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Compost: A Tale of Mulch and Men
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
Every few years the soil in the flower beds around the house starts to get hard and needs to be turned and enriched--"amended" in expensive gardener language. "Fed" to the rest of us. They get that tired, light-gray look and so I add manure and fertilizer to the beds. Actually, I don't do it so much for the plants anymore; I just like the look of dark fresh dirt on them each spring.
This year I brought home two big bags of mushroom compost and spread it out nicely and evenly, and then gently watered it down in place. The next day, the sirocco winds of the Sahara took a turn to the west and my yard looked like the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 1920s. So much for getting a spring jump on feeding the flowers.
I had thought about using the heavier steer manure (yep, that's cow poop to you short horns), but it not only stinks to high heaven in the heat, it also attracts the flies, which come and make lots of babies .....and I just didn't have the strength to deal with spring maggots this year.
I have used chicken manure, but it doesn't look dark and rich as a topsoil dressing in the beds as mushroom compost. I have also turned my hand at fish emulsion (having never seen fish "emulsh," I do not want to know what their emulsion really is).
According to Vic Hanna, at the mushroom compost site, mushroom compost is "ideal for the homeowner."
In a test performed by UC-Davis, 20 to 30 organic composts were tested, and, of all of these mushroom compost was the very best organic compost--the most evenly balanced in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus--followed by chicken manure as second best."
Considering all the crap I've put into my yard over the years to break up the heavy clay soil, I have to agree with Vic.
When we first moved into our house, the beds were so thick and dry that the dirt cracked and deep rivulets appeared every summer, no matter how much water I put on the straggling plants that survived near the house.
Over time, I added hundreds of bags of loam and sand trying to break up the water-choked clay. I have added peat moss. I have added dirt. I have added egg shells, coffee grounds and the remains of several door-to-door salesmen, all to no avail. I also no longer get the Girl Scouts to deliver--but that's another story.
Eventually, I probably raised the dirt levels in the yard by a good foot--but the organic nutrients in the soil were still pretty sad. Weeds loved us, but the older established plants still needed direct fertilizer several times a year. The roses crept towards the bin of shears and I was sure they were going to attempt suicide by slashing their own feeder roots.
That's when I turned to topsoil nutrients. As one of the world's largest growers of food, the United States is, not surprisingly, the largest user (outside of China) of fertilizers. The Fertilizer Institute reports that in the United States in 1999, 21.7 million tons of nutrients were applied. Most of it was in my yard. It was a really dry year.
I found the statistics on plant foods kind of interesting to think about while I watered down the dwindling dirt in my yard as the winds blew. The United States is the world's second-largest nitrogen producer after China, and the world's largest phosphate producer. We have plenty of resources to make all the fertilizer we need (except the fish emulsion stuff ... several states have made it illegal for fish to do that without prior approval of the church).
Strangely enough, the world's largest potash reserves are just north of the border in Canada, not here at home. Apparently, the potash is something not normally available within our pristine borders and needs to be imported in quantities equaling that of Molson Ale and Gordon Lightfoot recordings.
Most people don't realize that the North American Free Trade Act, passed during the Clinton administration, actually made the transportation and sale of potash effortless--something that worried parents for generations and gave gardeners something to cheer about. For years, fears of the Canadians hoarding their potash gave gardeners nightmares. But I digress.
With the compost on the flower beds, I can face the summer, knowing I have fed my plants the best way I can. Unfortunately, I don't have a sprinkler system and we tend to forget to water when it gets hot. So, while we feed the plants well around here, they die of thirst, instead.
That's when I exchange them at OSH and start over ... but that's another story.
Contact Deborah Taylor-Hollis via email at dthollis@metronews.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
