Composting

I have been reading about problems with contaminated compost. It seems that organic gardeners have been duped in many cases by buying compost that is contaminated with persistent herbicides. When this compost is applied to the garden, it kills your plants or stunts their growth and ruins their ability to bear fruit. These herbicides are manufactured to remain in the environment for years after application and they even pass through the digestive tract of horses, cows, goats and other animals and come out in their poop. When that poop is aged into compost, the herbicide is still there and ready to do its dirty work in your organic garden. So even gardeners who get compost from a local farmer rather than a bag at Lowe's may be getting this poison that will persist in their garden for years. At the beginning of last summer, my husband built this compost bin pictured above out of pine boards that we got from a friend who owns a cabinet company in Louisville. He has stacks and stacks of these boards so we will able to purchase them really cheap. They are great for projects like this, the chicken coop and the greenhouse. The garden provides a lot of leftover material that is great for composting. We also feed a lot of the garden and kitchen leftovers to the chickens. When we clean out their bedding, we add that to the compost bin and will be able to use it next year to fertilize the garden. We have a stainless steel compost container with a lid that I keep in the kitchen to collect produce waste, coffee grounds and egg shells. When it gets full, we take it out and add it to the green tumble composter. I bought this composter at Costco last year. It does the job quickly but it has some problems. Somehow, water is trapped inside the walls of it and some of the hinges are rusting already, even though I have only had it for about of year and followed the directions on assembly. Costco is one of my favorite stores and I really like their return policy. If you buy something there and you are not completely satisfied with it, you can return it anytime. If Costco comes up with a better designed composter this spring, I will probably clean this one up and return it.
All the organic gardening books and magazines emphasize the importance of adding compost to the garden before planting in the spring and then throughout the growing season as a side dressing. This adds vital nutrients to the soil and improves soil fertility and moisture retention. It also reduces the chance of diseases and pests overtaking the plants. I used compost liberally last growing season but I still had problems with pests and diseases. My cucumbers started growing strong and then suddenly, they all turned yellow and died. I couldn't figure out why but after reading the articles about contaminated compost, I worry that the bags of compost that we purchased from Lowe's may have had the herbicides in them. There is no way of knowing without ordering expensive tests. Even the compost industry does not test for it because they haven't established a threshold value and preliminary results from laboratory tests say that even non-detectable amounts can cause plant death. I wish I would have had enough of my own homemade compost last year so that I would not have bought that. I am thinking about planting a different crop in that area to see if it dies this year. If it doesn't, then I can assume that it was probably something else that killed all my cucumbers.
I can only hope that people become more aware of this problem and the persistent herbicides causing the problem are banned. In the meantime, I will make my own compost.
I just ordered a new book that I am looking forward to reading. It is "The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient Dense Food" by Steve Solomon. The preview says that he explains that if you want your food to be nutrient dense, just adding compost or NPK will not provide it. You have to analyze your soil and add other organic amendments such as magnesium, calcium and other trace elements. I will review the book on my blog and let you know how I plan to incorporate what I found to this years crop.