The Pros And Cons Of Composting For Your Garden

Last Updated on June 16, 2023 by Grow with Bovees

Welcome to our story on the pros and cons of composting.

Composting is the single most important thing you can do for the overall health and prosperity of your landscape.

The simple addition of compost to your garden soil, around trees and shrubs, or on your lawn will pay huge dividends in the form of healthy, disease-free plants.

And there is also the satisfaction of recycling yard waste, food waste and other organic materials, the feeling of well-being that comes from physical effort, and the delight found in being outdoors, digging in the soil.

The Benefits of Composting Are Many

…and the composting process also has many environmental benefits.

When you mix compost into your soil, the return on your investment from your yard and garden is so valuable that many gardeners refer to compost as “black gold.”

It revitalizes older plants and invigorates new, young plants, and helps to prevent plant disease by making them stronger and more resilient. Because there are so many ways to use it, invariably, there is never enough.

Limited amounts of compost usually force you to set priorities for its use in your yard.

Decide in advance whether it’s more important to use your supply on a new garden bed where the soil has never been improved, mulch new vegetable seedlings, or top-dress part of the lawn that is struggling.

Or you can consider several ways to stretch your compost supply by mixing it with materials acquired from commercial or municipal sources.

Compost Improves Soil Structure

To make the most of your supply of compost, it’s helpful to understand all of its benefits. Compost is essentially a soil conditioner.

Adding compost to the yard and garden changes the soil properties fundamentally: Compost alters its texture and infuses it with life to better support plants of all kinds; and compost helps to restore compacted, sterile soil, so it comes to closely resemble the rich natural soil found on the forest floor.

Compost Improves Soil Health

Because it’s light and fibrous, compost aerates any soil that it’s added to. Whether you mix it into the soil yourself or let earthworms pull it down from the surface, the net result is more air spaces around the soil particles.

If you are growing herbs, it will act as an organic fertilizer when compost is added to the herb potting mix.

It’s the nature of these soil particles— especially their size—that determines the texture of your soil.

If your soil is clay, the particles are so fine that they pack together tightly. There is little space for air around them, and the soil feels dense and heavy.

The particles stick together when they are moist, and the soil feels gummy.

If your soil is sandy, the particles are coarse, larger, and lighter. There is excessive space around them, and water tends to drain through them very quickly.

The amount of space around soil particles affects how well plant roots—especially fine, newly formed plant roots—can grow and move through the soil in search of essential air, nutrients, and moisture.

It also affects how much air, nutrients, and moisture the soil can make available to these plant roots. Plants grow well in sandy soil, but the soil doesn’t hold water and nutrients well.

Plants struggle in clay soil, but the soil holds nutrients and moisture better.

Of course, the ideal soil texture is something in between these two extremes—loam.

Loamy soils have ideal size particles. They are coarse enough to allow space to store air and water, yet they are also fine enough to prevent moisture from draining away. Loamy soils have humus in them, which helps them hold moisture, yet drain well.

Not everyone is blessed with loamy soil.

Compost improves soil structure by increasing its capacity for holding moisture and draining well. Of course, fresh organic materials will decompose eventually in the soil and provide humus, too, but these decomposing organic materials inevitably deplete the soil of some of its nitrogen as it completes the decomposition process.

With the addition of compost, inferior clay or sandy soils become friable, or lighter and more crumbly. As they are better able to retain air and moisture, their tilth—a combination of soil’s texture and its ability to retain moisture—improves.

Backyard Composting Reduces Landfill

If you turn all your garden waste and other household organic matter into compost, you will be doing a favor for the environment by reducing the amount of compostable materials that are placed into landfills.

These landfills are a source of methane gas, just one of the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change and global warming, that waste management companies are struggling to control.

You can also include a fair amount of organic waste in the form of kitchen scraps and other organic matter that you can collect in a counter top compost pail to add to your compost pile, thereby reducing landfill waste at the same time.

You will reduce the amount of compostable waste that goes to landfill, while encouraging healthy plant growth by supplying valuable nutrients with the finished compost, and reducing potent greenhouse gas emissions from landfills at the same time.

Compost Increases Microbial Activity

At every stage of its production, compost is home to a host of organisms, both large and small, that are responsible for decomposing the organic raw materials.

When you integrate compost into the soil, it still harbors lots of these beneficial bacteria. They make the difference between live, fertile soil and essentially dead, sterile soil.

And they can’t live if they don’t have humus to sustain them.

Breaking down chemical compounds bound in the soil particles into nutrients and then converting those nutrients into a form that plant roots can take up is the main contribution of microorganisms.

Some are bacteria that convert nitrogen from the air and “fix” it into the soil, so it’s available to plants. Still, other bacteria—more plentiful in compost from simple piles—are organisms that manufacture antibiotics, which attack disease pathogens in the soil.

Still, other bacteria are expert at releasing minerals from rock particles in the soil. There are also beneficial insects that prey on pest insects and their eggs in the soil.

Microorganisms also play an important role in providing food and air to plants. Plants can use nutrients only when they are in a liquid or gaseous state.

The bacteria, fungi, and other microbes in compost reinforce the microbial population already residing in the soil’s existing humus. The conversion of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, boron, and many trace minerals and nutrients into accessible gases and liquids is thus accelerated by microorganisms introduced with compost.

Care should be taken though, to check whether any yard trimmings that could contain harsh chemical fertilizers, or residue of any harmful synthetic fertilizers could be harmful to some beneficial composting organisms.

Compost Provides Some Nutrition

Although compost enriches the soil, it is not a fertilizer, it is used as a soil amendment.

Compost breaks down over time into the basic nutrients used by plants to make food, but not in sufficient quantity and variety to make it a reliable substitute for a general, balanced fertilizer.

The nutrient content of compost inevitably changes from batch to batch because the raw materials (ultimately the C/N ratio) from which the compost pile is built contain differing amounts of nitrogen.

For example, if the bulk of the organic waste green materials were grass clippings, the finished product would likely be heavy with nitrogen.

To get the best carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C/N ratio), in your home composting efforts, a generally accepted rule of thumb, is to use 2 parts green materials to 4 parts brown materials.

The number of times the pile is turned, the internal heat it achieves due to the aerobic conditions, and the speed with which the compost is used are all factors that affect the presence and makeup of nutrients in a given batch of compost.

Also, the nutrients compost provides are only indirectly available to plants. Like organic fertilizers for lawns, compost depends on organisms in the soil to process its nutrients into liquid or gas form.

Regular Applications Adjusts Soil Chemistry

Different groups of plants require certain levels of soil acidity or alkalinity to enable their roots to access nutrients in the soil. The levels of acidity and alkalinity are measured in terms of pH, which is expressed as a number on a scale of 1.0 to 9.0, with 7.0 being neutral.

If a digital soil test tells you it is below 7.0, it is more acid; above that, it is more alkaline.

Acid-loving plants such as rhododendrons, azaleas, and hollies prefer soil to have a pH around 4.5 to 6.5. In contrast, rose of Sharon, butterfly bush, and sedums will accept more alkaline soil that tests closer to 7.5 to 8.0.

However, most plants commonly found in residential landscapes do fine in an essentially neutral environment, their soil registering 6.0 to 7.2 or so.

Because the assortment of raw organic waste materials that end up in typical backyard compost piles usually decomposes into neutral humus, compost does not directly influence soil pH levels.

However, it has been recognized by generations of observant gardeners, and more recently by scientists studying soil ecology, that compost definitely influences soil pH indirectly in many circumstances.

How it does this is not yet fully understood, but researchers have determined that if growing in soil with a high percentage of compost in it (2% to 5%), plants develop the capacity to modify the soil chemistry to suit their particular pH needs in the area where their roots are growing.

This is not likely to occur with young, unestablished plants or with annual flowers and vegetables that are in the soil for only a few months. In soil laced with compost over several years, however, some trees and shrubs have exhibited the ability to modify pH levels.

Compost Buffers Extremes of Soil Temperature

Soil temperature is critical to the health and timely growth of plants.

Adding rich, dark compost to your soil is one way to help reduce any soil’s response to the extremes of temperature, and to protect your plants or germinating seeds.

If the soil temperature exceeds 85 °F (29.44 °C), for example, the growth of healthy root systems ceases until the temperature drops.

Used as a mulch in the heat of summer, compost is a great insulator against the sun and allows soil temperatures to stay 6° to 15 °F cooler, enabling plants to continue to grow and produce.

If the ground is too cold, microbial life is stressed and seeds won’t germinate. (In fact, soil temperature is even more critical to the germination of seeds than is ambient air temperature.)

For example, no matter when they are planted in late winter, peas will germinate only when the soil warms to 45 °F (7.22 °C). And the root systems of most plants don’t grow until the soil warms to at least 65 °F (18.33 °C) or more.

Mixed into the top layers where plants grow, compost can help to absorb heat, which stimulates plants to start growing earlier in the season.

Composting Is Great For Plants

Whether you’re growing annuals or perennials, bulbs, shrubs, trees, or vegetables, they will grow more vigorously and produce fruit, cones, seeds, and flowers more abundantly when they are in healthy, nutrient rich soil. Compost will definitely improve your soil quality and crop yields.

The single most common cause of plant problems is stress.

Plants that are improperly planted, don’t have the right light exposure, or are in poor soil are vulnerable because their systems are strained by coping with these difficulties—their natural defenses are thus weakened.

If the soil in which they are growing is improved by compost, the stress is reduced and their vigor improves. They are better able to adjust to problems, and their innate resistance to insect and disease attacks is also improved.

Compost Reduces Insect Pests

Soil that includes compost not only reduces overall plant stress, but it also fosters a plethora of advantageous microbes that eradicate harmful insect eggs and larvae, which can otherwise be a nuisance to the plants. Spiders and sugar ants are particularly fierce predators of pest insect eggs.

Life in healthy soil maintains a desirable balance among all populations of insects—both predator and prey—so the basic biological diversity is maintained.

Compost also adds fatty acids to the soil; these are effective at controlling certain pests, such as root-knot nematodes.

Feeding The Soil

Adding compost to your garden soil replenishes the nutrients taken up by plant growth.

Compost Fights Plant and Soil Diseases

Any ordinary soil contains viruses, bacteria, and fungal spores. They are part of its life.

Some of these organisms are part of its natural decomposition team, while others threaten plant health. The finished compost you add to the soil contains plenty of microorganisms that combat other microorganisms threatening to plant health.

Some of these beneficial organisms also suppress fungal diseases, such as certain rots and damping off, which invade plant roots.

These disease-fighting organisms are more abundant in the lower-temperature compost produced in a simple compost heap.

If you have a managed pile, take compost from the outer edges, which doesn’t get as hot, for use in disease control.

When used as a mulch, compost also helps control disease in plants. The spores of fungal diseases like powdery mildew are often spread to plants by raindrops that splash up from the soil onto the leaves.

A layer of soft, spongy compost under plants not only helps to retain water, but also absorbs the raindrops, thereby virtually eliminating the spread of fungal diseases while adding nutrients at the same time.

Try to only use organic fertilizers rather than chemical fertilizer in your garden.

Compost Discourages Weeds

A major advantage of composting is its role in discouraging weeds. Like any organic material, it makes an excellent mulch, even when it’s not completely broken down. Spread in a 3″ or 4″ layer on the soil over plant roots and between plants, it covers weed seeds that need sunlight to germinate.

Compost made by the hot composting managed method—where extremely high temperatures kill any weed seeds and dangerous pathogens in the organic raw materials from the pile—is best for this purpose.

Disadvantages of Composting

Not many that we can think of!

Some people say that there is an unpleasant smell associated with it, but that’s rather subjective.

There is an argument that composting occupies too much yard space, but if it’s all contained within one compost bin, then that’s not really such a big problem.

We think that everything associated with composting is definitely an environmentally friendly thing to do, and will produce less waste, as it all shrinks during the decaying process.

Composting will reduce your carbon footprint, even if it only means a smaller amount of waste products need to be collected from your home. The waste collection truck will not be pumping out carbon emissions on the trip to and from your house.

Pros and Cons of Composting – Final Thoughts

The benefits of composting cannot be ignored. You should use everything from your compost pile that you can!

References;

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00886539/document

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/tilth