With autumn leaves falling, lush grassy lawns springing back from summer's heat and drought, and gardens generating heaps of tired vines and other vegetable wastes, this is the perfect time to start a new compost pile or breath some new life into your old one. Our latest how-to video shows you what you need to know to create a pile that smokin' hot.
Other composting links of interest:
-Our buddy bacteria
-Build your own compost sifter
-Build your own compost bin
By Barbara Damrosch
If compost is the holy grail of organic gardening, what's holier than thou? Sifted compost.
What you want in a perfect mature compost is, of course, organic matter so fully broken down that the original ingredients -- whether straw, weeds, kitchen scraps or goat droppings -- are no longer recognizable. Finished compost looks like very rich, dark, fine soil. But even the best soil contains stones, twigs and the like. Sifted compost doesn't. It is the 400-thread-count soil amendment.
Grade-A sifted compost has many uses. Let's say you want to renovate the lawn in the fall. Using a shovel, you scatter sifted compost over the worst patches, rake it into the iffy grass growing there (if any) then sow seeds and water it thoroughly. The fine-textured compost provides an excellent seed bed. In fact, it is a good seed bed for anything, especially small, hard-to-germinate seeds such as carrot and onion. One trick is to dig a planting furrow, then fill it with sifted compost. You can even use it to start seeds in flats -- although compost must be completely mature and mellow for this purpose -- too much high-test nitrogen can burn tender seedlings. It is also a wonderful top-dressing for a vegetable garden, a luxury mulch that provides a good nutritional multivitamin while making your garden's soil look as dark and lustrous as a mink coat.