Practice Safe Soil with Compost

Just as we maintain sound health by eating nutritious foods and exercising, our soil requires maintenance to continuously provide optimal conditions for plants to grow. Compost is a soil amendment that not only acts as a vitamin to improve the ground when it's "sick" and unproductive, but also acts as "power" food to provide essential nutrients that help our soil maintain healthy, fertile conditions that stimulate plant growth.

Composting is a natural form of recycling, and it happens continuously in nature. For instance, composting occurs when leaves fall to the ground and decay. It's the transformation of organic material (plant matter) through decomposition, or decay, into an earthy, dark, crumbly soil-like substance called humus, or compost.

How Do I Enrich Thee? Let Me Count the Ways ...
Compost-enriched soil is beneficial in many ways. Not only does it reduce pollution and the use of landfills, but it also enhances soil to provide a nutrient-rich foundation stimulating healthy plant growth.

Yard and food wastes total approximately 30 percent of the "waste stream" in the United States, according to the How to Compost.org, an informational Web site about composting. Composting most of these waste streams would reduce the amount of municipal solid waste requiring disposal by almost one-fourth, the Web site says. This is significant, because the standard means of disposal for most yard and food waste include landfilling and incineration.

These practices are not as environmentally or economically sound as composting, according to the Content Resource Page, because landfilled yard waste breaks down very slowly as a result of a lack of oxygen (the soil isn't turned over; thus, oxygen isn't able to reach the center of the pile and break down all the elements as quickly). Also, as the waste decomposes, it produces methane gas and acidic leachate, which are both environmental pollutants. Landfilling organic wastes also takes up landfill space needed for other types of waste.

In addition to providing environmental attributes, compost is a nutrient-rich soil amendment that improves soil texture and water retention. It also contributes to soil fertility, proper pH balance, and healthy root development in plants. These qualities are the means to a happy ending: a rich agricultural yield.

Mending Wayward Soils
Whether your soil is a heavy clay or sandy mix, adding compost will benefit its texture, says Digitalseed, a horticulture Web site. Air and water cannot easily penetrate clay soil, because its extremely fine particles stick tightly together. Compost binds to the clay particles and helps open up the soil, letting the soil drain and enabling plant roots to easily penetrate the soil.

Sandy soil is just the opposite: It consists of very course particles with lots of air space that lets water drain through it very quickly. Compost fills these gaps and helps the soil retain water. In this way, it protects plants against drought.

Compost also attracts earthworms by serving as their food source, according to Aggie Horticulture, a resource of Texas A&M University. Earthworms enhance soil structure by burrowing and aerating the soil, and their tunneling brings valuable minerals from the subsoil up to the plant root zone.

Compost + Soil = Good Chemistry

In addition to improving water retention and soil texture, compost helps soil chemistry by "softening" extremes, such as highly alkaline soil or highly acidic soil. This is because most compost has a pH near neutral (a proper balance of alkalinity and acidity).

Compost also contains low levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. When incorporated into the soil, it acts like a slow-release fertilizer, releasing small amounts of these nutrients slowly throughout the growing season, Aggie Horticulture says.

There are also many micronutrients tied up in the soil that are unavailable to plants (they're not easily accessible to plant roots when they're too deeply buried). Composted matter bonds to these micronutrients -- such as iron, copper, manganese, and zinc -- and make them available to plant roots on demand, Digitalseed says.

Nutrients and micronutrients help to thwart diseases that often destroy plant roots. Disease control with compost has been attributed to four possible mechanisms, says the Environmental Protection Agency, including successful competition for nutrients by beneficial microorganisms, antibiotic production by beneficial microorganisms, successful attacks against pathogens by beneficial microorganisms, and activation of disease-resistant genes in plants by compost. Utilizing compost for these fungus-fighting qualities, farmers and home gardeners can significantly reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides and fungicides. Thus, they'll realize less of a risk of adversely affecting their water supply, food safety, and their own safety.

Committed to turning yard debris into an environmentally safe alternative to pollution and potentially hazardous chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Long Island Compost uses all natural resources to generate 100 percent nutrient-rich organic soil products. Look for the Long Island Compost brand when you shop for soil amendments at local garden centers and retailers.