PDC LESSON 7.0 COMPOST – MAKING GOOD COMPOST

 

PERMACULTURE COURSE AGRO-ECONOMY

PDC LESSON 7.0 COMPOST – MAKING GOOD COMPOST

Making Compost

There is nothing new about making compost.

Composting is a practice that has been going on for thousands of years; and doesn’t nature do it all by itself?

Yet many people seem to be a bit afraid of not getting it quite right and hesitate to have a go. 

What is compost?

Compost is a mixture of rich organic matter that has been allowed to rot down. The compost can be of any organic material that is piled up high enough to generate some heat, has access to oxygen and keeps enough moisture within itself to encourage microbial activity. 

For the best lesson in compost making, you would do well to look at nature at work on a forest floor. There is a natural yearly cycle of growth and decay. Insects, worms, fungi, and bacteria are constantly at work to create humus. This is what makes a living soil. The soil that has this constant activity of growth and decay is self-sustaining in cycles of rapid and slow decay throughout the changing seasons. 

Making your own compost is mimicking nature. You are simply speeding up the process of decay by creating ideal conditions for decomposition to occur.

Compost

is vital and this ought to include many different materials to ensure that all the minerals that are needed by the plants are included. The compost should be well broken down to the point of being complete in decomposition. Finished compost will be about 40% of its original volume. This compost contains much in the way of bacteria and fungi. Compost activators are always a good idea as they encourage that breakdown process to begin and then the microbes from the soil seek it out and multiply. Following biodynamic principles is very much in the same vein. The formulas that are used in bio-dynamic farming and gardening create these microbes in a very much-concentrated form and then disperse them over a large area. Decaying plant material in the soil will then be food for these microbes where they will grow and multiply.

This is the foundation of healthy, living soil.

Text from the roots, Elisabeth Ferkonia (Aus.) PDC studied with Bill Mollison, Chart by Geoff Lawton