Advice About Direct Composting

[BB from TN]

I was thinking that I could bury shredded leaves, food scraps and compost where I will be planting green beans, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. By the time I plant seeds and plants in spring it should be all composted enough to feed the plants. Does anyone have an opinion on how well this will work? Or if it will work? I've tried gardening for a few years now and never have very good results. Thank you for any response I might get.

[rainbowgardener]

what you are talking about is basically trench composting. You can type that in to the search box top left and find lots written here. Here's a couple to get you started:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... =4&t=66507 (scroll down toward the bottom of the page for the trench composting part)

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... ng#p361546

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... ng#p361515 (this one has links to some other threads)

I think often when you are gardening, but not getting the results you want, it is due to the quality of your soil. Time and energy and organic materials invested in your soil, will definitely improve your success! The soil is literally the foundation of your garden. Good loose, enriched, loamy soil is essential to good success. It takes awhile of working at it to get to that, but if you are working on improving your soil, each year your garden should get better. Compost everything! Mulch everything! A big part of a successful garden is keeping your soil mulched heavily with organic stuff (straw, grass clippings, shredded paper, pulled weeds, used coffee grounds, etc in any combination). The mulch helps conserve moisture and it breaks down to help feed your soil.

You probably should get a soil test. They will tell you the pH and fertility of your soil and what you need to add. The ag extension will probably tell you what you need to add in synthetic fertilizers, but once you know what is lacking you can do it organically, you don't have to follow their directions re synthetics.

Best Wishes, keep us posted how it is working for you.

[digitS']

With very little rainfall in the summer and soil that easily drains, not only do my gardens require irrigation but the compost piles almost do, too.

I began by just digging out a garden bed and building a compost pile there. Having the soil contact helped the material hold moisture and the 8" or so of soil that I removed could be used to cap the pile at the end of the season.

One season of decomposing in place gave me back a kind of rough garden bed that I found useful for squash plants, especially. By the 3rd season, the soil level was back to normal but the level of organic matter was high.

In more recent seasons, I have often just dug out several beds and piled frost killed plants in at the end of the season. I'm not really trying to build compost piles in those beds, just get that material under about 8" of soil. By the end of the following growing season, some of the material is still (somewhat) identifiable if I dig down in one of those beds. The roots of that season's plants don't seem to have any trouble starting out in the soil on top and growing later into the decaying plants from 12 months earlier.

There is digging involved in all this but no turning of compost.

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

RE: with very little rainfall in the summer and soil that easily drains, not only do my gardens require irrigation but the compost piles almost do, too.

Absolutely! If your compost pile dries out, it stops working. It will start up again as soon as it gets water, but in the meantime nothing is happening. If it is dry enough to water my garden, I water my compost pile too. Being buried, the moisture in a trench compost system is conserved somewhat, but it can still dry out in a drought, so you would still need to water the trench as well.

[bryce d]

This is how I compost. As stuff breaks down it will use up all of the nitrogen in the soil. I use a awful lot of nitrogen poured in the rows with the leaves and stuff.

[rainbowgardener]

hmm, interesting..... Carbon heavy stuff like leaves, straw, wood chips, etc, will use up Nitrogen in breaking down and can subtract a lot of N from the soil, if buried. I would not expect N heavy stuff to use any N in breaking down. Greens, kitchen scraps, etc are N heavy. So if you are just burying those, it should be adding not subtracting N. If you are burying a mix like what you would have in your compost pile, then I guess it depends on the balance.

[imafan26]

I have done trench composting before. It does work but there are a few problems. Browns on top = mulch, browns in the soil = carbon = negative nitrogen balance while it is breaking down you will need to add more nitrogen for the crop.

Soft greens and kitchen waste decompose quickly, they are mostly water in two weeks they are slime. However, with kitchen waste you get more worms and grubs around the waste. For me that meant I had to wait at least 3 weeks before I planted anything on top of it. 1) because the buried waste sinks over time 2) the mongoose dig up the garden to eat the grubs that are attracted to the decaying waste. 3) if you use fresh bonemeal the mongoose will eat that too.

I like trench composting as it is easy and I don't have a lot of accumulated waste for a pile and sometimes I have too much to feed the worms and no room in the freezer. The waste has to be clean because it will not get hot enough to kill anything.

[Gary350]

I use to use the lawn mower to chop tree leaves into tiny pieces. Mow them 3 or 4 times they get small and till into the soil easy. Till a lot of ammonium nitrate into the soil to make leaves compost quick about 1 month. If you don't compost the leaves they will suck all the nitrogen out of the soil. One summer I did this without adding nitrogen most of my plants turned yellow and died.

[BB from TN]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm do plan to put extra nitrogen where I direct compost. With "Plant Tone" fertilizer maybe some of the liquid fish emulsion that they sell at Lowe's. The leaves are shredded so I think they should break down quickly. If I remember I'll post in a few months and let everyone know how well this has worked for me.

[ButterflyLady29]

Urine is a great source of nitrogen. In some areas people collect their urine to use on garden beds. Do a search on "human urine use in gardens" and you'll find a lot of info about it.

[jal_ut]

Well some have said to me....... " You are not a gardener, you are a farmer!"

Whatever you call it..... this is what works for me:

Organic materials, manure etc, get put on the plot in the fall and tilled in. Come spring amend with some NPK from a box and go plant. (Follow instructions on the box for the amounts.)

Someone said "irrigation". In these parts that is certainly a big part of gardening. We would not grow much without it. Yes, water your beds as needed.

Have a great garden!

[imafan26]

Take a look at the box of plant tone and look at the npk . The numbers are low and not all of it is available. You need to wait longer to plant or you need more available nitrogen if you plan to plant before your green manure has decayed.