I’m amused by the near breathless excitement some garden bloggers have when talking about their compost.
I expect poetry and songs next. Aw, shoot. Let me go first.
When I compare thee to a summer’s day
Your fragrance is of fields of hay
And in my fingers I feel your wealth
And to my flowers…
What rhymes with wealth? Oh yeah. Health.
And to my flowers you give health.
Okay, all kidding aside, I love compost too. That love doesn’t lean toward the romantic side so much as the greedy side. I want more, MORE, MORE!
So it was with some interest in reading Joe Lamp’l’s (not a typo – his name is Lamp’l) book The Green Gardener’s Guide that I have been tossing perfectly good compost materials in the trash.
Lamp’l says I can also compost vacuum cleaner bag dust and even the bag, paper towels and rolls, coffee grounds and filters, cotton and wool rags, dryer lint, hair and fur. Hah! Finally a use for all that loose dog hair! You can also compost newspapers, although it’s best to shred them.
I know that most newspapers are now printed with soy-based ink, so they are fairly safe composting material. What I’m a bit leery of is his assertion that you can compost clean office paper. Does that mean clean as in there are no jelly donut stains on them? Or clean as in not having been printed on?
I still have to print out reams and reams of statistical output to write reports. I always use both sides of the paper. But still, I have a good amount of paper waste as a result. Is it safe to shred and compost paper that has been printed with laser or inkjet toner? Given my desire for a healthy and mostly organic garden, is it safe to introduce these into the mix?
I have tried some searching and found an interesting, if not authoritative, exchange over at Gardenweb.
What do you think? To compost or not to compost? Any experts out there?
Robin
Did I get your attention? I thought I could use a gripping lead to entice you to read about…worms!
Most mornings (okay, SOME mornings), I lace up the old tennie pumps and head out for a walk. Mostly I just go up and down the driveway since the rural roads where we live have no shoulders could be hazardous.
The mornings after a rain, a lap takes twice as long as sunny days. That’s because I have to pick up all the rapidly-dehydrating worms and relocate them to the grass. Sure, I might stare straight ahead on the first lap, determined to keep going. But before long, I’m glancing down and start feeling horrid about just walking past these wriggling, suffering creatures. So I stoop down, gently pick up the worm and find a nice patch of wet grass and earth for him to recuperate.
The absolute WORST mornings for me are those when Harry has made it outside first. Sadly, this happens pretty frequently since he runs from 5 – 6 a.m. on weekdays and I am not that, shall we say, motivated. On those days, after a rain and when I head outdoors, I witness unspeakable devastation. Harry is a good person. But he runs without glancing down, not even thinking about what he’s doing. I can only hope that he misses some that I can rescue later. It’s ugly. Really ugly.
I can see some of you snickering now. (You know who you are. I know who you are.) But really, the whole motivation is as ancient as, well, Buddhism. There are Five Precepts (the basic code of ethics) in the Buddhist philosophy. The first precept of Buddhism is:
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life (killing) of living beings.
When you read Buddhist literature, you realize that most people interpret this as not just passively refraining from throttling your husband for leaving the kitchen all messy or your son for bringing home a stinking report card. Most extend this precept to an active practice of not doing any harm to any living being.
Are you following me here? The practice of picking up worms is an ethical practice that contributes to good karma.
This interest isn’t just because of my recent reading or the fact that worms are good for the garden. I have had a long interest in worms.
A while back, I had this brainstorm that since I hate going out into the cold to dump our kitchen scraps into the compost bin, we could just use a worm composter. (It’s called vermicomposting and the setup is called a home vermiculture system.)
What a grand idea! I bought this nifty Can-o-Worms that I set up in the basement. I ordered worm bedding (I kid you not) and a couple pounds of extra special redworms. I lovingly prepared the composter exactly according to instructions, layering in damp newspaper. Then ho, ho, ho. I was ready to go!
You feed your worms many of the same types of things that could ordinarily go into a compost bin–peelings of vegetables, leaves of lettuce that are brown, etc.
So here’s the problem. Worms really don’t eat that much. Maybe…maybe a WHOLE BUNCH of worms could keep up with a single person who doesn’t eat a lot of fresh vegetables. But these worms could not keep up with our family of three.
Frankly, I hate to report this part. I’m not sure what ultimately happened. I don’t know if our worms were overwhelmed with the bounty that they had at their disposal. I don’t know if the fact that they arrived in a snowstorm and sat in the mailbox for two days had something to do with it. But the worms met…well…an early demise. It was a very sad day for me when I went to visit with the worms and found everyone sleeping. Wait. They weren’t sleeping, cause they wouldn’t wake up. They were DEAD!
Bad karma here for that, no doubt. I hope to make up for it by picking up worms after the rain.
Robin
