Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm Mugisha together, a co host of Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius, one of the founders of Mental Laws, and
Speaker 1: this is Humans Growing Stuff, a collaboration from My Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and your friends at Miracle Grow. Our goal is
Speaker 1: to make this the most human show about plants you'll
Speaker 1: ever listen to, and along the way, we'll share inspiring stories,
Speaker 1: tips and tricks to nurture your plant addiction, and just
Speaker 1: enough science to make you sound like an expert. So
Speaker 1: we are on summer break right now, but the truth
Speaker 1: is Molly and I can't stop our plant addiction, so
Speaker 1: we're bringing you some sunny mini episodes to enjoy before
Speaker 1: we return with a brand new season. Throughout this summer,
Speaker 1: we'll be dropping incredible stories from growers, fun advice we
Speaker 1: get from experts, and we'll even be bringing you along
Speaker 1: on our field trips as we hunt all over Brooklyn
Speaker 1: for a Polka Dot plant and learn about growing lavender
Speaker 1: on Governor's Island. It is super fun. In today's bonus episode,
Speaker 1: we're getting to the bottom of compost, from how to
Speaker 1: do it, when to start, why it's so important to
Speaker 1: soil health, and how it can help combat climate change.
Speaker 1: So quick backstory when my family and I lived in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: We would take our food scraps to a local farmers
Speaker 1: market for collection to be turned into compost. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of where my compost story begins and ends. But
Speaker 1: after listening to our many guests and friends on the
Speaker 1: show just talk at length about the benefits and meditative
Speaker 1: nature of composting, I wanted to figure out what exactly
Speaker 1: I needed to get started at home. So I called
Speaker 1: up Tara Lewandowski and Carry Oceans. Tera is a senior
Speaker 1: scientist with Scott's Miracle Grow, and Carry is an associate
Speaker 1: director for the US Composting Council, and both are compost experts.
Speaker 1: So if anyone could get me started, it's definitely these two.
Speaker 1: Hey Tera, Hey Carry, are you there? Yeah, I'm here.
Speaker 1: So I've always liked the idea of composting, and I
Speaker 1: even used to drop off my food scraps at a
Speaker 1: farmer's market in Atlanta. But um, during COVID that stopped
Speaker 1: and I realized how much garbage I was generating. It's
Speaker 1: it's really crazy, but you know, to be honest, I'm
Speaker 1: still not that familiar with what composting actually is and
Speaker 1: how it all works, and I'm a little hesitant to
Speaker 1: just start, so I I'd love if you could explain,
Speaker 1: you know, what compost is and the act of composting
Speaker 1: to a newbie like me. Alright, So, at its core,
Speaker 1: composting is taking the natural process of decomposition, which happens
Speaker 1: when leaves fall to the ground and the forest or whatever,
Speaker 1: and putting that into a concentrated location and managing managing
Speaker 1: that to accelerate it. So we can put stuff into
Speaker 1: a into a pile at home that could be you know,
Speaker 1: instead of just a narrow layer, it's now in a pile.
Speaker 1: And by putting in a pile you accelerate all those
Speaker 1: processes and so things will decompose faster, and then in
Speaker 1: the end you can end up with material that's kind
Speaker 1: of like a soil. We call it a soil amendment,
Speaker 1: something you would add to your soil to help improve
Speaker 1: the soil's health. And then there's just a few basic principles.
Speaker 1: So the work of the composting is being done by
Speaker 1: millions and millions of micros, bacteria, fungi and other things.
Speaker 1: And just like any animal husbandry, if you maintain a
Speaker 1: herd of cows, you have to make sure that they're
Speaker 1: all fed and housed, and keeping the micro hurt happy
Speaker 1: and making sure they have the right amount of moisture,
Speaker 1: which is just just a moist environment and making sure
Speaker 1: it is enough for them they kind of build some
Speaker 1: heat up and things don't get too dry, and they
Speaker 1: have the right balance of nutrients, which is really just
Speaker 1: we call them browns and greens, they're really represent carbon
Speaker 1: and nitrogen. It's pretty simple at a at a small
Speaker 1: level and at a home level, you can't get into
Speaker 1: too much trouble. So that's the process of composting, and
Speaker 1: encompost is just the end result to that process, and
Speaker 1: it's something that is good for the soil. Helps helps
Speaker 1: feed the soil, and feeding the soil you'll be feeding
Speaker 1: your plants, so it's not really a direct fertilizer, but
Speaker 1: it's something that helps your plants grow indirectly by helping
Speaker 1: your soil grow. Can I ask why is composting so
Speaker 1: essential to growing and gardening? So compostings away for us
Speaker 1: to recycle carbon, nitrogen um and the micronutrients to get
Speaker 1: them back to a form that the plants can use.
Speaker 1: It is really important for us to make sure we're
Speaker 1: reusing these organic inputs. People often think of a big
Speaker 1: egg and how inputs are off taken from the field,
Speaker 1: but not many are put back. And that's a great example,
Speaker 1: but the same thing can happen at home. We want
Speaker 1: to make sure that when you're gardening and you're taking
Speaker 1: those organic inputs off, you're also putting something back. When
Speaker 1: you add organic matter to the soil in these forms,
Speaker 1: you end up with greater nutrient retention in the soil.
Speaker 1: It's often known as canon exchange capacity. Sees you also
Speaker 1: have carbon in the soil, and carbon is really important
Speaker 1: not for the plants, but for the microbes in the soil.
Speaker 1: The microbes are going to need that carbon for their processes,
Speaker 1: but in breaking down the carbon, they're also breaking down
Speaker 1: and p K and making it more available for the plant.
Speaker 1: So very important for a couple of different reasons. I
Speaker 1: had this incredible writer and thinker, Barton day Thurston on
Speaker 1: and he was talking about his practice of composting, which
Speaker 1: just sounded so romantic to me. He'd like go out
Speaker 1: in the mornings after meditating and he'd take a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee and he'd sort of spin the compost and
Speaker 1: check the temperature, and and I had this very quiet
Speaker 1: morning that was kind of based around his compost But
Speaker 1: but I was curious, if I was just gonna start composting,
Speaker 1: how would I do it. The best time to start
Speaker 1: composting is in the fall, because there's usually fall leaves around,
Speaker 1: and that's a good way to start. You we're going
Speaker 1: to start other times a year. You need to kind
Speaker 1: of you need to have those brown uh that high
Speaker 1: carbon dry stuff that you're gonna add your food waste into,
Speaker 1: so you you need you need to have that first.
Speaker 1: You can just do it in a pile, and the
Speaker 1: only problem with the pile is that takes up a
Speaker 1: lot of space, So you contain a pile inside a
Speaker 1: couple of palettes or a wire ring or something that
Speaker 1: contains the space and makes it easier to build a pile.
Speaker 1: Or you can get these commercial either bins or or
Speaker 1: the fancier turners like you said you the bins that
Speaker 1: are mounted and so can spin. Every state cooperative extension
Speaker 1: office in the country has pretty good instructions on home
Speaker 1: composting and they're all pretty reliable. So get a pamphlet
Speaker 1: ahead will have the basic dues and don'ts and how
Speaker 1: to start and what your options are, but there are
Speaker 1: other variations. There's worm composting for people in apartments that
Speaker 1: just really just have the food waste. They just want
Speaker 1: to be or do the right thing and not send
Speaker 1: their food waste to a landfill. Composting of the worms
Speaker 1: called verma composting is an option. In the end, you
Speaker 1: have to do something with this stuff that you've collected
Speaker 1: and made in the compost. So if you don't have
Speaker 1: a garden, you know you're gonna find a friend to
Speaker 1: use it with. Uh, you know, you have to. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of value in composting in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, for the for the planet, because we're keeping
Speaker 1: the food waste out of landfills, and that causes methane,
Speaker 1: which is a powerful greenhouse gas, depending on how you
Speaker 1: measure it, either twenty five or a hundred times worse
Speaker 1: than carbon dioxide. You might wonder why, well, why doesn't
Speaker 1: that happen in a compost pile. Well, in our compost piles,
Speaker 1: we work to keep it aerobic. We we work to
Speaker 1: keep oxygen flowing to the microbes in the pile, and
Speaker 1: methane only happens under strict anaerobic conditions. So if there's
Speaker 1: air getting in, won't be creating methane. Landfills are designed
Speaker 1: to keep air out. But in the end, as the
Speaker 1: point is to make compost and to use the compost,
Speaker 1: and so one way or another, you have to think
Speaker 1: about what am I going to do of this stuff
Speaker 1: once I have it. I love the idea of having
Speaker 1: garden parties and giving out gift boxes to everyone who comes.
Speaker 1: But um, so tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the worms, because I'm fascinated about by them. And we
Speaker 1: talked to this wonderful person, Jamie Brennan from Gold Feather Gardens,
Speaker 1: and she was talking about how worms can be essential
Speaker 1: to the part of composting. So, okay, can you tell
Speaker 1: me about how they contribute to the process. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can do a dedicated box container that you get
Speaker 1: the right kind of worms are called red wigglers. Once
Speaker 1: they're active, they will eat half their weight every day
Speaker 1: in food waste. So if you have a pound of worms,
Speaker 1: which might be a thousand or two thousand worms, they
Speaker 1: will eat half a pound of food every day. It
Speaker 1: is somewhat miraculous, Like where did it go? Depending on
Speaker 1: of your single person or family four, depending how much
Speaker 1: you're feeding them. Eventually it kind of gets all composed
Speaker 1: and then you have to do something with it. That's
Speaker 1: a that's another story. But if you're comp us is
Speaker 1: on the ground, which most people, unless it's in a
Speaker 1: tumbler off the ground, you will get worms working their
Speaker 1: way into their compost pile. You'll get sal bugs and
Speaker 1: other things. At a commercial facility, we don't get any
Speaker 1: of those because it's too hot. But at a home
Speaker 1: compost pile, yeah, you get. You get a whole food web.
Speaker 1: You get you get little mites, you hat sal bugs,
Speaker 1: you get all kinds of things that will be living
Speaker 1: in your compost pile. Then they're all good. They're all
Speaker 1: helping part of the food web of the compost pile.
Speaker 1: There's a great book called Worms Eat My Garbage by
Speaker 1: Marry apple Hof, and that is like the worm composters Bible.
Speaker 1: Tell everything you need to know about how to do it,
Speaker 1: what to do with it when you're done, what are problems.
Speaker 1: It's a great it's a great resource. So you mentioned critters,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, how involved should possum or raccoons be
Speaker 1: in my compost pile. They shouldn't be. We try to
Speaker 1: get them out and that's why if you're in an
Speaker 1: area that has those things, putting your compost in a
Speaker 1: bin in an enclosure, well we'll keep them out. In
Speaker 1: an urban city, you want to rat proof beIN right,
Speaker 1: and rats can get through a hole like the size
Speaker 1: of a of a quarter. What are some things we
Speaker 1: can compost and what surprising that we can't. Anything that
Speaker 1: was once alive or produced by living things can be composted.
Speaker 1: And you may have heard in some of the states
Speaker 1: in the Northwest now they allow composting of human bodies
Speaker 1: instead of funerals, so you can compost anything that was
Speaker 1: once alive. Now at the home scale, that's a different
Speaker 1: story because you're not getting the heat, you're you're not
Speaker 1: getting the controls that you have at a big scale.
Speaker 1: And so generally we say to keep to things that
Speaker 1: we're growing like leaves, brush, grass, weeds, and from the
Speaker 1: kitchen anything that was vegetative in nature, and try to
Speaker 1: avoid too much dairy or meat or oils. Some people
Speaker 1: will be very persticaty about this, and you know, really
Speaker 1: only do like coffee grounds and tea and and the
Speaker 1: carrot tops and things like that. Others of us are
Speaker 1: not so worried about it. And so a little bit
Speaker 1: of cheese or a little bit of meat or a
Speaker 1: little bit of oil from a salad dressing really is
Speaker 1: fine as long as especially as long as you're burying
Speaker 1: it into your pile and not having it exposed. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're going to get some questions about that,
Speaker 1: because some people will really disagree with me. I am
Speaker 1: a fairly lazy composter or I mean, you can really
Speaker 1: be aggressive in your composting and turn it frequently and
Speaker 1: mix it up and make composts fast, or you could
Speaker 1: be a lazy compostor like me. I might turn my
Speaker 1: compost pile once a year, just when it gets so
Speaker 1: full I can't add anymore in. That's when I have
Speaker 1: to start a new bin. And that's one thing that
Speaker 1: people have to figure it out, is if they have
Speaker 1: a single bin and they're adding food every every couple
Speaker 1: of days or once a week, when do they stop?
Speaker 1: How do they get their compost out? And so ultimately
Speaker 1: that you have to kind of start a second bin
Speaker 1: so you can let the first bin finish. I guess
Speaker 1: that's that's one of my That's one of my questions too,
Speaker 1: is like how do you know when it's ready. It's
Speaker 1: it's tricky because the outside doesn't finish. I mean, the
Speaker 1: stuff on the very outside always looks like it's not decomposed.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to look inside to find it.
Speaker 1: Stuff breaks down. Compost happens after a few months and
Speaker 1: a pile. The stuff at the botto of your pile
Speaker 1: that you can't see will be compost. Take the raw
Speaker 1: stuff off the edges and off the top, and then
Speaker 1: you'll have your finished compost. So the add to this
Speaker 1: um it goes back to your question on cadence of
Speaker 1: when to start composting. So most people are going to
Speaker 1: be wanting to add compost to their garden in the spring,
Speaker 1: right like when they're starting their garden. If you back
Speaker 1: out from that, you're gonna want at minimum I would
Speaker 1: guess six months and some of these piles, I mean
Speaker 1: that's a minimum. So when Carrie's saying, like when you
Speaker 1: should stop adding to a pile, fall might be a
Speaker 1: good time to consider doing that. For what you want
Speaker 1: to use in the spring to start a new pile
Speaker 1: to then add to a different cadence could be every year.
Speaker 1: Maybe you run a pile for a year and then
Speaker 1: you let it sit for a year. It kind of
Speaker 1: depends how much you're putting in, how big your storage
Speaker 1: area is, and when you want to use it. I
Speaker 1: think everyone's going to be a little different there. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I'd like to add is when you're
Speaker 1: talking about inputs with the compostable products that are, we're
Speaker 1: all very excited to be seeing them reducing waste to landfill.
Speaker 1: For the home compost or, it's a bit tricky. I
Speaker 1: can't say that you can't compost them, but it's going
Speaker 1: to depend on how you're composting, how active you are
Speaker 1: with that pile, with turning it and wetting it, how
Speaker 1: long it's sitting there. And if you don't like seeing
Speaker 1: pieces of cardboard or cup or some of that compost
Speaker 1: full stuff in your finished compost, you may not want
Speaker 1: to use them. They're primarily formulated for municipal or large
Speaker 1: scale composting facilities that do have the time and temperature
Speaker 1: to really break them down. Well, I love that you've
Speaker 1: advocated and made space for the lazy composter because that
Speaker 1: feels very much my lane, even though I love the
Speaker 1: romance of like composting daily uh and the way Barryton
Speaker 1: Day does it. I probably feel the same way about
Speaker 1: the gym where I shouldn't be going every day but
Speaker 1: but don't. But so if someone was on the fence
Speaker 1: about composting, what is your quick pitch for why they
Speaker 1: should get into it. That's a great question. So we
Speaker 1: all have organic waste that we're producing, and you're sending
Speaker 1: a high volume of materials, of possibly stinky material that
Speaker 1: sitting in your trash. You're sending it to landfill, and
Speaker 1: often you're putting it in a plastic bag, and at
Speaker 1: that point decomposition is slow to stop, especially when it
Speaker 1: gets into the ante over part of the landfill. We're
Speaker 1: just losing nutrients. That way, you could take that material
Speaker 1: compost it at home. For one, you're going to significantly
Speaker 1: reduce the weight, the smell, the mass of product you're
Speaker 1: saying to the landfill. So you're paying for trash. That
Speaker 1: right there is a win. But secondly, it can be
Speaker 1: as involved or as uninvolved, as lazy as you say,
Speaker 1: magna as you want it to be. It does not
Speaker 1: have to be a big deal. You can easily start
Speaker 1: a static pile and just add to it for a year,
Speaker 1: and then you can add with very minimal effort and
Speaker 1: still have a successful pile. Of just making a hole
Speaker 1: in that pile and put your food waste in and
Speaker 1: covering it up, maybe adding some water once a week,
Speaker 1: that could go a long way, and you could be
Speaker 1: all the way from that to a very involved composter.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't need to be a big production in
Speaker 1: your life in order to have a really positive effect
Speaker 1: on the environment. There is a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are readily accessible to every person to do to address
Speaker 1: climate change. Keeping food out of landfills is one of them.
Speaker 1: On that is really accessible to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And unlike other kinds of recycling, where if you put
Speaker 1: a bottle in your recycling bind, it's going to go
Speaker 1: thousands of thousands of miles to a processor, to a
Speaker 1: converter eventually end up as other product, compost stays local.
Speaker 1: Keeping it at home is the most local you can be.
Speaker 1: But even sending it to our commercial facility, it's going
Speaker 1: to be within fifty or a hundred miles of you.
Speaker 1: And then less it ends up in a bag of
Speaker 1: scots and might go five thousand miles, it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: end up within fifty or a hundred miles from where
Speaker 1: it started. And so that's a real advantage just on
Speaker 1: the process side, and then you've got all the benefits
Speaker 1: of the product itself. Tara talked about the nutrients, but
Speaker 1: there's other things that does for the soil. Soil that
Speaker 1: has a lot of organic matter, and it can absorb
Speaker 1: rain easier, it holds onto the rain longer, it's easier
Speaker 1: to work, it's easier to garden. So there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of benefits that come both with the process and with
Speaker 1: the product. Thank you both for hanging out with me
Speaker 1: and talking compost today. Happy to do it at a
Speaker 1: great time. Thanks sank. I want to thank Tara Lewandowski
Speaker 1: and Karay Oceans again for sharing all their incredible knowledge
Speaker 1: about compost. You can learn even more about composting at
Speaker 1: the US Composting Council's website at Composting Council dot org.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's bonus episode, but check back here
Speaker 1: again soon for more bonus episodes this summer. And don't
Speaker 1: forget no matter what season it is or where you're
Speaker 1: at in your gardening journey, there's some incredible resources waiting
Speaker 1: for you on the Miracle Grow website. Humans Growing Stuff
Speaker 1: is a collaboration from I Heart Radio and your friends
Speaker 1: at Miracle Grow. Our show is written and produced by
Speaker 1: Molly Sosha and Ni Mongayatigler. Our editor and engineer on
Speaker 1: this episode was Matt Stillo. Thank you so much for listening.