Theoretically, anything that has once lived can be composted i.e. returned to become one with the soil where it began. This has included friends, both human and otherwise. It's where my body will finally rest too.
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On the other hand, do not compost:
- Meat, or you may find your local dogs, goannas, maggots have become your backyard companions.
- Cheese, ditto.
- Leftover lasagne or any soggy food - leftovers are why the backyard chook system as invented, or a "leftovers club", where you and your friend share the giant dish of eggplant parmigiana you can no longer bear to snack at.
- Eggs shells - they won't break down till you slowly dry them till brittle in the oven when you are cooking other stuff.
- Plastic bags, even if they are labelled "compostable". They are not.
- Packaging filling labelled "edible". Our chooks say it isn't, and so do the bacteria and fungi in our compost heaps.
- Disposable nappies
- Cream wafer biscuits
- Ice-cream
- Large amounts of fat or oil (I make stale bread sandwiches for the chooks with excess fat or oily salad dressings).
- Bread
- Too much fruit or veg that will attract fruit flies and breed other pests.
- Garments knitted from raw wool (I have a hat I knitted for my son as a baby then dug out of a compost heap, quite intact once dry cleaned, 30 years after it had been knitted).
- Doormats, carpet, or any artificial fibre
- Wombats that are presumed deceased, even if you have asked them nicely, as they can sleep very soundly so may not be lifeless. Also see above for "meat". The way to compost friends - wombat, dog or otherwise - is to dig a grave and plant something they love over them, or in the case of a family pet, a grave under the "playing tree" where the kids know the love remains.
- Too many grass clippings or leaves so they clomp together.
The perfect compost heap is a tossed salad, a few weeds, some corn stalks, a bag of leaves, a gentle scatter of lawn clippings, a few handfuls of hen manure to speed up decomposition, the peel from one, but only one pumpkin, raw, a bit of moisture and lots of air.
A tumbling compost heap, or one you throw up into the air with a garden fork each day, gives you the quickest results - you can turn muck into magic soil in three weeks if you add air.
And it will be magic. Plants grow in compost - faster, more pest and disease resistant - plus it's free fertiliser and your dinner will be delicious because after all that work, you need to make something good with those carrots, because they will be the best you have ever eaten.
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We have three compost bins. Sadly they are rarely looked after as they should be, or emptied often enough, mostly because we also have a useful bank the weeds are thrown down, where avocado pits sprout and become fruit trees, and lilly pillies welcome the birds.
In an ideal world, i.e. the one we could have next week, with enough goodwill, all bags would be reusable, packing would be scrunched paper that could be reused too; leftovers would go to friends, or REALLY left leftovers to the chooks, and the rest onto compost, and our gardens would grow and so would our children and the earth would slowly bloom again.
Your backyard compost heap won't save the world - our planet's problems are mostly industrial and/or political. Even if everyone had a compost heap, the planet's future wouldn't change all that much. But if we don't care enough about tomorrow to even have a backyard compost heap, or learn how to make it, or to show our kids how yucky stuff can turn into luscious tomatoes and strawberries, the chances of us pushing for the vital bigger changes seems small.
And with enough compost, you will know that no matter what happens this year, your raspberry or spinach crop will be fantastic.
This week I am:
- Planting many, many carrots, six varieties, including the purple ones that are a bit tough but look splendid on the plate.
- Beginning the "will you please take a bag of apples" summer plea.
- Listening to the cicadas, who are a bit late this year, but welcome.
- Discovering that if you actually get around to picking EVERY zucchini when it is finger size, you will actually wants lots of zucchini, and the bushes will keep producing longer.
- Making pesto with lots of basil, except with cashews instead of pine nuts.
- Simply watching. The valley and garden are green and flower-filled and the animals are fat, and it is a paradise I never want to leave.
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Jackie French
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
