Environmental Chefs Will Love This Compost Stew ABC Recipe Book

Absolutely! At whatever age we, children and adults, begin to be concerned with how to feed our garden, Compost Stew will teach us the way.

It sounds as if an aspiring gardener, of whatever age, could learn a lot with these books.

This was fun and rather interesting. I enjoyed both your article and the comments it elicited :)

I am mad keen on recycling, and, as I am a gardener, compost is a key part of my strategy. I make garden compost in heaps/bins, and make kitchen compost from scraps, which I make in a plastic compost bin. Getting manure is not always easy, so what I do is I combine pelleted chicken manure, which comes in large pots, with compost, so the whole allotment is covered every winter. I also add rock dust to the mixture, which mineralizes the soil. Ideally I then, in Autumn, cover the lot with leaves. To keep them in place I soak them and press them down. You can see the leaves breaking down in Spring.

Sounds to me as though you know the Compost Stew recipe quite tastefully! And it sounds like you have the ingredients for a composting cookbook of your own.

Here is another tip. In winter, when compost bins slow down, you can dig a compost trench. Dig a trench in the earth and slowly fill it with your waste, then as you do cover it over. The decay will rob some nitrogen from the soil for a while, but as nitrogen is constantly recycled it will return as bacteria in the compost die off an decay. This is why this technique is best in winter. The ground where this is practised becomes great for peas and beans.

The key to compost is the development of humus. This is a complex colloid, black in colour, that develops from decaying organic matter. The black colour retains heat in the soil, and the large, complex molecule, which is yet improperly understood, retains water and nutrients, and acts as a glue to bind soil together. You should always ask yourself how black is your soil. I love a good black soil rich, as this means that it is rich in humus

Thank you for enlightening us on human and animal waste as pertains to composting. It sounds as if you're quite informed on the topic.

You can physically compost cooked food, but as Telesto says, it attracts rats. The way to compost cooked materials is to use a wormery, which is sealed and which thus prevents rats from entering or even smelling. There are two nutrients that derive from a wormery, the liquid, which is incredibly nutritious, though it stinks, and the compost itself.

Human waste material can be composted, but it is unwise to put it onto food plants, because although a well-used compost toilet can destroy 99.99% of pathogens and parasites in the six months that it takes to compost, there is one species of ring worm whose egg can survive. The technique is to spread the compost around fruit trees and bushes, and the egg, if it is there, will be eaten in the soil or the worm eaten if it hatches.

Animal bodies should not be added to compost,as foxes and rats will dig them up. I buried a dead hedgehog recently on my allotment, and the fox dug it up twice until I reburied it and put a bin on top.

The human materials that can be easily composted are hair and nail clippings. Nail clippings provide the calcium that is lacking in compost, and they dissolve in the compost acids, with the calcium being retained in the complex molecular structure of humus, which holds on to water and nutrients.

Ideally you will not only use compost but leaf mould, which provides some nutrients, such as calcium. I like to cover my ground with leaves in winter, so that they rot down and become soil. You can decay the leaves first, as leaf mould, it takes a year

Of course you are charming :-) I use compost for food plants and it is my personal preference not to introduce human nor animal bacterial issues.

I do put fingernails in... I sound charming, don't I? But nothing animal, it (apparently) attracts rats. And we have a big enough problem with them in London as it is.

I will pass on that tip, Telesto. I do not mix anything animal or human into composting.

There is another "speed up your composting" tip but I'm not absolutely sure I should share it, lest you think I am a bit mad.... It involves human urine being added to the mix. I saw it on television some years back and have used it periodically since.

It's a cookbook for Mother Nature, not for meals for humans. I think of it as Mankind being the chefs of the earth... we need to feed her a healthy diet! Thanks for sharing an interesting tip on 'hurrying up' the decomposition of fabrics!

I'm glad that this isn't a cookbook! Seriously, I compost as much as I can. I have very diligently cut up old towels and woollens very small so that they will decompose more easily. And had the best roses as a result. Great article.

Compost Stew would make a great household gift for your daughter on her kitchen composting journey.

My daughter has just started kitchen composting, she would love this, I'll have to tell her about it. Love the image you created!

That is too cool on the wool. Funny thing, I never composted my dog's hair but did leave it lay in the yard when I brushed her (piles of fur!) I watched birds grabbing it for nest building!

Much can be composted: hair and dust from the hoover for example. Seaweed makes a great addition to the compost heap, as do teabags. There is a farmer in Cumbria, Northern England, who composts wool that he cannot sell and bracken.

I so agree with you, Frank, that Compost Stew should have a place in school libraries, as it definitely starts kids out on the road to composting, in a way they can comprehend and enjoy.

Oh yes, I do believe there is much to be learned from reading children's books, even as an adult, maybe especially as an adult!

Yes! to the leftovers and food waste!

This is a book that should be in school libraries, because it is teaching children how to thrive in an environmentally challenging world, and you have done a service by showing us that it exists.
When you say kids of all ages..., Ruth, you are hitting on a great truth, that some books transcend age and can be read by all ages. This is a mark of their value.

I am glad that this book shows the importance of seaweed, which is a foodstuff and an excellent soil conditioner.

Eating up leftovers is a key part of my self-reliance strategy, but I also compost what cannot be used, so it goes onto my allotment to produce more food.

Absolutely! Compost Stew is perfect for kids of all ages, including big kids like me!

It sounds like a really good idea to throw seaweed into your compost. I think that book would cover all the bases of learning how to compost.