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Guide to composting

By: a complete idiot

[list of Compostable Materials (Thai/English)]


The thai word for Compost is “Pui Maak” or “Pui Chi-wa-paap”

Composting is the easiest thing on earth. Seriously, you put stuff in a pile, and it turns into fertilizer, right? Not entirely. You can compost most anything, with a few exceptions, those being

Cooked food
Oily food
Meat (cooked or uncooked)
Manure from animals that consume meat (dogs, humans, zombies, zombie dogs, etc)

If you try to add these things to your compost pile, you could end up with a terrible smell, or, potentially you could be introducing harmful bacteria to your crops, that you could in turn consume (hepatitis). So just don’t do it.

Did anyone else have a “compost pile” at their homes growing up that was just a pile of leaves that never actually composted? There are a few easy things to remember when making a compost pile, remember these and then you’ll be making plant food in no time. Compost piles need a few key things to work:

Moisture
Air
“green” compost
“dry” compost
Soil

The majority of the composting is done by worms, insects and bacteria. For these things to flourish, the pile needs to be moist, but not sopping wet. It also needs air in the pile for the insects, worms and bacteria to consume.

The easiest way I have found to produce compost is using a wire fence, looped in a circle and attached to stakes in the ground. You have to loosen the soil under the pile with a pitch fork or some other implement (in lieu of a pitch fork, I actually dug up the soil with a shovel, and then dropped it back in so that it was loose). I put a layer of sticks and branches on the bottom, as recommended by “how to grow more vegetables”. It recommends this to keep air in the pile, so that everything eating the waste stays happy.

When you are ready to start composting, you need to put down a later of dry compost. Dead leaves, yard clippings, etc. so long as its dry and dead, it doesn’t really mater. On top of the dry compost, you need to add green compost, and this could be manure, green clippings and leaves, or kitchen scraps. On top of the green compost, put a layer of soil on the whole pile. Next time you have dry compost, put it on top of the pile, then green, then soil, etc. Keep your pile at about a 1/3 dry, 1/3 green, 1/3 soil mix if you can (mine has much more dry compost, because I live in the desert).

It recommends building the entire pile at once. I cant do this, so I add mine as I go, and it seems to be working out alright so far.

I take a hose to my pile once a week or so, to make sure that it stays moist. You really only need to stir the pile up once, and the compost is ready for use when it smells “earthy”, is brown like soil and crumbles in your hands.

If you do it right, it shouldn’t smell. If it does smell, its probably too wet.

Compost needs heat to work, and in Thailand you can compost year round. Although, you would be able to compost much more quickly in hot season and rainy season than you would in cold season. From start to finish it should take 3 to 6 months, although if its not completely composted, you can still use it as fertilizer, so long as you add it before tilling OR bury it under a garden before planting.



Wet Composting

I just recently went to a government agriculture station for a SAO Duu Ngan, where I was showed a different kind of composting that I imagine is much more effective than a pile, but would certainly be much less popular with Thais.

You need a barrel, grass clippings and water. That’s about it. Put the clippings, leaves, manure, whatever you like, in the barrel. Fill the barrel to the brim with water, and put the lid on. Then you just leave it be for a while.

Bacteria eat the compost and after a month or so, the smell becomes unbearable. You can put this on your field before you till the soil, and it is supposedly very effective.

The drawback, naturally, is that the smell is overpowering. The upshot is that (I believe) you can compost just about anything, although I would still avoid manure from animals that are carnivorous.


Further Reading
Backyard_Composting-Recycling_A_Natural_Product
Compost — the organic farmer's gold!
Composting at Home
Composting_Book_1 (sharepoint; large)
Home_Composting (sharepoint)