Should I Use Garden and Yard Waste in My Compost?

Healthy SOIL is the most important factor in raising foods that are rich in vitamins and minerals. The nutrients humans need for good health originate in the soil. The plants you grow in your garden draw nutrients from the soil. Fruits and vegetables that are grown in rich soil pass those nutrients on to whatever animal eats them, directly through human consumption, or indirectly through livestock. Livestock that is fed quality feed grown on healthy soil produces better quality meat, milk and eggs. It is the natural order of things.

Building healthy soil is the reason that compost is so important in your garden. The microbes in your compost pile break down the plant matter completely. The nutrients that were trapped in the cells of the growing plants are returned to the soil in a readily available form, waiting to be dissolved by rain to be taken up again by the next generation of plants. If you aren't cycling your yard and garden waste through your compost pile, you are depleting your soil, throwing away free fertilizer, and diminishing the nutrients available to your garden's fruits and vegetables...in essence, you are making the food from your garden less nutritious.

There is a cumulative effect. If you never replenish the natural fertility of your garden soil, the food you grow declines in nutritional value with each passing year.

Chemical fertilizers do not behave the same way that natural compost fertilizer does. Most chemical fertilizers are man-made alterations of chemicals. Some are petrochemicals; some are naturally occurring chemicals, but they are engineered and combined in ways that would not occur in nature. The challenge to agricultural chemists in the big ag corporations is to make synthetic fertilizers bioavailable to plants...in a form that plants can use...while creating new patented products that increase company profits. Millions of tons of chemicals are used on crops every year. Only a fraction of the chemicals are bioavailable to plants, and the excess enters waterways as runoff or resides in the soil, building to toxic levels with continued use.

Chemical fertilizers do nothing to improve soil. When you add compost to your garden, you are adding nutrient-rich humus that helps rebuild the soil. AND IT'S FREE. Every bit of plant waste from your yard, garden and kitchen should be added to your compost pile. There are two exceptions to this: 1) A plant that is infected with a soil-borne disease, such as one of the wilts that infects plants like tomatoes or peppers; 2) Any plant or lawn waste that has been chemically treated. Burn or destroy infected or chemically treated plant debris away from the garden and compost pile. This includes grass clippings from a chemically-fertilized lawn. Chemical fertilizers can kill the microbes in your compost pile and turn it into a pile of smelly slime.

The center of a compost pile should be full of living, working microbes that can raise the temperature of the compost pile enough to kill harmful insects and pathogens lurking in the plant debris. Turn your compost pile regularly to mix oxygen deep into the center of the pile, creating an aerobic environment that makes microbes thrive. Malodorous compost is caused by inadequate oxygen, so keep your pile turned and aerated. A spading fork or shovel makes short work of turning the pile. Water your compost pile just enough to make it moist, never soggy.

Source:
Personal Experience