Ah, Composting.

The, “Stairway to Heaven”  to organic farming or maybe the “Free Bird?” In any case I just read the Rodale book on composting from cover to cover and now I think I might be an expert at it. I THINK I might and with suspicion from others for good reason.

Back at the Orange River Research Farm somehow I was able to convince them to start a composting system. But not just any composting system, a fancy three bin composting system. Major league stuff.
Luckily for me, there were plenty of volunteers. Four college students are spending 8 weeks on the farm for practical experience. Just in time for the heavy work, building the system. We laid out the dimensions on Friday and by Monday we went “inna di bush” to fetch lumber.

Building the Compost Bin.

The construction sort of left my hands at this point as the kids took over and built themselves a nice little compost bin for themselves. Honestly I would have loved to built the thing myself but it is best to allow them to take control. By all means we are here to build capacity.

Almost there. Now we just need to add the inner walls.

With the bins built now its just a matter of collecting materials to get the system up and running.
With composting you are setting up optimal conditions for microorganisms to flourish. And for that to happen you need nitrogen and carbon based organic materials, water, soil, air and warmth ( plenty of all that in Jamaica). The trick is to get the ratios right. Too much carbon and nothing really happens or the pile breaks down very slowly. Too much nitrogen and it will start smelling like a typical garbage heap. Get it just right and the temperatures sky rocket as bacteria expel heat for carbohydrates. The golden composting ratio in this case is 25:1 in favor of carbon.

We are fortunate on this farm since there is never a lack of any type of organic matter. I foraged for cocoa husks under the trees, literally next to the compost bins. Cocoa leaves were also in abundance. Bananas growing wildly around the trees gave me plenty of green leaves to add. One rule of thumb is that if 'something' breaks down rather quickly, its a good source of nitrogen. This includes ANYTHING banana.

Grass clippings is the “ power chord” (guitarists anyone?) of composting as it is already close to the C/N ratio and breaks down easily on its own. I gathered a good load of grass after someone just cut it. Great timing. Another stroke of luck was that a few farm workers were shucking common mangos. This is the time to plant common mango seed. They will be used as root stock and eventually grafted to another mango seedling like a Julia variety or an East Indian. But that is another blog story. I gathered heavy buckets of mango pulp, rich in nitrogen. Now its time to put it all together.


Once you have your materials the technique is to form layers. I started with dried up cocoa leaves which will represent the our carbon based materials. Next came the banana leaves and the mangos. Nitrogen stuff. The cocoa husks went on top of that followed by more leaves. After all the organic materials, I threw some soil to inoculate the pile full of microorganisms and plenty of water to get it all started.

Workers harvesting common mango seeds for root stock. I'll take the pulp thank you very much.

 Repeat. Many times until the pile is substantial in size. As the system goes once the first pile is build,
turning it over to aerate it helps break it down even faster and more evenly. That's the purpose of throwing the whole heap into the second bin and starting another fresh batch in the first. And so on it goes. 

Cocoa husks.

It was only a few days until I got really excited. I wanted to check the temp. The only way I could gauge it was to stick my hand into the center to feel the temperature. The pile was heating up and I don't mean slightly warm, I mean uncomfortable hot!  I had one of those rare, “ I actually did something right moments.” With my excitement I invited a few of my colleagues to feel how hot the pile actually became. At that point they reminded me that I am in the tropics and they didn't really want to stick their hand into a gooey organic petree dish of bacteria. Pfft. Whatever guys.

So the compost is composting at a fever pitch. Eventually it will cool down and other strains of bacteria and fungi will continue its movement towards humus. At that stage we will hopefully take the stuff and experiment. How important is organic matter to plant health? Does it help against drought resistance? Ward off diseases and make veggies taste better and more nutritious? We will soon find out and see whether compost is the John Coltrane saxophone solo of agriculture or just simply disco.

Compost heap with a fresh bounty of mango peels. Better cover it up before the flies find out.