Greening my House

Earth

Thirty-eight years ago, one of the two commonly observed Earth Day celebrations was created by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson to be celebrated on April 22, 1970. Yes, of all people it was a politician! I’m not making this up! Since that time, it has grown from a fringe, grassroots sort of celebration an almost mainstream thing. The idea behind it was to foster greater awareness of environmental issues with the general public.

So I thought if this is a green blog, I should probably post something for Earth Day. I figured, heck, what is more appropriate for Earth Day than earth itself? I write “earth” with a small “e” because I mean “dirt”, not the proper name of the planet as a whole.

What the Heck are you Going on About Now, Edwin?

Recently, I checked out the web site of my local waste management company, Allied Waste. It seemed pretty scary to me if waste got together in an alliance like that, so I had to be sure… Okay, so now I’m just being silly.

One thing I noticed on the AW web site is that they are giving away free compost. What? FREE? Yes, that’s right, it’s free. Can’t beat that. It’s the compost made from all the green waste collected from all the SF Bay Area green bins, including ours. All I had to do is prove I’m a resident, and I could pick up one free cubic yard of compost. This spring, they had two pick up dates, and the most recent was last Saturday.

Here is the compost in boxes:

Mostly Organic

Compost from a company like this is mostly organic fertilizer. I say “mostly” because you never know what sort of strange things people put into their green bins. It may include chemicals, pesticides, and other things that shouldn’t be there. For example, I found a few strings and pieces of plastic bags in my load. But, on the whole, it should be pretty much composed of just yard trimmings, and therefore mostly organic.

A study by the University of Washington in 2000 found traces of the herbacides clopyralid and picloram in municipal composts. These affect broad leaf plants, and therefore are not good to put in your garden. Clopyrid was subsequently deregistered for lawn uses, and is usually not found in compost any more. However, picloram is still a possible problem.

Another possible problem is plant diseases that survive composting at insufficient temperatures. The temperatures in a municipal compost heat may not be sufficient for heat-sterilizing the microbes, fungus, etc. Usually, however, municipal composting is done in very large heaps and there is nowhere for the heat to go, so it gets pretty hot.

I am going to try using the compost anyways. Picloram can be degraded in soil by microbes, and can be leached from the soil in water. I will let the amended soil sit for a number of days before planting my plants in hopes that any traces of nasty stuff like that might leach out first, and that beneficial bacteria and insects will find their way into the compost first.

Here’s what it looked like as I was incorporating it into the garden soil:

The compost was pretty smelly. It smelled like a combination of cigar, earth, and garbage. I am not sure it was finished composting actually, as compost I have smelled before pretty much only had the “earthy” part of the smell. Here, you can see the compost and soil mixed and set up into nice furrows. I will plant the tomatoes and basil on these furrows.

Have a happy earth day, and try to do something “green” yourself. The more of us that participate, the better!