Breaking Down Fall Composting
Fall is a great time for composting. Not only for building your own bin with colorful fallen leaves, but also for top dressing your garden! Spreading compost over a garden bed, then covering it with mulch will encourage growth of soil organisms that will be super beneficial come springtime!
Break-down of Benefits:
• Encourages the growth of earthworms and other macro-organisms, whose tunneling makes room for water and air, making way for optimum root growth
• Provides nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur and micro-organisms that are essential for plant growth • Acts as a glue, holding water and soil particles together, and makes soil resistant to erosion
• Binds itself to polluting metals, pesticides and other contaminants to prevent them from washing into waterways or being absorbed by plants
• Suppresses soil-borne diseases and plant pathogens (a number of plant and lawn diseases are suppressed by micro-organisms found in compost!)
Practice a technique called "side dressing". Apply a layer of compost a few inches away from the plants, protecting delicate plant stems from active microorganisms. This way, the compost is applied as a mulch and it reaps multiple rewards!
Seacoast Compost
Made in Oregon, certified organic and biodynamic. They make use of “waste” from three major Oregon Coast Industries. Fish, shrimp and crab from seafood processing, along with cow manure and bedding from organic dairies, as well as Red Alder hardwood from the lumber industry. They add in some homeopathic preparations like yarrow, chamomile, nettle, oak bark, dandelion and valerian to enliven the whole mix and stimulate plants to reach their full potential in their environments.
Malibu Compost
Made in California, certified organic and biodynamic. Their farm-made compost combines organic dairy cow manure, straw, wood chips, and biodynamic concentrations of yarrow, chamomile, valerian, stinging nettle, dandelion and oak bark. They proudly do not use products with synthetics, greenwaste, pesticides, hericides, growth hormones, and sewage sludge.
Sources:
King County Composting
SeaCoast Compost
Malibu Compost