The end purpose of composting is to create nutritionally dense organic material to feed – or fertilize – the soil.
The definition of fertilize being: to make fertile, to enrich the soil by adding organic (or chemical) substances.

Agriculture has been around for 11,000 years give or take. As you may guess, fertilizing the soil isn’t a “new” thing.

The core plant nutrients are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P) and Potassium (K).
How much of what you need depends on the breakdown of your soil and what you’re growing in it.

Nitrogen is the most needed nutrient. It’s an essential building block used to assemble amino acids, nucleic acids and protein. Nitrogen is crucial to life.
Nitrogen needy plants are more “life less”… yellowed, smaller and less fruiting.

Before commercialization

Organic manures and guano were popular fertilizers.

There are two classes of manures: green and animal.
Green manures are crops that are grown with the specific intent of plowing them under. These are also called “cover crops”.
For instance Legumes are nitrogen rich… when they’re plowed under they add nitrogen back into the soil. Soy beans were originally only used as a cover crop.

Animal manure is the feces from certain mammals including horses, cows and chickens. All are grass/plant eating animals and produce nitrogen rich manure.

Guano is feces from sea birds, seals and bats… again, nitrogen rich and high in phosphorous as well. Also has fungi and bacteria that act as a natural fungicide for plants.
The term originated in Peru.

Commercialization of farming and fertilizers

There wasn’t much in the way of commercial fertilizers before 1900.
In the 1890’s agriculture started becoming less family farm with a horse drawn plow and more mechanized and commercialized.
Along with that trend, commercial fertilizers became part of the mix.

Chemical fertilizers came along in the mid 1800’s. Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate.

Ammonium Sulfate was originally a by-product from coal gas manufacturing. The quality wasn’t great as a fertilizer but it was used some in the 1800’s.

Sodium Nitrate was the first popular fertilizer and used in the early 1900’s.

Ammonium Nitrate came into vogue after World War I.
Ammonium Nitrate was the principal ingredient used in explosives. Following War I, it made it’s way to the fields in significant volume… more so in Europe than the US. Following World War II with a large surplus in the US… why not “explode” crop growth .

Ammonium Nitrate is an inorganic source of nitrogen.

Big versus Small; Inorganic versus Organic

Large industrial agriculture is still a big user of chemical inorganic fertilizers. However, organic farms, home gardens and some smaller farms favor organic fertilizing.

In the US this is most typically in the form of compost and animal manures.
Being urban farmers, we go for the horse manure from a nearby stable and we’re working on our little compost factory.

Farms (organic and smaller) also are conscientious about crop rotation and may use “cover crops”.

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A healthy soil is teeming with a multitude of critters: microbes, fungi, nematodes, insects and worms. Since plants don’t have digestive tracts to breakdown the ‘food’ in the soil, all these critters work together to breakdown the humus or organic material and the mineral component of the soil for easy uptake by the plant’s intricate root system. It’s been said, When trying to grow the ultimate garden – two thirds of success lie in the ground.

Healthy soil is a must and something I learned early on in my gardening life. Although the last few years I’ve amended the soil most seasons, because of the lack of time and other commitments I haven’t been caring for the soil like I could have. This year for instance, I skipped my usual bag or two of steer and chicken manure in each bed – this I had learned from my grandmothers. This season, my conscience got to me – I didn’t know the source of the manures – likely from a large scale factory farm so I couldn’t or rather wouldn’t use those as my amendment any longer.

During Spring planting, we were short on our own plant matter compost so I used some in each planting hole along with some horse manure we had left from a run to the stables a few years ago. The result, this season’s garden looks like a vegetable garden from Lilliput – Not enough nutrients!

Look at these two tomato plants…the first was planted with a few scoops of compost in unamended soil. The second was planted one week later in an oak barrel with fresh American Soil’s Local Hero with a few shovel fulls of our plant material compost. There is a yard stick next to each plant – Plant #2 is four times larger than puny plant #1! Robin’s tomato plants are large and healthy as well – she carefully amended her soil as she does every year. Maybe she’ll give us her secret recipe .

I’ve come to realize that most of the soil in our beds are pretty lifeless – not much worms whereas a few years ago the soil had lots of red wigglers. Now that we are upping the ante and committing more time and energy into our garden, I have become obsessed with bringing our soil back to life. What I’ve learned and will now follow – the golden rules to healthy soil.

Golden rule number one – ammend regularly. Each bed must be amended after each crop no matter what you’ve grown. You can amend with plant matter compost or animal compost.

Golden rule number two – never walk on prepared soil. All those critters in the soil – they need oxygen. So nice fluffly soil is a must.

Golden rule number three – cover your soil with mulch even if you don’t plan to plant it right away. This keeps the weeds from taking over (sapping those nutrients you worked so hard to put in) and keeps the soil moist – you don’t want to dry out your bed as this will damage the soil structure.

Compost. Back in college, I had a plot in a community garden. As luck would have it, the gardens were situated next to a horse stable. We had mountains of composted horse manure a wheel barrow away. I grew some amazing veggies that year. Patti – our digital dumpster diver extraordinaire – found two stables nearby that are begging folks to come scoop up the horse manure.

Bingo! As much composted horse manure we can possibly use minutes away from our garden! So far we’ve gotten about 500 pounds of really nice ready to use compost. I guess that we’ll end up with another 1000 pounds before all our raised beds have been rehabilitated.

In our own yard. we have a Wiggly Worm Wranch which we got from StopWaste.Org and three compost bins – one was here when we moved in years ago and two were recently gifted to us from our kind neighbors. The worms are happy and doing well. Worm castings and worm tea are excellent soil ammendments. I’m also learning the fine art of composting. In the past, I’ve ended up with bins of smelly slim as the compost rotted because I had too much green material and not enough brown. Now my plan is to layer the kitchen scraps with straw and will toss in some uncomposted horse manure for extra measure. My goal is to get the compost pile to be hot – this tells me that the composting bacteria are doing their thing. I’ll be turning the compost regularly to fluff up the material putting in more oxygen thereby speeding up the process. Plus, it’s a great work out!

Mulch. Hands down our favorite is straw and we’re lucky enough to be 10 minutes from the race track where we can purchase the bales of straw.

All set. Now all I need is a strong back to work the soil back to health. What a great workout this gardening is turning out to be…and I was just considering finding a trainer…

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