Category Archives: Composting

Compost, trucking, and other garbage

February 23, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

(Scroll to the bottom for today's bit on Black History Month.)

I find myself today at TruckFlix.com, a website for truck drivers. Interesting. Of course, it is compost that has led me here, albeit via a circuitous route. Here’s a sort of overview of the process: Compost, yard-waste, garbage, landfills, municipal solid waste, cities, New York City.

Put it all together and you get the question, What does New York City do with its garbage?

The answer is that it exports it by truck and rail to Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Virginia, besides sending a fair amount upstate.

Something I’ve learned while digging through the garbage recently: nothing is straightforward, and some of the stories are so ludicrous, so intricate and unlikely, that it’s hard to decide whether to laugh or cry. Toronto, for instance, has been sued by no fewer than three First Peoples (the Oneida, the Chippewa, and the Munsee) over its newly purchased Green Lane Landfill site. And that’s just the tip of that particular garbage pile.

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Posted in Composting, Environment

Compost vs. Arsenic: And the winner is–compost!

January 21, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

Several posts back I mentioned in passing that compost can help fix arsenic in soil, and it seems reasonable to explain what the hell I was on about there. To "fix" arsenic is get it to bond with other, stable molecules so that it can neither leach from the soil into the water supply, nor migrate into your vegetables, and thence into you.

I got onto this originally because the news articles about the great Tennessee coal ash spill of '08 kept mentioning arsenic. Arsenic, I learned, occurs in several different forms, but the one that turns up most commonly in coal ash is arsenate(V), the same form that leaches into soil from telephone poles and fences treated with copper chromate arsenate (CCA).

And yes, at least one recent study conducted at the University of Florida found that when carrots and lettuce are grown in soil that's contaminated by CCA, both vegetables absorbed less arsenic when the soil received plentiful treatments of compost.

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Posted in Composting, Environment, Organic Gardening, Research Spin-off, Soil & Amendments

For arsenic-free water, pull up your compost socks.

January 9, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

I realize that this post-title sounds as if I'd lost both my remaining marbles, or else as though I were trying to imitate the inimitable off-the-wall titles of the great Blogger from Blackpitts, James A-S himself. But no. As you will see.

Let us begin with the subject of spreading compost. Easy, right? All you need is a wheelbarrow and a shovel. Well. Check out the photo below.

Source: Compost: Completing the Cycle
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TECQ), 20

That, folks, is how they do it in Texas. Apparently, when they go for compost there, they do it big-time. (Why am I not surprised?)

Compost blankets like this one reduce runoff, making reseeding disturbed soil far quicker, more successful, and therefore economical than it is when using what are disparagingly referred to as "traditional methods." But that's not really the point here. The point is the machinery, which I'll return to in a minute.

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Posted in Composting, Environment, Research Spin-off

Compost tools: Rage against the machine

December 3, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

The compost-auger-that-has-to-be-attached-to-a-drill, subject of yesterday’s rant, is just the latest motorized gadget I’ve seen recommended for composters. Some manuals seem to assume that everyone keeps a garage full of gas-guzzling machines handy. Shredders, gas-powered mowers and roto-tillers top the list, but weed whackers and chippers get occasional mention, and now we can add electric aeraters to the list.

Composting happens most swiftly if materials are chopped into tiny pieces first, of course. So what to do with leaf-piles to “prepare” them for the compost heap? Just drive your mulching lawn-mower over them, many manuals advise, as if of course everyone has a mulching lawn-mower. Most such sites don’t say, “If you have a mulching mower, you can use it to….” No. They say “drive your mulching mower….” Do they have a contract with the mowing manufacturers, I wonder?

Newspaper, I read in my current composting book, can be composted; ‘but be sure to shred it first.’ With your handi-dandi shredder, of course. Even sticks and logs can be used if you toss them in the chipper and mix them with—But I don’t care what I’m supposed to mix them with; I’m ready to compost the book.

I’ve got two MAJOR problems with this sort of idiocy.

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Posted in Composting, Tools of the Trade

Compost auger: a rant

December 2, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

Well, that’s torn it.

Yesterday’s post, disclosing my “secrets” for winter composting, ended by saying that I’d turned my pile the old-fashioned way (with a fork) since my hole-poking technique hadn’t introduced enough oxygen to let the pile re-heat after its temperature started to drop.

James A-S (Blogging from Blackpitts Garden) emerged from his bundle of blankets long enough to advise using an auger. (Hey—I just figured out why the bonfire, James. Thinking warm thoughts?) Colleen of In the Garden agreed.

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Posted in Composting, Tools of the Trade