From dirt to lunch From dirt to lunch (August 20, 2004)

Composting makes good gardens, less waste

By David Herbert

Your mother may have told you not to play with your food as a child. Luckily, she probably never said anything about playing with the garbage.

This Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, the City of Mountain View and Santa Clara County are teaming up to teach a free two-hour "Compost Basics" workshop, where residents will learn the most effective techniques for home composting.

The monthly class, taught by "Master Composter" volunteers, teaches interested adults how to use yard trimmings and food scraps into high-quality compost valuable for gardening.

Most people think composting is simply mixing rotten food with worms and dirt in a bin. But according to Sarah Smith, who is co-director of the Master Composter program, the process is much more complicated.

"If that's all they did, they would just have a smelly mess," she said.

Some of the tips composters learn are: Maintain the mixture's air and water balance, vary the food and chop all the ingredients.

The benefits of composting are many, Smith explained. Homemade compost is vastly cheaper than commercial fertilizers since it only requires a cheap bin, some worms, a little know-how and, of course, leftover food. It is also more environmentally sound since it saves food waste from unnecessarily heading to landfills and keeps dangerous chemicals out of the ground, where they often make their way to the Bay.

And compost simply makes yards greener.

"It's so much more fun to garden if you have good soil," Smith said.

The fall is also a good time to start composting, a process that takes three to six months to produce quality fertilizer, because there are so many dead leaves around, Smith added.

The "Compost Basics" workshops are in their ninth year and continue to be productive, with about 10 Mountain View residents signed up for the class this weekend and sessions in San Jose often drawing as many as 60 people each.

For those who don't have the time to attend the class or are reluctant to deal with the mess of composting, there are other options. A free video is available through the program that goes over the composting basics. Interested gardeners can also pick up free compost from the SMaRT Station in Sunnyvale. And Santa Clara County gives away free worm bins to local residents upon request.

Composting is a fun way to be a friend to the environment, Smith added. "Forty percent of waste stream is organic. Composting is a little thing that everybody can do. It's a very gratifying feeling."

The class is taught at the Community Center at 201 S. Rengstorff Ave. The SMaRT Station, where free compost is available, is located at 301 Carl Road in Sunnyvale. To learn more about the program, or to sign up for a composting class, call (408) 918-4640 or visit www.reducewaste.org.

E-mail David Herbert at dherbert@mv-voice.com

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