manureposting
Feb. 28th, 2019 09:50 pmI've been enjoying ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
corvidology's "Stuff I Love" posts (https://corvidology.dreamwidth.org/tag/february+love+stuff). Mine also fits the "February is for shitposting" theme, because the magic ingredient that lets me put everything that rots into my compost pile is an ample supply of horse manure.
I love compost. As a gardener, I love it for improving the tilth of my soil, and providing water storage and slow-release nutrients to the plants that grow there. As a hippie, I love it for giving me more of the cycle of life, instead of the straight line of work gets you money, money gets you stuff, stuff turns into garbage, garbage goes to the landfill. As a person living in the 21st century, I love it for storing carbon.
It's not carbon sequestration. All the carbon is still part of the carbon cycle. But compost makes more carbon spend more time as carbohydrates, and less as carbon dioxide. First, it stores organic matter in the soil. Our soils are young, and our climate doesn't support a lot of trees without irrigation, so there's a lot of room for organic improvement. And second, improving the soil's tilth, water storage, and nutrient profile means that it supports more life: plants, animals, and all the other kingdoms. The wild grapevine growing out of my soil, the songbirds feasting on the grapes, the Cooper's Hawk feasting on the songbirds, those are all biomass, nurtured by my compost. Well, primarily they are living things, enjoying their own lives and pursuing their own purposes. But as a side effect, they are storing carbon.
( one picture of a compost bin )
corvidology's "Stuff I Love" posts (https://corvidology.dreamwidth.org/tag/february+love+stuff). Mine also fits the "February is for shitposting" theme, because the magic ingredient that lets me put everything that rots into my compost pile is an ample supply of horse manure.I love compost. As a gardener, I love it for improving the tilth of my soil, and providing water storage and slow-release nutrients to the plants that grow there. As a hippie, I love it for giving me more of the cycle of life, instead of the straight line of work gets you money, money gets you stuff, stuff turns into garbage, garbage goes to the landfill. As a person living in the 21st century, I love it for storing carbon.
It's not carbon sequestration. All the carbon is still part of the carbon cycle. But compost makes more carbon spend more time as carbohydrates, and less as carbon dioxide. First, it stores organic matter in the soil. Our soils are young, and our climate doesn't support a lot of trees without irrigation, so there's a lot of room for organic improvement. And second, improving the soil's tilth, water storage, and nutrient profile means that it supports more life: plants, animals, and all the other kingdoms. The wild grapevine growing out of my soil, the songbirds feasting on the grapes, the Cooper's Hawk feasting on the songbirds, those are all biomass, nurtured by my compost. Well, primarily they are living things, enjoying their own lives and pursuing their own purposes. But as a side effect, they are storing carbon.
( one picture of a compost bin )