And the correct answer is ?

When is compost finished? I have heard this asked over and over again and every now and then I go on random searches for answers. So, here are the answers to that question that I have found so far. Feel free to add your own answers or expound upon these.

1. When it is crumbly like a soil with no large bits in it.

2. When nothing is left that can be identified, screen out large pieces and what is left is compost.

3. When you can place a slightly damp handful into a sealed plastic bag for a few days and it still smells like sweet earth when you open it. If it smells sour it needs more time to finish composting.

4. Who cares! If it has broken down enough to question if it is done or not it is ready to use as mulch or to be dug into your soil to loosen it up and plant in.

"No compost before its time."

My answers are 1, 2, and 4! But to be honest, I am so impatient that I usually go with number 4. But I always wonder if I am short-changing my beds by using unfinished compost.

I never thought of trying # 3--very interesting idea.

I'm with you CapeCodGardener, got straight to number 4! This ain't no beauty contest, it's about improving your soil!

I go straight to #4. To impatient to wait, and having to remember to water the pile (VERY dry, here in Denver). And it's not like it won't continue to break down when it gets put in the garden.

LOL, somehow I knew 4 was going to be a popular answer with this group :~)

Zany - I have met a few of the High Falutin' types out this way, who look down their noses at anything other than answer #1. I usually ask if they have hired someone to "do" their compost for them, "custom blend" & all that, so they don't have to dirty their hands!
For me - #4, ditto-ing Doccat & Vadap.

#3 - I am going to do this over the next few days. It's a curiousity, now.
Always liked the smell of compost.

This message was edited Nov 21, 2007 6:15 PM

Let us know how the baggie test comes out. I have never tried it, just read it on several other garden sites.

I can't imagine anyone paying someone to tend their compost :~) If they can affor that seems like they wouldn't want the look of a pile around the place anyway!

I didn't mean to give the impression that someone actually does this. It's just that there are folks in my area with $$$ that put a great deal of emphasis on things that really don't matter in the scheme of life, and distance themselves from having to live like the rest of us.
A while back I had a conversation with a lady (customer) at one of the box stores who made a comment about the chicken manure being sold there. She wanted to know why I was buying it and proceeded to educate me on why she would not.
It got interesting - apparently I needed to spend big bucks on specially raised chickens of royal lineage that pooped Gold-wrapped nuggets during a Full moon phase. (ok - I am exagerating...) The stuff that the rest of us use was deemed "icky", as in "common". This is where the "hiring out the compost making" came into play. She seemed like the perfect candidate, as have a few others I have encountered.
Zany, I am in total agreement about the existence of a pile in such a person's yard. Heavens! What would the neighbours think?
However, it would look tres chic in a hand carved mahoghany bin, doncha think?

LOL carved mahogany might pass muster but only with a lid with solid gold or platinum hinges.

Perfect - I'll take three, with the platinum hinges.
But I'll need to source a specialty forged fork & a gent to go with it...

Would that be the platinum for wuth the ornate engravings or the elegant one with just the monograms? Shall I wrap it with the Gent? Or would you prefer seperate parcels?

Ornate engravings, please.
Have Gent deliver, white glove service!

You know, if I could handle being around such types, I would have thought long & hard about making this a side business. There was an article this summer in one of the Seattle papers about these gardeners who were making generous sums for working the urbanites' veggie and herb gardens for them. Some did a turnkey operation - design to implementation; others planted/maintained/harvested.
I wondered if they had someone eat for them as well...

They probably make the gardener act as a taster at the beginning of each meal. If he doesn't die it is okay to take a bite...

ornate engravings are so overdone

I just had to add that I know several people that get paid $15.00-$18.00 an hour for which they do back breaking work and then turn around and pay $25.00 an hour to a guy to mow their lawn. So nothing really amazes me anymore!

cathy4, does that mean you would prefer the monogrammed pitchfork?

Zany - that's something I had taken note of recently.
Especially when the lawn is postage stamp size...
I've got about 3/4 acre of lawn, and now that my son has an after school job, I have been mowing it. My property slopes, so it's a great workout, and only becomes a headache when it stays wet from all the rain.
Plastic bag with compost - research starts tomorrow.
I thought it appropriate as compost is something to be thankful for.

Compost! Oh the lovely lovely stuff we all desire!

I guess I'm a bad composter for still having horse poop balls in my gardens. And imagine all the pine needles sticking out of the dirt in an unorganized manner. Oh, the audacity! LOL I have seen adds on the gov't job websites that they pay gardeners $20/hr in Portland and Washington. More than my concrete mixer job pays here in Denver. AND, I do ALL my own work, including digging out crab apple tree stumps and replacing with a lasagna bed(I'd like to kiss the person who came up with that!).

Tsk, Tsk, Tsk!poop balls and pine needles! LOL and I bet you have lots and lots of fat happy worms too...TSK!

And 2 rose bushes that I thought were dead. Plunked in a lasagna bed, and a couple of weeks later noticed they were growing. I had forgotten abt them. They bloomed like crazy! Poop balls and all! LOL

Forgot to add, they only drink Starbucks, and my leftover SBC grounds.

This message was edited Nov 21, 2007 10:32 PM

When working uncultivated soil for the first time, it is better to use #4 because it is still working, and will blend with the new ploughed ground.The longer compost sits the less value it is to the soil.Its ok for top dressing, but lacks a "working" condition.

I feel sorry for the type people afore mentioned, They miss the raw beauty of living.Mike

They sure do. There is nothing so lovely as a handfull of fresh living soil or the first taste of your very own home grown veggies!

On a serious note - I guess I really don't understand why one would garden but not want to get up close & personal with the environment that the plants grow in. It has been through observation & practice that I have learned about the different conditions that exist on my property. I don't know how I would have achieved this without being actively involved.

Ladies! I think we need to form a consortium and hire out to garden for these "fools". It amazes me what plp will do make themselves feel important. What a hoot! And a sorry statement on what our society has become of late. How sad.

Katye, I don't think any gardener could help but enjoy knowing the soil. The other type are not people that like gardening but like to own a garden. They want pretty and are willing to pay a lot for it so they can stroll through and snip a rose or host a garden party and be admired for their beautiful garden. They own the property and pay for the plants and labor so it is theirs. They take credit for the garden by virtue of having scored a good employee to do the grunt work. It is pride of ownership just like owning a piece of art.

doccat5, you all go ahead, My old bones have enough to do sniffing about in my wee little garden and piling up greens and browns in the hope for the finest black gold on the planet ;~)

Now if an interprising young man wanted to really get rich, just hire an all japaneese garden crew, and advertise " the best, if you can aford it gardeners".Play the game with them, and capatalise on a fool like that.There are certinly areas like that, and could be made a reality.Mike

I'm looking forward to peeling the sweet potatos today so I can take them out to the compost. Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, maybe history is repeating itself. In the late 1900, all the rich, robber baron types had whole staffs of gardeners for those huge formal gardens popular then. So who knows.

Any investment involves time & energy in some form.
I think that the most surprising thing about the encounter I previously described, was that it lacked personal investment, other than $.
I can understand wanting instant gratification in the landscape, & do not look down on someone who has the wherewithal to do so. It was more a case of a perspective lacking balance: perhaps $ could buy the very best, nutrient rich soil, but the plants aren't going to grow any faster. Do the worms/microbes care where your manure is from? I certainly don't, and found it amusing that she felt the need to impress a stranger.
"Like owning a piece af art" - correct again, Zany. When people have the $ to spend on their landscaping, it is a good thing: there are visual benefits for many, & financial benefits for whoever performed the work.
I prefer personal involvement in the work because of the potential for acquiring knowledge, which, from my perspective, is priceless.

As much as I enjoy stolling through beautiful gardens, like those at disneyland and such that have the resources to hire the best gardeners and buy the best plants or soil available, I still need to get my own hands dirty. Seeing a flower bloom that I planted in soil that I enriched with back breaking work is much more rewarding than buying a flawless bouquet grown in a hothouse somewhere else. And admiring my neighbors little patch of garden growing is much more exciting than all the manicured gardens I have ever seen. I enjoyed the stroll through the big polished gardens but it held no sense of personal achievement and no feeling of being a part of the earth. And who wants to miss the feeling of digging a trowel into the soil and wittnessing fat happy worms wiggling through it!

Yeah, see - those o'erworked turf gardens don't do much for me. I'll post a picture of what I consider to be a miscarriage of plantage, a tremendously popular garden in Victoria that makes my teeth hurt.

Wow.
Who knew that how you determine if your compost is finished or not had such profound socio-economic implications? I should get out more often. I wouldn't mind if my yard looked like that picture. No poisons though, please.

LOL - all in the eye of the beholder, I agree. It *is* a very popular place. They have some specimen plants that I'd die for...

... but, I would prefer to have this one....

Gardens like that are perfectfor taking pictures or strolling through for a rest break from working my own garden. But I seriously doubt either of those is chemical free. Not that it would be impossible but they would have to have more than a few workers to keep it looking like the pictures evenwith chemicals and without them I don't thinkthey could ever maintain that level of near perfection.

Agree, Zanymuse, it's almost to perfect. The top one looks like it's been trimmed within an inch of it's little life! LOL

At least for the lawns. But you know, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, etc., are chemicals, no matter the source.

What I really like about the first one is the way the trees are IN the flower beds, kind of the opposite of the little-planting-in-a-circle-around-an-old-tree. It's a great trick to use trees and shrubs as part of the beds. I'm trying to do it, we'll see. Of course the second one is great, too.

Without going into too much detail, I probably put more gross stuff in my compost than most people, so I let it go a loooong time before I use it. I don't care about the odd pine cone or parts of branches still in it. I would use unfinished compost as a mulch without hesitation, especially this time of year, but wouldn't unfinished compost consume living plants like it would any other nitrogen source? I don't know. I guess that's how the lasagna method works, nobody complains about that.

I have way too many bulbs left to plant. The existing beds are pretty full of bulbs and some perennials I don't want to risk disturbing by digging around them to squeeze in a few more bulbs. But I still have a few (10?) wheelbarrows of compost left. The compost is definitely finished, I'm thinking of just burying the bulbs in compost at this point. Any ideas about that?

oops. Only one 't' in potassium now.

This message was edited Nov 22, 2007 8:09 PM

The way I understand it, the stuf that is not broken down completely just rots slower in the soiland helps loosen it up and hold moisture. The roots of the plants use what they need and some "fix" the nutrients in the soil adding value to it. The compost would not eat the living plants.The only harmtoliving plants would be if the compost were too hotand burned them.

As for planting the bulbs in your finished compost, It sounds good to me since it is all soil anyway.But you might need to add some type of ammendment like sand for drainage so the compost doesn't stay too wet and rot them ?

Narcissus are definately more forgiving than tulips in respect to compost.

PC - "makes your teeth hurt" LOL - talk about eye-candy.....
Have you ever been there? High-Maintenance: garden staff everywhere - always working, planting, trimming - made me tired.
Very colorful, pretty, but too many annuals...

Katye, we visited last summer, it was lovely. But I agree, exhausting to think about all the work, a bit to much organization. We went down a path toward the lake, it is much less formal there.

I loved the way they used colored pencils to mark what color the plants would bloom.