Compost is a hot topic right now. This rich, dark soil amendment is all over the internet and in garden supply stores. From urban community compost initiatives to large-scale worm farms, it seems like compost is all anyone’s talking about. But what is compost, and just what is breaking down inside it?

Compost, in simple terms, is decomposed organic matter—the nutritious and biologically stable result of breaking down plants, food scraps, yard waste, and even animal manure. The composting process can be as simple as piling up grass clippings and eggshells in your backyard or as complicated as using a large-scale industrial aeration facility. The end result is a rich and high-quality soil amendment that will provide nutrition for a garden and help protect the environment by reducing waste and keeping soil intact.

Making great compost requires the right balance of ingredients. Compost experts divide these ingredients between carbon-rich materials, or browns, and nitrogen-rich materials, or greens. Browns include leaves, plant stalks and sticks, wood chips, and untreated shredded papers and cardboard. Fruit and veggie scraps, cut grasses, eggshells and coffee grounds are all greens. Layering browns and greens in the right proportions, as well as providing adequate aeration and hydration, is the key to successful compost creation.

Vermicompost: Compost’s wormy cousin

Vermicompost is the result of using worms to aid the decomposition of organic materials. Worms are nature’s manure machines: they eat quickly, and their waste is one of the richest soil amendments available. When food scraps are added to a vermicompost system, the worms get busy eating and excreting. Their excretions are called casts, which are mixed into the soil to provide nutrients and rich organic matter.

Compost’s benefits to soil and the ocean

The organic matter in compost can help improve soil structure, and the process of adding it can provide aeration to the soil as well. This organic matter also attracts beneficial microorganisms, insects, and worms, which regulate the available nutrients and make it easier for plants to take them up. In addition, these creatures predate on each other, keeping pest populations in check and helping to break down the organic matter that attracted them in the first place. All of these benefits can reduce or eliminate the need for added pesticides and fertilizers.

When compost is added to soil, it acts as a sponge, soaking up and holding on to water during times of flood and drought. This reduces the amount of runoff during periods of heavy rain and allows nutrients to soak into the soil at a slow and usable rate. Reducing runoff protects the ocean from pollution.

When food waste and plant material are composted rather than sent to a landfill, the carbon that would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere is instead stored in the soil. The same applies to methane, which makes up 50% of the gasses released from landfills and is a potent greenhouse gas. This reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, in turn, protects our ocean from warming. The more we compost, the greater this effect!

Compost: the heart of Ocean Hour Farm

Compost is literally and figuratively the center of our operation. Located in the middle of the farm, the compost center makes it easy for us to divert waste from landfills and support soil health. The compost center showcases several different types of composting facilities. Layered compost in chicken-wire towers, using a 1:30 ratio of nitrogen to carbon, breaks down slowly and doesn’t require much energy beyond sunshine to maintain. There’s also a thermal compost pile, which is monitored to ensure its nitrogen-to-carbon ratio keeps it hot enough to break down quickly. And indoors, away from the sun, is the vermicompost table, where over 40,000 worms are hard at work making their way through the farm’s food scraps and turning them into nutritious casts. 

By keeping the farm’s compostable waste out of landfills, we can do our part to reduce methane emissions. When the compost is added to our soils, we can keep nutrients in the soil and prevent them from running off into the ocean. Ocean Hour Farm’s compost center is critical for protecting our most important neighbors: Narragansett Bay and the ocean at large.