The 4 Universal Compost Ingredients

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Balancing nitrogen-rich elements with carbon, oxygen, and water produces the most lush, nutritious food for soil. But there are some important things to consider in the process of building healthy compost. Kate teaches us how compost creators can gather and combine the right varieties of these elements. Epic Gardening Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3LZ1DMj Botanical Interests Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3QhPkgq Book Collection Page: https://growepic.co/3M1At7s EG Homesteading Book: https://growepic.co/48STmTW Connect With Kate Flood: Kate Flood is happiest when she's teaching people about compost, reading about it, or elbow deep in the stuff. She's a compost nerd and sustainability educator, and she's on a mission to help others step-up their household waste management. From her home on the south coast of New South Wales, the teacher and mum of three busy dirt-babies spreads the word on 'garden gold' via Instagram, TikTok, and workshops for councils, community gardens and businesses. Kate has inspired her family, friends, and ever-growing online community to think about the small actions they can take daily to stem the climate crisis and make composting fun Website Instagram TikTok Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code THEBEET for 5% off your entire order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Preorder Kevin’s newest book Epic Homesteading if you are looking to turn your home into a thriving homestead! Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us: Our Blog YouTube (Including our Epic Homesteading and Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If I told you there were only four ingredients you needed to make good compost, you might
0:08.1	doubt that truth, because of course you could put in manure, you could put in cheese,
0:13.2	you could put in a fish.
0:14.7	But really it all breaks down into these four universal ingredients.
0:18.8	We have Kate flood back on the show The Compost Coach, also the name of her book out now.
0:24.6	Kate, what are the four?
0:26.1	What are the universal four?
0:27.6	So the four universal ingredients that it really is this simple is carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water.
0:37.3	And yes, I know it's a bit of a cheat Kevin because there's so many different variables
0:42.1	when it comes to that.
0:43.2	But it is really useful thinking it in those four basic building blocks because then you
0:50.5	always know you're adding in the right balance and good compost is balanced compost.
0:57.0	So people think when you first start composting it's all about food waste, which yes sure
1:03.1	it does need to be, you know, food waste can become a climate poison when we add it into
1:07.1	landfill, but it's more than that.
1:09.7	So breaking down those components will first of all start with food waste because that's
1:14.0	what people often think of.
1:15.9	So that's nitrogen rich.
1:19.3	Nitrogen is something that people in compost language call the greens, but that can be
1:23.9	a little bit confusing because nitrogen isn't just colored green.
1:27.6	It can be things like manure that you had mentioned, coffee grounds, you know, they're colored
1:32.7	brown, but they're very brown, yeah, they're full of nitrogen.
	...

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