Ever gone to the trouble of making compost and applying it, only to be disappointed with the results?  Or worse still, ever purchased compost only to discover that it wasn’t worth the money?  

Pamela was excited about composting.  She had an awesome idea for her new greenhouse – to combine the functions of growing seedlings and nourishing her vegetable gardens, she would build a compost pile from pallets that would sit in the corner.  Seedling trays would lay on top, reaping the warmth created by the microbes, and then the compost would go into the garden.  She followed online instructions to create her pile from horse manure, shavings and scraps, and the warmth began.  Before applying the compost in the spring, she decided to have a soil food web analysis completed.  Many root-feeding nematodes were present, along with bacteria known to inhabit conditions conducive to human pathogens.  Eeeeek!

For compost to be beneficial and not simply decomposed organic matter or putrefied waste, three key objectives need to be met.  First, it must contain a diverse (and healthy) mix of starting materials which in turn harbour diverse (and healthy) indigenous micro-organisms.  These are the wee beasties who will perform decomposition and ultimately go to work for your plants once they hit the soil.  Second, aerobic conditions and adequate moisture must be maintained for beneficial bacteria to flourish and begin a reproduction frenzy, creating heat.  Finally, the whole thing must stay hot enough for long enough to kill pathogenic organisms.  Meanwhile, many beneficial organisms will go dormant in the heat, ready to re-emerge later. 

Pamela re-built her pile using soil food web principles and voila! – microscopic analysis showed balanced and abundant beneficial organisms with no sign of nasty nematodes or pathogens.  After applying it to her tomatoes, there was an obvious improvement in plant health.  More importantly for this time of year, “when I dig my fingers into the soil, the surface is dry but there is moisture in the new, spongy soil structure beneath.  I hardly need to water!”.  As it turns out, tending those wee beasties was well worth the effort.