01-04-2004, 02:00 PM
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Where does a city boy get compost?
wrote in message . com...
1. Does your city have an industrial composting program yet? The City
of Toronto (Ontario, Canada) does, and you can take away as much
compost as you can shovel into your vehicle from the pick up point at
Centennial Park in Etobicoke.
Turns our my city (Waterloo, Ontario) is giving out free compost and
mulch to residents on a particular weekend in May. Bring your own
container and up to X bushels per person. Can't remember exactly what
X is.
If you are in waterloo, just pick up the bags of clippings that your
neighbors put in the trash, specially dead leaves in the fall. These
will give you a mellow, non-smelly compost that you can use with just
about any veggie. In it, you can mix other, stronger organic compounds
for fertilization purposes. Your local Starbucks will give you all the
coffee grounds you want (low pH, high N). If you have a friend who has
a wood stove, a few pounds of wood ash will give you all the K you may
need (high K, high pH, high micronutrient). some bonemeal will provide
some P.
In practice with clay you need texture (soil breakdown) more than
fertilization, and for that straight leaves, used as mulch to allow
prolonged action by an army of worms, are the best. You should simply
lay them uncomposted, bag after bag, on your garden and plant through
them. nature will do the rest. They will also disappear within the
season, composted by the worms, so that next year you can direct seed
in the resulting finer soil.
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