Sprout

adam July 10th, 2008

So I was driving home one day with about 1, 200 cracked eggshells in my trunk. I had picked them up from The Bent Spoon, the ice cream store in Palmer Square that cracks about 100 dozen eggs a week or more to use as the base for their ice creams.

I had contacted them because I wanted their eggshells and whatever else they had to contribute to my compost pile. I’ve been thinking about compost a lot this gardening season, ever since I read in The New Organic Grower that composting is the most important aspect of a small farm.

The idea went off in my head like a firework. I went out and bought The Rodale Book of Composting and ever since I have been plotting numerous ways to acquire for my compost pile the abundance of waste, casually discarded everyday, that could enrich my garden. I can’t go on walks in my neighborhood without spying and secretly desiring things like leaf piles people have left on their curbsides.

Actually, the book suggests contacting local businesses and asking them for their waste; yet even the authors recognize the absurdity such a task can inspire. “Most barbershops or hair salons will be happy to supply you with bags of hair (though they may think your request is strange unless you explain).” I would be too embarrassed to ask a barber for the remains of their client’s hair, but I’m inspired to build up the nerve when I read this fact: “Between 6 and 7 pounds of hair contain as much nitrogen as 100 to 200 pounds of manure.”

Luckily I have many good friends who will support me through even my most ridiculous adventures. So I called up my friends at The Bent Spoon, and by the following week I was driving home with all those eggshells and garbage bags full of lemon and grapefruit rinds.

John Dunphy, the editor of The Lawrence Ledger, saves compostable items from home and brings them into work for me. One morning I came in and a plastic bag full of coffee grounds and eggshells was on my desk, much to the confusion of my coworkers. Another friend has left bags full of spent food items for me at the garden to pick up and bring home. And recently I’ve taken home compost from my friend’s Miles and Megan’s house, a particularly foul batch that had been sealed in a bucket in their backyard for a long, long time. (Ridding themselves of it, they benefited from that transaction much more than my compost pile.)

The benefits of adding compost to your garden soil are myriad, spectacular, and fascinating. Let’s hear it from Rodale:

“Compost improves soil texture and structure, qualities that enable soil to retain nutrients, moisture, and air for the support of healthy crops. By increasing the soil’s moisture-holding capacity, compost helps control erosion that otherwise would wash topsoil into waterways. Compost is the best recycler of biological wastes, turning millions of tons of our refuse into a food-growing asset. Compost provides and releases plant nutrients, protects against drought, controls pH, supports essential bacteria, feeds helpful earthworms, stops nutrient loss through leaching, acts as a buffer against toxins in the soil, controls weeds, and conserves a nation’s nonrenewable energy sources.”

Amen.

I brought home two bags full of eggshells. When I told my friend Kate how many eggshells I would be composting, she said, “Eggshells don’t break down well.”

Things like eggshells should be pulverized to help them break down quicker.

When I told Kate all the citrus I had composted, she said, “Citrus doesn’t break down well.”

Hank the dog has been shedding a lot of hair, now that summer’s here. One day I took a clump home to throw in the compost. Kate said, “Hair does not break down well.”

I check the compost often, stirring it every couple days. Everything is breaking down just fine.

• Composting