Organic Gardener's Composting Part 6

_Cottonseed meal_ is one of this country's major oil seed residues.

The seed is ginned out of the cotton fiber, ground, and then its oil content is chemically extracted. The residue, sometimes called oil cake or seed cake, is very high in protein and rich in NPK. Its C/N runs around 5:1, making it an excellent way to balance a compost pile containing a lot of carboniferous materials.

Most cottonseed meal is used as animal feed, especially for beef and dairy cattle. Purchased in garden stores in small containers it is very expensive; bought by the 50-to 80-pound sack from feed stores or farm coops, cottonseed meal and other oil seed meals are quite inexpensive. Though prices of these types of commodities vary from year to year, oil cakes of all kinds usually cost between $200 to $400 per ton and only slightly higher purchased sacked in less-than-ton lots.

The price of any seed meal is strongly influenced by freight costs.

Cottonseed meal is cheapest in the south and the southwest where cotton is widely grown. Soybean meal may be more available and priced better in the midwest. Canadian gardeners are discovering canola meal, a byproduct from producing canola (or rapeseed) oil.

When I took a sabbatical in Fiji, I advised local gardeners to use coconut meal, an inexpensive "waste" from extracting coconut oil.

And I would not be at all surprised to discover gardeners in South Dakota using sunflower meal. Sesame seed, safflower seed, peanut and oil-seed corn meals may also be available in certain localities.

Seed meals make an ideal starting point for compounding complete organic fertilizer mixes. The average NPK a.n.a.lysis of most seed meals is around 6-4-2. Considered as a fertilizer, oil cakes are somewhat lacking in phosphorus and sometimes in trace minerals. By supplementing them with materials like bone meal, phosphate rock, kelp meal, sometimes pota.s.sium-rich rock dusts and lime or gypsum, a single, wide-spectrum slow-release trace-mineral-rich organic fertilizer source can be blended at home having an a.n.a.lysis of about 5-5-5. Cottonseed meal is particularly excellent for this purpose because it is a dry, flowing, odorless material that stores well. I suspect that cottonseed meal from the southwest may be better endowed with trace minerals than that from leached-out southeastern soils or soy meal from depleted midwestern farms. See the last section of Chapter Eight.

Some organic certification bureaucracies foolishly prohibit or discourage the use of cottonseed meal as a fertilizer. The rationale behind this rigid self-righteousness is that cotton, being a nonfood crop, is sprayed with heavy applications of pesticides and/or herbicides that are so hazardous that they not permitted on food crops. These chemicals are usually dissolved in an emulsified oil-based carrier and the cotton plant naturally concentrates pesticide residues and breakdown products into the oily seed.

I believe that this concern is accurate as far as pesticide residues being translocated into the seed. However, the chemical process used to extract cottonseed oil is very efficient The ground seeds are mixed with a volatile solvent similar to ether and heated under pressure in giant retorts. I reason that when the solvent is squeezed from the seed, it takes with it all not only the oil, but, I believe, virtually all of the pesticide residues. Besides, any remaining organic toxins will be further destroyed by the biological activity of the soil and especially by the intense heat of a compost pile.

What I _personally_ worry about is cottonseed oil. I avoid prepared salad dressings that may contain cottonseed oil, as well as many types of corn and potato chips, tinned oysters, and other prepared food products. I also suggest that you peek into the back of your favorite Oriental and fast food restaurants and see if there aren't stacks of ten gallon cottonseed oil cans waiting to fill the deep-fat fryer. I fear this sort of meal as dangerous to my health.

If you still fear that cottonseed meal is also a dangerous product then you certainly won't want to be eating feedlot beef or drinking milk or using other dairy products from cattle fed on cottonseed meal.

_Blood meal_ runs 10-12 percent nitrogen and contains significant amounts of phosphorus. It is the only organic fertilizer that is naturally water soluble. Blood meal, like other slaughterhouse wastes, may be too expensive for use as a compost activator.

Sprinkled atop soil as a side-dressing, dried blood usually provokes a powerful and immediate growth response. Blood meal is so potent that it is capable of burning plants; when applied you must avoid getting it on leaves or stems. Although princ.i.p.ally a source of nitrogen, I reason that there are other nutritional substances like growth hormones or complex organic "phytamins" in blood meal.

British gla.s.shouse lettuce growers widely agree that lettuce sidedressed with blood meal about three weeks before harvest has a better "finish," a much longer shelf-life, and a reduced tendency to "brown b.u.t.t" compared to lettuce similarly fertilized with urea or chemical nitrate sources.

_Feathers_ are the birds' equivalent of hair on animals and have similar properties. See _Hair_

_Fish and sh.e.l.lfish waste._ These proteinaceous, high-nitrogen and trace-mineral-rich materials are readily available at little or no cost in pickup load lots from canneries and sea food processors.

However, in compost piles, large quant.i.ties of these materials readily putrefy, make the pile go anaerobic, emit horrid odors, and worse, attract vermin and flies. To avoid these problems, fresh seafood wastes must be immediately mixed with large quant.i.ties of dry, high C/N material. There probably are only a few homestead composters able to utilize a ton or two of wet fish waste at one time.

Oregonians pride themselves for being tolerant, slow-to-take-offense neighbors. Along the Oregon coast, small-scale market gardeners will thinly spread shrimp or crab waste atop a field and promptly till it in. Once incorporated in the soil, the odor rapidly dissipates. In less than one week.

_Fish meal_ is a much better alternative for use around the home. Of course, you have to have no concern for cost and have your mind fixed only on using the finest possible materials to produce the nutritionally finest food when electing to subst.i.tute fish meal for animal manures or oil cakes. Fish meal is much more potent than cottonseed meal. Its typical nutrient a.n.a.lysis runs 9-6-4. However, figured per pound of nutrients they contain, seed meals are a much less expensive way to buy NPK. Fish meal is also mildly odoriferous.

The smell is nothing like wet seafood waste, but it can attract cats, dogs, and vermin.

What may make fish meal worth the trouble and expense is that sea water is the ultimate depository of all water-soluble nutrients that were once in the soil. Animals and plants living in the sea enjoy complete, balanced nutrition. Weston Price's cla.s.sic book, _Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,_ attributes nearly perfect health to humans who made seafoods a significant portion of their diets. Back in the 1930s--before processed foods were universally available in the most remote locations-people living on isolated sea coasts tended to live long, have magnificent health, and perfect teeth. See also: _Kelp meal._

_Garbage. _Most forms of kitchen waste make excellent compost. But Americans foolishly send megatons of kitchen garbage to landfills or overburden sewage treatment plants by grinding garbage in a disposal. The average C/N of garbage is rather low so its presence in a compost heap facilitates the decomposition of less potent materials. Kitchen garbage can also be recycled in other ways such as vermicomposting (worm boxes) and burying it in the garden in trenches or post holes. These alternative composting methods will be discussed in some detail later.

Putting food sc.r.a.ps and wastes down a disposal is obviously the least troublesome and apparently the most "sanitary" method, pa.s.sing the problem on to others. Handled with a little forethought, composting home food waste will not breed flies or make the kitchen untidy or ill smelling. The most important single step in keeping the kitchen clean and free of odor is to put wastes in a small plastic bucket or other container of one to two gallons in size, and empty it every few days. Periodically adding a thin layer of sawdust or peat moss supposedly helps to prevent smells. In our kitchen, we've found that covering the compost bucket is no alternative to emptying it. When incorporating kitchen wastes into a compost pile, spread them thinly and cover with an inch or two of leaves, dry gra.s.s, or hay to adsorb wetness and prevent access by flies. It may be advisable to use a vermin-tight composting bin.

_Granite dust._ See _Rock dust._

_Grape wastes._ See _Apple pomace._

_Gra.s.s clippings._ Along with kitchen garbage, gra.s.s clippings are the compostable material most available to the average homeowner.

Even if you (wisely) don't compost all of your clippings (see sidebar), your foolish neighbors may bag theirs up for you to take away. If you mulch with gra.s.s clippings, make sure the neighbors aren't using "weed and feed" type fertilizers, or the clippings may cause the plants that are mulched to die. Traces of the those types of broadleaf herbicides allowed in "weed and feed" fertilizers, are thoroughly decomposed in the composting process.

It is not necessary to return every bit of organic matter to maintain a healthy lawn. Perhaps one-third to one-half the annual bioma.s.s production may be taken away and used for composting without seriously depleting the lawn's vigor--especially if one application of a quality fertilizer is given to the lawn each year. Probably the best time of year to remove clippings is during the spring while the gra.s.s is growing most rapidly. Once a clover/gra.s.s mix is established it is less necessary to use nitrogen fertilizers. In fact, high levels of soil nitrates reduces the clover's ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. However, additions of other mineral nutrients like phosphorus, pota.s.sium, and especially calcium may still be necessary.

Lawn health is similar to garden health. Both depend on the presence of large enough quant.i.ties of organic material in the soil. This organic matter holds a ma.s.sive reserve of nutrition built up over the years by the growing plants themselves. When, for reasons of momentary aesthetics, we bag up and remove clippings from our lawn, we prevent the gra.s.s from recycling its own fertility.

It was once mistakenly believed that unraked lawn clippings built up on the ground as unrotted thatch, promoting harmful insects and diseases. This is a half-truth. Lawns repeatedly fertilized with sulfur-based chemical fertilizers, especially ammonium sulfate and superphosphate, become so acid and thus so hostile to bacterial decomposition and soil animals that a thatch of unrotted clippings and dead sod can build up and thus promote disease and insect problems.

However, lawns given lime or gypsum to supply calcium that is so vital to the healthy growth of clover, and seed meals and/or dressings of finely decomposed compost or manure become naturally healthy. Clippings falling on such a lawn rot rapidly because of the high level of microorganisms in the soil, and disappear in days.

Dwarf white clover can produce all the nitrate nitrogen that gra.s.ses need to stay green and grow l.u.s.tily. Once this state of health is developed, broadleaf weeds have a hard time competing with the l.u.s.ty gra.s.s/clover sod and gradually disappear. Fertilizing will rarely be necessary again if little bioma.s.s is removed.

Homeowners who demand the spiffy appearance of a raked lawn but still want a healthy lawn have several options. They may compost their gra.s.s clippings and then return the compost to the lawn. They may use a side-discharge mower and cut two days in succession. The first cut will leave rows of clippings to dry on the lawn; the second cut will disintegrate those clippings and pretty much make them disappear. Finally, there are "mulching" mowers with blades that chop green gra.s.s clippings into tiny pieces and drops them below the mower where they are unnoticeable.

Gra.s.s clippings, especially spring gra.s.s, are very high in nitrogen, similar to the best horse or cow manure. Anyone who has piled up fresh gra.s.s clippings has noticed how rapidly they heat up, how quickly the pile turns into a slimy, airless, foul-smelling anaerobic mess, and how much ammonia may be given off. Green gra.s.s should be thoroughly dispersed into a pile, with plenty of dry material. Reserve bags of leaves from the fall or have a bale of straw handy to mix in if needed. Clippings allowed to sun dry for a few days before raking or bagging behave much better in the compost heap.

_Greensand._ See _Rock dust._

_Hair _contains ten times the nitrogen of most manures. It resists absorbing moisture and readily compresses, mats, and sheds water, so hair needs to be mixed with other wetter materials. If I had easy access to a barber shop, beauty salon, or poodle grooming business, I'd definitely use hair in my compost. Feathers, feather meal and feather dust (a bird's equivalent to hair) have similar qualities.

_Hay._ In temperate climates, pasture gra.s.ses go through an annual cycle that greatly changes their nutrient content. Lawn gra.s.ses are not very different. The first cuttings of spring gra.s.s are potent sources of nitrogen, high in protein and other vital mineral nutrients. In fact, spring gra.s.s may be as good an animal feed as alfalfa or other legume hay. Young ryegra.s.s, for example, may exceed two percent nitrogen-equaling about 13 percent protein. That's why cattle and horses on fresh spring gra.s.s frisk around and why June b.u.t.ter is so dark yellow, vitamin-rich and good-flavored.

In late spring, gra.s.ses begin to form seed and their chemical composition changes. With the emergence of the seed stalk, nitrogen content drops markedly and the leaves become more fibrous, ligninous, and consequently, more reluctant to decompose. At pollination ryegra.s.s has dropped to about l percent nitrogen and by the time mature seed has developed, to about 0.75 percent.

These realities have profound implications for hay-making, for using gra.s.ses as green manures, and for evaluating the C/N of hay you may be planning to use in a compost heap. In earlier times, making gra.s.s hay that would be nutritious enough to maintain the health of cattle required cutting the gra.s.s before, or just at, the first appearance of seed stalks. Not only did early harvesting greatly reduce the bulk yield, it usually meant that without concern for cost or hours of labor the gra.s.s had to be painstakingly dried at a time of year when there were more frequent rains and lower temperatures. In nineteenth-century England, drying gra.s.s was draped by hand over low hurdles, dotting each pasture with hundreds of small racks that shed water like thatched roofs and allowed air flow from below. It is obvious to me where the sport of running hurdles came from; I envision energetic young countryfolk, pepped up on that rich spring milk and the first garden greens of the year, exuberantly racing each other across the just-mowed fields during haying season.

In more recent years, fresh wet spring gra.s.s was packed green into pits and made into silage where a controlled anaerobic fermentation retained its nutritional content much like sauerkraut keeps cabbage.

Silage makes drying unnecessary. These days, farm labor is expensive and tractors are relatively inexpensive. It seems that gra.s.s hay must be cut later when the weather is more stable, economically dried on the ground, prevented from molding by frequent raking, and then baled mechanically.

In regions enjoying relatively rainless springs or where agriculture depends on irrigation, this system may result in quality hay. But most modern farmers must supplement the low-quality hay with oil cakes or other concentrates. Where I live, springs are cool and damp and the weather may not stabilize until mid-June. By this date gra.s.s seed is already formed and beginning to dry down. This means our local gra.s.s hay is very low in protein, has a high C/N, and is very woody--little better than wheat straw. Pity the poor horses and cattle that must try to extract enough nutrition from this stuff.

Western Oregon weather conditions also mean that farmers often end up with rain-spoiled hay they are happy to sell cheaply. Many years I've made huge compost piles largely from this kind of hay. One serious liability from cutting gra.s.s hay late is that it will contain viable seeds. If the composting process does not thoroughly heat all of these seeds, the compost will sprout gra.s.s all over the garden. One last difficulty with poor quality gra.s.s hay: the tough, woody stems are reluctant to absorb moisture.

The best way to simultaneously overcome all of these liabilities is first to permit the bales to thoroughly spoil and become moldy through and through before composting them. When I have a ton or two of spoiled hay bales around, I spread them out on the ground in a single layer and leave them in the rain for an entire winter. Doing this sprouts most of the gra.s.s seed within the bales, thoroughly moistens the hay, and initiates decomposition. Next summer I pick up this material, remove the baling twine, and mix it into compost piles with plenty of more nitrogenous stuff.

One last word about gra.s.s and how it works when green manuring. If a thick stand of gra.s.ses is tilled in during spring before seed formation begins, its high nitrogen content encourages rapid decomposition. Material containing 2 percent nitrogen and lacking a lot of tough fiber can be totally rotted and out of the way in two weeks, leaving the soil ready to plant. This variation on green manuring works like a charm.

However, if unsettled weather conditions prevent tillage until seed formation has begun, the gra.s.ses will contain much less nitrogen and will have developed a higher content of resistant lignins. If the soil does not become dry and large reserves of nitrogen are already waiting in the soil to balance the high C/N of mature gra.s.s, it may take only a month to decompose But there will be so much decomposition going on for the first few weeks that even seed germination is inhibited. Having to wait an unexpected month or six weeks after wet weather prevented forming an early seed bed may delay sowing for so long that the season is missed for the entire year. Obstacles like this must be kept in mind when considering using green manuring as a soil-building technique. Cutting the gra.s.s close to the soil line and composting the vegetation off the field eliminates this problem.

_Hoof and horn meal._ Did you know that animals construct their hooves and horns from compressed hair? The meal is similar in nutrient composition to blood meal, leather dust, feather meal, or meat meal (tankage). It is a powerful source of nitrogen with significant amounts of phosphorus. Like other slaughterhouse byproducts its high cost may make it impractical to use to adjust the C/N of compost piles. Seed meals or chicken manure (chickens are mainly fed seeds) have somewhat lower nitrogen contents than animal byproducts but their price per pound of actual nutrition is more reasonable. If hoof and horn meal is not dispersed through a pile it may draw flies and putrefy. I would prefer to use expensive slaughterhouse concentrates to blend into organic fertilizer mixes.

_Juicer pulp:_ See _Apple pomace._

_Kelp meals_ from several countries are available in feed and grain stores and better garden centers, usually in 25 kg (55-pound) sacks ranging in cost from $20 to $50. Considering this spendy price, I consider using kelp meal more justifiable in complete organic fertilizer mixes as a source of trace minerals than as a composting supplement.

There is a great deal of garden lore about kelp meal's growth-stimulating and stress-fortifying properties. Some garden-store brands tout these qualities and charge a very high price. The best prices are found at feed dealers where kelp meal is considered a bulk commodity useful as an animal food supplement.

I've purchased kelp meal from Norway, Korea, and Canada. There are probably other types from other places. I don't think there is a significant difference in the mineral content of one source compared to another. I do not deny that there may be differences in how well the packers processing method preserved kelp's mult.i.tude of beneficial complex organic chemicals that improve the growth and overall health of plants by functioning as growth stimulants, phytamins, and who knows what else.

Still, I prefer to buy by price, not by mystique, because, after gardening for over twenty years, garden writing for fifteen and being in the mail order garden seed business for seven I have been on the receiving end of countless amazing claims by touters of agricultural snake oils; after testing out dozens of such concoctions I tend to disbelieve mystic contentions of unique superiority. See also: _Seaweed_.

_Leather dust_ is a waste product of tanneries, similar to hoof and horn meal or tankage. It may or may not be contaminated with high levels of chromium, a substance used to tan suede. If only vegetable-tanned leather is produced at the tannery in question, leather dust should be a fine soil amendment. Some organic certification bureaucrats prohibit its use, perhaps rightly so in this case.

_Leaves._ Soil nutrients are dissolved by rain and leached from surface layers, transported to the subsoil, thence the ground water, and ultimately into the salty sea. Trees have deep root systems, reaching far into the subsoil to bring plant nutrients back up, making them nature's nutrient recycler. Because they greatly increase soil fertility, J. Russell Smith called trees "great engines of production." Anyone who has not read his visionary book, _Tree Crops, _should. Though written in 1929, this cla.s.sic book is currently in print.

Once each year, leaves are available in large quant.i.ty, but aren't the easiest material to compost. Rich in minerals but low in nitrogen, they are generally slow to decompose and tend to pack into an airless ma.s.s. However, if mixed with manure or other high-nitrogen amendment and enough firm material to prevent compaction, leaves rot as well as any other substance. Running dry leaves through a shredder or grinding them with a lawnmower greatly accelerates their decomposition. Of all the materials I've ever put through a garden grinder, dry leaves are the easiest and run the fastest.