:October 28, 2013
Post category:Blog Sage Advice
Post comments:0 Comments

Dried tree leaves make good compost material

Ask Gardenerd: Leaves for Compost?

A great question came in from a curious gardenerd this week: "Just started composting! I have a composting tumbler in my yard as there are many animals I would need to keep out of a pile eg. deer raccoons, etc. I have a separate bin where I plan to collect autumn leaves to have available for adding to the composter with the green material. Is this acceptable? I have read elsewhere that it's better not to use dead leaves as…

Post author:Christy
Post published:October 1, 2013
Post category:Blog Sage Advice
Post comments:9 Comments

A bacterial-eating nematode

Up Close and Personal with Compost

Nerd Alert: this blog post may cause irrational desire to look at compost under a microscope. Ever since I took Alane Weber's compost immersion workshop last year, I have been trying out the techniques I learned to make better compost. In our test garden, we've been building Active Batch Thermal compost piles as well as cold compost piles (slowly adding material over time) with plenty of water and a good balance of carbon and nitrogen materials. The results look good,…

Post author:Christy
Post published:July 31, 2013
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:2 Comments

The "thermal" in active batch thermal composting

Active Batch Composting

What the heck is "Active Batch Composting" anyway? You're about to find out, but first let's look at another term: Cold composting. Cold composting, though the name is a bit of a misnomer, is what most gardeners do. We have a compost bin or pile, and over time we add our kitchen scraps and garden waste, some leaves and shredded office paper, tissues, paper towels, etc. We water it and wait. The temperature may climb to 100-120°F but that's about…

Post author:Christy
Post published:March 6, 2013
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:4 Comments

Compostable cutlery, nearly three years later

Compostable Cutlery – Not!

I've been unknowingly conducting an experiment on compostable cutlery over the last three years. Today I report my findings to you, in hopes that it will dispel some of the myths about biodegradable products. I celebrated a landmark birthday in February nearly 3 years ago. In our effort to lower our carbon footprint, we bought compostable/biodegradable cutlery and planned to compost everything from the party, including paper plates and cups (no birthday girl wants to do dishes in a ballgown). …

Post author:Christy
Post published:November 14, 2012
Post category:Blog What's Growin' On
Post comments:6 Comments

Soil Foodweb: It’s a Party In There

This week we are delighted to present another guest blogger, Sheri Powell-Wolff, A.K.A. Compost Teana. Sheri is an Advisor and Master Soil Consultant for Soil Foodweb Oregon and Earth Fortifications in Corvallis, Oregon. Her company, Compost TEAna’s Organic Landscapes provides compost tea services and soil biology testing and consultation in the Los Angeles Area. She's here to gives us the ...

Post author:Christy
Post published:April 18, 2012
Post category:What's Growin' On
Post comments:9 Comments

Compost Queries

A question came in this week from a Gardenerd student:

"I'm sharing a Biostack [compost] bin with my neighbors in my apt complex and the question was raised on whether or not it's acceptable to put whole fruit, apples, oranges, etc. into the bin. I'm trying to keep the bin simple for people so I am hesitant to tell people to cut up their fruit to help accelerate the composting, but my neighbor thinks they should be. Can you tell me what the ...

Post author:Christy
Post published:September 15, 2010
Post category:Blog Sage Advice
Post comments:6 Comments

Quicker Compost

Here's a question that came in last week:

"How can I speed up composting without spending a lot of money. Cover it with a tarp? Helga"

Hi Helga,

There are a few things you can do to try and speed up your compost production, and none of them cost money:

The first is to build a bigger pile - at least 3 x ...

Post author:Christy
Post published:May 19, 2010
Post category:Sage Advice
Post comments:4 Comments