Does compost make acidic soil? It is a common claim made for compost but does it really work? Is it a good option for making alkaline soil more acidic? Let’s have a closer look.
Compost Creates Acidic Soil
Composting
How to Compost: Browns & Greens
The common advice for making compost is that you should use the correct ratio of browns and greens. Why is this important? What is the correct ratio? Are dried green grass clippings, a brown or a green? Good questions that will help you understand how to compost.
Compost Controls Pests
Most discussions about compost and pests are concerned with keeping pests out of compost bins. Lots of insects and other pests like to live in a compost bin and I’ll discuss this issue in a future post. But does compost, when added to the garden, reduce the number of pests affecting plants? It is a claimed benefit of compost.
Compost Adds Enzymes and Hormones
One of the claimed benefits of compost in the garden is to provide the soil and plants with enzymes and hormones. Is this true? What would enzymes and hormones do for the garden? Good questions in the quest to understand compost better.
Does Compost Reduce Plant Disease?
Plant disease reduction is a common benefit attributed to compost—but is it true. Will compost, added to the garden, reduce diseases in the garden? This is a very complex question that leads to some very interesting discussions about plants, and their diseases.
Compost Microbes – Good for the Soil?
Compost microbes are micro-organisms (mostly bacteria and fungi) that live in the compost pile and get transferred to your soil when you add the compost to the soil. Many people consider this to be a benefit of using compost. Compost manufacturers even advertise their “special microbes”, sometimes called Effective Microbes.
It is all a myth. Let’s dig deep and understand this important gardening topic.
Benefits of Composting
In past posts I have talked about some of the benefits of compost. It improves soil structure and it adds nutrients to the soil. What about the other benefits like adding microbes to the soil, reducing diseases and eliminating the need for additional fertilizer? Are these real benefits or just gardening myths?
Compost Fertilizer Numbers
In my last post Compost – Is it an Organic Fertilizer, I concluded that compost was an organic fertilizer and that it adds nutrients for the garden. I’d now like to have a closer look at the compost fertilizer numbers, the NPK, to better understand how and when the nutrients from compost are made available to plants. This discussion will also uncover some interesting facts about reported fertilizer numbers for organic fertilizers.
Compost – Is It An Organic Fertilizer?
Compost is good for the garden, in part, because it adds nutrients for the plants. That sounds like a fertilizer. But almost everything you read says that compost is NOT a fertilizer. Something doesn’t make sense—let’s have a closer look at this myth. Is compost an organic fertilizer?
What Is Compost?
I was doing some reading about compost and compost myths and I asked myself, do I really know what compost is? I thought I knew. I had certainly read a lot about it, and I have been making it for over 40 years. I started by Goggling the definition of compost and it quickly became clear that the popular dictionaries on the net don’t agree on a definition. In fact they contradict one another. It became clear that this simple question had a more complicated answer.
The posts for the next several weeks will be dedicated to composting, making compost and composte‘, if you prefer that term. I’ll unravel the truth behind this black gold.
