Table of Contents Compost Nature’s Black Gold 4 TEAM COMPOST Meet the Players 9 Digging Deeper Inside the Pile 16 The Total Breakdown Compost Chemistry 21 Compost Compost One and All 29 The Art of Composting 34 Getting Down and Dirty How to Do it on Your Own 39 Dig in to Make a Difference 45 Glossary 46 Index 47 Show What You Know 47 Websites to Visit 47 About the Author 48
COMPOST NATURE’S BLACK GOLD Instead of throwing food scraps away you can turn them into a useful soil-like substance called compost The next time you finish a meal take a look at your plate Believe it or not that crust of bread and pile of peas that didn’t make it into your stomach have a lot of potential They aren’t just food scraps they’re ingredients for something precious With just a little effort scraps like these can be converted into a substance that people around the world value and depend on black gold Black gold is another name for finished compost a dark crumbly mixture that is rich in minerals and other nutrients It has the smell of fresh earth and holds onto moisture like a sponge Compost can be mixed with soil to improve its quality and help plants to grow 4
It’s Alive Or it Was What is organic matter It’s anything that is or ever was alive This includes plants and animals as well as their products cotton and leather and waste products manure All organic material can be composted although some things take longer than others to decompose What is composting It’s nature’s way of recycling organic matter and all the natural resources it contains Composting happens thanks to a diverse group of tiny organisms called decomposers Decomposers range from single-celled bacteria to worms and other multi-celled organisms These essential players in the web of life do the dirty work of cleaning up dead plants and animals and their wastes They break down organic matter by eating and re-eating it and each other This releases nutrients back into the environment and turns the matter into finished compost Food Chain Facts Decomposers are an important part of every food chain A food chain shows how energy and matter are transferred from one living creature to another The first link in every chain is a producer usually a plant capable of making organic matter Plants do this using the sun’s energy water and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a process called photosynthesis The next links are consumers animals who get their food and energy by eating plants or other animals When any of the links in the chain die decomposers step in to break down their remains plant producer sun decomposers plant producer 5
