The Complete Compost Gardening Guide: Banner batches, grow heaps, comforter compost, and other amazing techniques for saving time and money, and ... most flavorful, nutritous vegetables ever. [Paperback]

Barbara Pleasant (Author), Deborah L. Martin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2008

Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin turn the compost bin upside down with their liberating system of keeping compost heaps right in the garden, rather than in some dark corner behind the garage. The compost and the plants live together from the beginning in a nourishing, organic environment. The authors' bountiful, compost-rich gardens require less digging, weeding, mulching, and even less planting. And here's one of the best parts — no more backbreaking slogs from compost bin to garden. The authors even identify the plants that benefit most from compost and how the elements of a composted garden work together.

A natural Six-Way Compost Gardening System provides the ruling principles for successfully improving every garden with healthy compost. Readers will learn how to:

1. Choose labor-saving sites that keep gardens and compost piles as close to one another as possible.

2. Work with the compostable riches produced at home. Every yard and kitchen produces plenty of material — easily identified with at-a-glance charts — for a great start.

3. Help composting critters do their work by balancing ingredients, adding high-nitrogen meals when needed, and keeping the compost moist.

4. Reuse recycling bin items, such as large plastic buckets and cardboard boxes, as composting equipment.

5. Keep diversity in the mix. The magic is in the variety of the components and how they work together to create "gardener’s gold."

6. Customize composting to suit specific garden needs, always concentrating first on soil care.

Adhering to these guidelines, Pleasant and Martin bring readers on a thorough, informative tour of materials and innovative techniques, leading the way to an efficient and rewarding home gardening system. Their methods are sure to help gardeners turn average vegetable plots into rich incubators of healthy produce, bursting with fresh flavor, and flower beds into rich tapestries of bountiful blooms all season long.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

When heaping mounds of garden debris just sit there like so much, well, garbage, many frustrated garden composters bemoan their lack of success and throw in the old pitchfork. Some worry about becoming a slave to elaborate, multiplex bins requiring heavy maintenance, while others fret over locating a compost pile where it won’t draw the ire of neighbors. Based on their own trial-and-error experiences, the authors calm the fears that can wriggle through gardeners’ psyches like so many burrowing earthworms. Writing in an easygoing, conversational style, the authors introduce such novel practices as underground composting and vermicomposting. Including critical safety tips, indispensable tool recommendations, and extensive guidelines for compostable materials, this comprehensive how-to will persuade novices to give composting a try, and offer accomplished composters ingenious new methods for creating healthy gardens. --Carol Haggas --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Turn the compost bin upside down! The nutritious, organic diet your garden craves is as simple as creating compost heaps right in the garden. Plants and compost live together in labor-and time-saving harmony, producing bright, sweet, juicy vegetables all season long.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (February 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580177026
• ISBN-13: 978-1580177023
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Soil Science
  • #30 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Conservation
  • #61 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Sustainable Living

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great practical ideas and a wonderful "compost philosophy", June 26, 2008

By 

Finch - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Compost Gardening Guide: Banner batches, grow heaps, comforter compost, and other amazing techniques for saving time and money, and ... most flavorful, nutritous vegetables ever. (Paperback)

My favorite passage from this book points out that buying hundreds of dollars of composting gear runs directly counter to the philosophy underlying a compost / organic garden. Composting is about using what you have where you have it, and that idea resonates throughout this book. While the basic methods will be familiar to experienced gardeners, it's still cheering and invigorating to see the many ways in which not only compost but also simple, raw organic matter can be worked directly into the garden. This book brings compost out of a complicated and expensive bin in the far corner of the yard and puts it back where it belongs, right in the center of the garden.

Its methods are also highly effective and nicely fleshed out, with the authors not only decribing how to set up sheet, crater, bin, and worm composts, but also giving invaluable tips on the types of crops that thrive in each. I took their advice and dug layers of leaves, grass, pulled weeds and food scraps directly into the earth, and the reward has been an most amazing crop of potatoes and squash - two plants that they rightly singled out as being particularly fond of a compost crater. Now, instead of trying to keep up with high-labor speed batches or buying a pricey tumbler, I'm letting my compost do the work itself, snuggled into the bottoms of dug or raised beds or, in the case of my pine needles, mulched right around the roots of the azaleas. It's a deeply satisfying feeling to stop lugging garbage bags full of organic material to the curb and instead look around at a yard that gives itself everything it needs.

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Composting Made Easy, January 1, 2009

By 

allanbecker-gardenguru (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Compost Gardening Guide: Banner batches, grow heaps, comforter compost, and other amazing techniques for saving time and money, and ... most flavorful, nutritous vegetables ever. (Paperback)

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide

By Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin

Storey Publishing

ISBN 978-1-58017-702-3

ISBN 978-1-58017-703-0

The hedgehog that lives in my back yard has let me know, in his own way, that purchasing a compost bin with a ground level opening is not a good idea. He already eats everything tasty in my garden, so access to compostable kitchen scraps will only create a feast for him and a mess for me. The solution would be to invest in a rotary compost bin that prevents animals from climbing inside. Not a good idea! While I would like to do my part to save the planet, spending a lot of money on equipment contradicts the idea of going green.

That is why the arrival of this book on my doorstep was so welcome. It only took the reading of a few pages to realize that there are many ways to compost without spending a lot of money. At first glance, I thought that this publication was targeting the commercial farmer, but on closer inspection, I discovered that this book has so much to offer the recreational gardener as well.

What I like best about this book is the scholarly method with which the subject of composting is introduced and expanded upon, in incremental sub topics, until the totality of the subject has been examined. The essential message in this publication is that anyone's back yard or farm can easily become a "compost- generating system" by simply following a few steps to create the right environment for organic matter to break down.

The first three chapters discuss the fundamentals by reviewing the science of composting, the tools needed and the materials that are helpful. Then the book gets really interesting when the various techniques of composting are discussed. In this section, we are introduced to four methods of composting. Here is where we personalize the book, by selecting the procedure or procedures that best suit our landscape, our skills and our needs. Farmers with large quantities of waste vegetation may opt for one process while the weekend gardener might choose another.

The first method is called "banner batches". This is composting that takes place in heaps or enclosures. The second method is referred to as "comforter compost and grow heaps" This is a labor saving procedure that requires one to simply pile garden waste in layers, moisten and allow nature to do the rest. The next method discussed is called underground composting. In this procedure, holes in the ground are filled with organic material and then covered with earth and allowed to decompose. The last method is called `vermicompost" which uses worms to convert waste into compost.

The final section of the book discussed how plants can interact with compost by growing in or near a compost heap. Some plants are enriched by growing close by and some plants enrich the heap itself by growing in it. In all, fifteen plants are recommended, each one being suitable for one of the four composting methods discussed in the book.

While composting is a science, at no point in the book does the writing become technical. The publication is written for the layperson in a friendly and easy-to -read style. It almost makes the reader feel that we are visiting the authors on a farm and learning from them as they go about their work.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Yet for Depth and Variety, December 2, 2008

By 

M. Symak "Master Gardener" (Rural WIsconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Compost Gardening Guide: Banner batches, grow heaps, comforter compost, and other amazing techniques for saving time and money, and ... most flavorful, nutritous vegetables ever. (Paperback)

I am a Master Gardener Educator with a special interst in organic, Mother Earth stewardship. Outside of Rodale's book on composting, this it the best overall guide on composting I have found. It is in-depth, yet takes us to practical ideas. Great photos and layout. Easy reading. Knowledgeable and inpiring. I think is a great choice!