All About Composting

All About Composting

Composting is no doubt a worthdoing activity as for as farming or gardening is concerned. Compost is a  decomposed organic matter. Organic matter is necessary for plants to grow well and a key to obtain excellent produce. Organic matter provides minerals to the roots, helps to retain soil moisture, good for soil porosity which provoids oxygen to roots. I have come to know many stories of composting by many friends in gardening. All they found it a good and excellent job.
        Composting is not a difficult job. It is quite easy. Make a dig in your nearby place where smell may not be a big issue. Put all your decomposeable household waste, leaves, vegetables and fruit covers etc in that dig and cover the hole with mud/soil.Left it for some months after 3-4 months you will find a good compost ready for filling your pots, flower bed and other plants.

The raw materials used are mixed plant residues, animal dung and urine, earth, wood ash and water. All organic material wastes available on a farm such as weeds, stalks, stems, fallen leaves, prunings, chaff, fodder leftovers and so on, are collected and stacked in a pile. Hard woody material like cotton or pigeon pea stalks and stubble are first spread on the farm road and crushed under vehicles such as tractors or bullock carts before being piled. Such hard materials should in any case not exceed ten percent of the total plant residues. Green materials, which are soft and succulent, are allowed to wilt for two to three days to remove excess moisture before stacking; they tend to pack closely if they are stacked in the fresh state. The mixture of different kinds of organic material residues ensures a more efficient decomposition. While stacking, each type of material is spread in layers about 15 centimetres thick until the heap is about one and a half metres high. The heap is then cut into vertical slices and about 20-25 kilograms are put under the feet of cattle in the shed as bedding for the night. The next morning the bedding, along with the dung and urine and urine-earth, is taken to the pits where the composting is to be done.

The site selected for the compost pit should be at high level so that no rainwater gets

in during the monsoon season; it should be near to the cattle shed and a water source. A

temporary shed may be constructed over it to protect the compost from heavy rainfall. The pit should be about 1 m deep, 1.5-2 m wide and of any suitable length.

The material brought from the cattle shed is spread evenly in the pit in layers of 10-15

cm. On each layer is spread a slurry made with 4.5 kg dung, 3.5 kg urine-earth and 4.5 kg of inoculum taken from a 15 day-old composting pit. Sufficient quantity of water is sprinkled over the material in the pit to wet it. The pit is filled in this way, layer by layer, and it should not take longer than one week to fill. Care should be taken to avoid compacting the material in any way.

Turning:

The material is turned three times during the whole period of composting; the first

time 15 days after filling the pit, the second after another 15 days and the third after another month. At each turning, the material is mixed thoroughly, moistened with water and replaced

in the pit.

The pit method

Generally, composting is carried out in a corner of a field and in a circular or

rectangular pit. Rice straw, animal dung (usually pig), aquatic weeds or green manure crops are used and often silt pumped from river beds is mixed with the crop residues. The pits are filled layer by layer, each layer being 15 cm thick. Usually, the first layer is of a green manure crop or water hyacinth, the second layer is a straw mixture and the third layer is of animal dung. These layers are alternated until the pit is full, when a top layer of mud is added; a water layer of about 4 cm depth is maintained on the surface to create anaerobic conditions which help to reduce losses of nitrogen. Approximate quantities of the different residues in tons per pit are: river silt 7.5, rice straw 0.15, animal dung 1.0, aquatic plants or green manure

0.75 and superphosphate 0.02. Three turnings are given in all, the first one month after filling the pit and, at this time, the superphosphate is added and thoroughly mixed in. Water is added as necessary. The second turning is done after another month and the third two weeks later. The material is allowed to decompose for three months and produces about eight tons of

compost per pit.