Composting

Composting is the art of recycling organic waste back into the soil. Composting can provide a rich source of nutrients for your garden and yard. Here in the Caribbean, most islands are experiencing problems with waste disposal facilities. In many cases, the volume of waste has simply swamped the landfills. A significant reduction in the amount of waste that goes to the landfills can be achieved through composting practices. Composting is not a labor intensive endeavor. Once you have set up the composting area, it becomes routine to dump the biodegradable wastes into the compost, rather than into the trash can. There are two main methods of composting. The first is to provide right environment that allows the natural bacteria and fungi found in organic waste to decompose the compost material. The year-round warmth of the tropics makes this an easy method. But if you live in an apartment building or have very little land surrounding your home, there is the vermicompost method. With this method, any of several types of common worms (red worms are shown to the right) are used to digest the composting material. This method requires only a five to ten gallon sealeable plastic tub and can be kept right inside the home. The Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering at Cornell University has put together an extensive site on composting. The Composting Homepage provides links to areas from data base surveys to literature resourses. It is worth visiting if you plan to do a special topic in this field.

The Cornell composting site provides a Science and Engineering section that discusses important technical details of composting. Within the Science and Engineering link you should visit all the links within the "Background Information" section that provides information on Invertebrates, Microbes, Chemistry, and Physics. (There is also a "Ideas for Student Research Projects" link for those interested.) After reading these sections, you should be familiar with:

• Invertebrates (cache)
  • The different types of "consumers".

  • Descriptions of nemotodes, mites, snails, ants and flies, as well as the role they play in the compost.

• Microbes (cache)
  • The products of microbial decomposition

  • The three phases of composting

  • The role of actinomycetes and fungi in composting

• Chemistry (cache)
  • The roles of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen to microbial decomposition

  • The results of inappropriate C/N ratio

  • The importance of the pH in the compost

• Physics (cache)
  • The physical factors that effect decomposition

  • The mechanisms for conduction, convection and radiation in the compost

  • The importance of particle size and moisture in decomposition

If you would like additional information, there are many sites available on composting. A simple search with the word "composting" will provide you with more sites than you could compost in millenium.