Last week: The Golden Ratio

Compost provides life-giving nourishment to plants, because the nutrients in it are more readily available to flora than they would be in your run-of-the-till soil. As I was doing some outreach last weekend at the Park Slope Food Coop, I realized that the composting class is having a similarly nurturing effect on me: I'm becoming more deeply intertwined with, and gaining better access to, the "nutrients" and resources in my community. The course is providing us MCs entrée to a whole network of local sustainability-in-action-food coops, community gardens, botanic gardens, local grown foods, large-scale composting operations.

The decision to compost, in effect, has led me to see the ecology of people and soil in a completely different way, but let me get down to brass tacks: As part of my Master Composter training, I signed up to answer questions at the Coop for a few hours, thinking that this would be a great activity for Earth Day ‘07. The questions were both illuminating and inspiring, and I thought I would briefly share some Q&As in the hopes that they'll be helpful for all you existing composters or 'posters-to-be out there.

One of my initial visitors asked what to do about fruit flies that are drawn to an indoor worm bin. First, be sure to wash (or freeze) fruit rinds and banana peels you're planning to compost, because the fruit fly eggs invariably embedded on the outside of most fruits will otherwise hatch when they're in your pile. To deal with an existing fruit fly quandary, you can build a trap to draw them away; and make sure that you're covering your food scraps with plenty of browns on top, which will prevent flybys from sensing the food.

Other questions that came up: Can you compost eggshells? Yup, they're a good source of calcium and carbon. Can you put in meat? No, nor should you put in other foods like dairy products that would putrify as they decompose. Will outdoor composting draw pests? Shouldn't, since a) these creatures have plenty of other food sources that they'd prefer and b) if your bin is properly sealed off with wire mesh, and if you layer enough browns on both top and bottom of the pile, you won't attract organisms other than the critters you want.

A consistent theme throughout the day was that people are somewhat intimidated about having worms at home. They're slimy, they're gross, they might try to escape from the bin. (They don't, because they stay with the food source, and they couldn't survive very long outside of the bin). I confess that I had these hang-ups, too, until I got the bin going. Now I find them fascinating. The red wigglers don't bite, they have five hearts, they're healthy eaters yet they're fine if you leave on vacation for two weeks; they naturally and very happily reduce your carbon footprint. Is this not the ideal pet?

Next Week: Steaming Compost

Image: National Institutes of Health