March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Black gold a garden treasure

In recent years, many professional and weekend gardeners have come to praise the attributes of composted material as the key to better plant production. Not only is compost rich in the needed nutrients for a growing plant, they’ll tell you, but it’s fluffy composition increases the drainage properties of the garden plot, allowing water and fertilizer to soak down to the plant’s roots.

This revelation comes as no surprise to Ann and Joseph Kucera of Garland who have been enthusiastic advocates of composting for more than 20 years. The Garland gardeners, who moved to this area from Massachusetts seven years ago, know firsthand how important this “black gold” is to their garden’s well-being.

“When we first moved up here and started gardening on the land,” Joseph Kucera says, “it was really discouraging. The soil was poor and had a lot of clay in it. We would dig a hole and put a bulb in it and that clay would harden right around it. The water would pool around the roots and rot them and fertilizer couldn’t get to the roots because the dirt was not porous enough. We lost hundreds of dollars worth of plants in the beginning because of the soil.”

The Kuceras knew that the soil was in dire need of more porous matter to improve its drainage. In addition, clay is not known for being very high in the nutrients needed by plants. Introducing compost, which is both fluffy and high in organic matter, to their garden’s soil was the only solution.

Garden productivity jumped for the couple. The more they worked the soil and added compost to it, the better their plants grew and produced.

Back in Massachusetts, the Kuceras had the opposite problem with their soil. There their garden spot was very sandy and pebbly and water would go right through it. Mrs. Kucera began her composting efforts there by digging a small hole next to a backyard tree.

“What I was actually doing,” she said, “was I was trying to make dirt.”

Once a week, she would deposit a small amount of household waste into the hole and then cover it back up. Eventually, the waste would decompose and be added to the garden plot and a new hole dug to continue the dirt-making effort.

If you garden, say the Kuceras, you should be composting. But they will concede that some gardeners become discouraged about composting because much of the literature about it is written in such a technical manner.

For the first-time composter, the Kuceras have some suggestions.

“For one thing,” says Kucera, “have some fun with it. It’s not like baking an angel food cake where all of the ingredients have to be measured precisely. Don’t get too technical with it. Treat it like it’s a science fair project back when you were in school. Experiment with it. If you’ve got it right, you’ll know.”

Start out small, he says. Get a bushel full of leaves and small pieces of yard waste, throw in some household waste like coffee or tea grounds or vegetable peelings. Sprinkle it with some chicken or cow manure, throw on a layer of topsoil, water the pile and then turn it over. Fluff it with a pitchfork and water it three times during the summer. In three months time, the compost is ready to be stirred into the garden plot.

For those who don’t want to be as loose with their recipe, a rule of thumb for the pile is 70 percent weeds, grass and leaves; 15 percent manure and 12 percent topsoil, Kucera says.

What you ultimately want, he says, is to create the conditions where a “hot rot” will occur in the pile. If the pile is decomposing as it should, the pile should be warm and there should be evidence of the waste breaking down, he said. When the decomposition process is complete, the pile should smell not of manure, but of damp earth.

Just about anything can go into the pile, they say, except human and dog and cat waste. For people needing more information about composting, the Kuceras recommend the local extension service or the county soil conservation office.


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