BOISE, Idaho — Fall is a perfect time to add compost to your yard and garden, and if you are a resident of the City of Boise, you can get that compost free.
On this edition of 'You Can Grow It,' KTVB Garden Master Jim Duthie shares more information about this compost give-back program and shows how other Idaho residents can learn to create beneficial compost at home.
For the past several years, the City of Boise has provided a free curbside compost program, where they pick up yard waste and food scraps from the homes of residential customers for recycling.
"Part of that program is that we give back compost to our community. It's part of your solid waste bill," Boise Compost Program Lead Lisa Knapp said.
Composting is a great way to amend your soil and to improve the health of your lawns and gardens. This week on You Can Grow It, we will learn more about how you can make composting work for you.
"These sites, we’re at one of them right now, are open year-round," Knapp said. "You can come in the spring time, it’s often used, but really in the fall is a great time to be putting compost down in your yard as well.”
Like these ladies are doing, they stopped by this compost give-back site at the Idaho Botanical Garden to pick up a little clean, nutrient-rich compost to spread in their gardens and flower beds at home.
"We’ve got two different sites here in Boise, our two give-back sites. One is here at the Idaho Botanical Garden, and one is over in West Boise off of Joplin Road," Knapp said. "Every single household is allowed to take up to two cubic yards, which is about two truckloads every single year.”
Mother Nature makes its own compost naturally from fallen leaves and plant material. The Boise Curb It Compost Program just helps to speed up that cycle at its processing plant south of town.
“Our facility is called 20 Mile South Compost Facility, which is aptly named as it’s 20 miles south of Boise. It’s a ways out of town, but there we process about 35,000 tons of organic waste every year," Knapp said. “Composting is really just humans kind of engineering and speeding up the natural process of decomposition that’s happening all around us every day on the forest floor and elsewhere.”
This is the perfect time of year to apply compost.
“This time of year in the fall is a great time for top dressing your lawn. You can put down about a half inch, quarter inch of compost, rake it around, and that will provide nutrients to your grass," Knapp said. "It will get fully pulled down all winter. You can also mulch your trees with compost, so in the fall we recommend putting two to three inches around.”
Although Boise's Curb It Compost Program is available to city residents only, other nearby communities are beginning to develop waste recycling programs. Knapp said it is "a great way to keep that organic waste of out of landfill and put it to a much, much better use and recycle it here."
According to the City of Boise, the program has been collecting residential compost waste for six years. Roughly 33% of the city's residential waste is used to make compost, rather than going into the landfill.
“We’re excited. Leaf season is right around the corner, and we would recommend – first of all – rake early, rake often. Get that stuff picked up and put into your compost bin as soon as you can," Knapp said. "It gets really hard on our service provider, Republic Services, when there’s lots of leaves on the curb at one time. But really, if you’re able to compost in your own yard, or to keep some of that organic material where it fell, that’s the best thing you can do.”
If you are a Boise resident, consider becoming a compost host. You can have a truckload of compost delivered that you can then share with your neighbors. If you are not a Boise resident, you are not out of luck. You can learn to compost at home yourself, with help from the University of Idaho Ada County Extension Service.
“If you want to do composting at your own house and you decide to do backyard composting, we have an easy composting class that we offer with the extension office. It starts in the early part of October," said Hatasu Tankersley, a volunteer with the U of I Ada County Extension. "It’s easy for anyone to sign up, and we’ll teach you more than you probably thought you ever could know about composting, how to create it, how to take care of it and what to do with it when it’s finished.”
From small spaces, to large property, anyone can practice composting.
“If you build a compost pile, the microbes will come. They will turn your organic waste, yard waste, leaves, things like that, into compost that’s usable, soil amendments for your garden or yard," Tankersley said. “It takes thousands of years for Mother Nature to make an inch of soil. So, if we take care of it by amending it and putting some value back into it, it really improves what you’re going to have to work with.”
For more information about Boise's Compost Program and how you can pick up free compost or become a neighborhood compost host, check the City of Boise Public Works Department website.
To sign up for composting classes, contact the Ada County Extension at ada@uidaho.edu.
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