Urban Farm Projects: Making the Most of Your Money, Space and Stuff by Kelly Wood

Author:Kelly Wood [Wood, Kelly]
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2014-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

Cold Compost Piles

Cold composting, also known as regular or long-term composting, involves collecting biodegradable matter in one area and letting it sit for an extended period of time. Biodegradable basically means “this rots and will make compost.” Rain, cold, sun, worms, bugs, and nature’s decomposers eventually break down the organic matter, turning it back into soil. If you have a small corner of your yard that you don’t regularly use, it could be ideal for a backyard compost pile.

You can put a variety of waste from your house and yard on the pile: weeds, wilted flower bouquets, fallen leaves, dead houseplants, kitchen trimmings (excluding any animal products), cat litter (minus the feces), and dryer lint. Make sure everything gets really wet once in a while, and in a year or two or three, you can rake everything out of that corner; remove any remaining branches, sticks, and avocado pits; collect the lovely black dirt; and put it where you want new plants to grow. You can then continue to use this area for a compost pile because the decomposer insects and microbes will already be present, or you can plant in the rich soil that remains and start a new pile elsewhere. Composting doesn’t get easier than that.

The downside of cold composting is that it does not kill off many of the seeds and pathogens found in your compost items. So depending on where you use your compost, you may have a lot of weeds (or squash or cucumbers, depending on your diet). Plants grown in the compost might have fungi or other soilborne diseases that were not eradicated during decomposition. These problems are rare—and worth the risk, in my opinion, for the small amount of work a cold pile requires.

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