Compost is the heart and soul of your garden. Does it matter which compost you buy? Damn straight it does! Well made compost is all our soil needs to grow abundant crops with minimal disease. But rubbish in, rubbish out – compost made with sub-standard ingredients will wreck your soil and your crops. So too, compost bags need to be cared for, for best health.
Here are the three key things to look out for when buying compost.
1. Compost is kept undercover + in the shade
Compost is a living product – not that well suited to life in a plastic bag. Once it gets sealed it starts going downhill from there and if it’s sitting out in the weather, especially the sun – it’s speed skiing its way to oblivion. How I’d love compost to be dated. Integrity! Be sure to choose bags stored under cover and in the shade.
2. Compost smells good, or forget it!
We’ve all walked past piles of compost bags and recoiled from the smell. Sour smelling anaerobic compost is nasty. There will be no soil life at your place if you put this muck on. Musty smelling compost that’s died and gone to heaven isn’t as dangerous as anaerobic stuff, but a complete waste of money. Trust your nose, my friends and walk on by.
3. Compost is safe from Pyralids
Pyralids are a group of persistent herbicides that, if present in your compost, will wreck your crops. It totally deserves its nickname “killer compost”. Bums me out that this spraying is still going on in NZ, but keeping it real, our people are choosing it – so best you are aware.
I first became aware of herbicide in bought compost in the early 2000’s when a school garden failed to get going. Potatoes sprouted but were curled and distorted. Tomatoes and beans did the same. We presumed spray drift to be the cause until another school garden with the same compost had exactly the same experience but no possibility of spray drift. I started digging.
Clopyralid, Aminopyralid and Picloram are the foes here. They’re used on sports turf, golf courses, school grounds, road sides, hay paddocks, forestry and on home lawns (even though its illegal for home use) to kill broadleaf weeds, thistles, dandelions and clover. Whaaaat dandelions + clover! Big sigh.
The magic of pyralid and the reason it gets used so lavishly, is that grass and all its relations like corn, continue to grow on nice and happily thank you very much. They are of course saturated in it which is how this stuff lives on
- in grass clippings + greenwaste,
- in the manure of animals that graze on grass sprayed with it
- in hay from paddocks sprayed with it.
It’s so persistent it lives on after the composting process – intensifying in strength even. Yip it lives on and on.
So, what’s a home gardener to do?
Make compost! It will soothe your mind from the worries of the world, and it’s your best and safest bet. Reduce your fertility needs, with these design tips, and you wont need to use as much.
If you do need to buy compost, quiz your suppliers. Get asking my friends. Nothing makes change like consumers – you and me and all our friends and aunties (especially the aunties) – getting on the job.
- Find out whether or not your composter uses grass clippings, greenwaste or manure or carcasses from non organic farms – if they do you can pretty much guarantee pyralids.
Let’s keep composters on their toes. We’re paying for good, wholesome compost. Stuff that’s safe enough to feed our selves and our children and our mums and dads with.
Test bought compost, by raising seedlings in it
Before you spread bought compost, you can if you like, wait 2 weeks and do a grow test. Its well worth knowing, either way.
Sow broadbeans in cool weather, or tomatoes in hot weather – they’re particularly sensitive to pyralids. Sow one lot in bought compost + one lot in soil that you know is sweet. This control group is sensible as a comparison, and especially useful when pyralid concentration is low and the differences are subtle.
If the compost is poisoned, seedlings may not germinate or will grow slowly, be stunted and growing tips will be curled, cupped, twisted – generally distorted, exactly how plants look after herbicide drifts over them.
How to do your own grow test + pics of affected plants.
Dont Blame the Composters
Lets be fair. Composters are recycling all the waste from our lives – it has to go somewhere.
To get to the root cause of poisoned compost, we do the same thing as we do to clean our waterways, to clean out air, to sort our health out….
- Buy from straight up, soil loving, local growers/ farmers
- Grow as much of your own food as you and your neighbours can
- Get amongst it at your school and sports ground and find out if they are using pyralids or gyphosate sprays. Then wow them with safe alternatives – spray free towns and cities are being rolled out around the world. Farmers footprint.