Hi Dieter,
if you have ever seen a good made compost - dark, good smelling, loose
structure and full of life - you wouldn't say so.
There are lossses of amount, that's true. But what you get, when the
process of composing comes to an end,
is more valuable than the loss.
Alwin Seifert, a german pinoneer of organic gardening, explained it like
this:
a wild crab aple tree (with small fruits which are only a shell for the
important seeds) grows and lives only from that,
what he took from the soil and what he got back from the leaves falling
down in autumn and return to the soil again.
This one layer of leaves is enough for him.
But for our productive apple trees, with big amount of apples this one
layer is not enough.
Because it is not possible to put the necessary ten or twenty layers
around the trunk he did it on another side nearby
- the compost heap.
In my garden I do both: composing (espacially when a lot of organic
matter accumulates in a short time without free
space on the garden beds) and applying organic matter directly whenever
possible.
Compost I also need for potting soil, for my greenhouse and as a
fertilizer for cabbage and others.
Greetings
Christian
Am 26.12.2011 10:35, schrieb Dieter Brand:
_______________________________________________...Composing the organic material before adding it is muchPeople end up believing this because it is being repeated all the time. In fact, the opposite is true: the longer something stays on the compost heap, the greater the losses. Hence, the most efficient way of using organic matter is by applying it directly to the soil without composting.
more efficient soil building than adding it straight.
A good compost will heat up with microbial activity, and decomposeThe greatest losses occur during the high temperature phase.
very quickly.
Happy Christmas,
Dieter
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