Howard published details of the Indore method in 1931 in a slim book called The Waste Products of Agriculture. The widely read book brought him invitations to visit plantations throughout the British Empire.  It prompted farmers world-wide to make compost by the Indore method.  Travel, contacts, and new awareness of the problems of European agriculture were responsible for Howard’s decision to create an organic farming and gardening movement.

Howard repeatedly warned in The Waste Products of Agriculture that if the underlying fundamentals of his process were altered, superior results would not occur.  That was his viewpoint in 1931.  However, humans being what we are, it does not seem possible for good technology to be broadcast without each user trying to improve and adapt it to their own situation and understanding.  By 1940, the term “lndore compost” had become a generic term for any kind of compost made in a heap without the use of chemicals, much as “Rototiller” has come to mean any motor-driven rotarytiller.

Howard’s 1931 concerns were correct—­almost all alterations of the original Indore system lessened its value—­but Howard of 1941 did not resist this dilutive trend because in an era of chemical farming any compost was better than no compost, any return of humus better than none.

Still, I think it is useful to go back to the Indore research farm of the 1920s and to study closely how Albert Howard once made the world’s finest compost, and to encounter this great man’s thoughts before he became a crusading ideologue, dead set against any use of agricultural chemicals.  A great many valuable lessons are still contained in The Waste Products of Agriculture. Unfortunately, even though many organic gardeners are familiar with the later works of Sir Albert Howard the reformer, Albert Howard the scientist and researcher, who wrote this book, is virtually unknown today.

At Indore, all available vegetable material was composted, including manure and bedding straw from the cattle shed, unconsumed crop residues, fallen leaves and other forest wastes, weeds, and green manures grown specifically for compost making.  All of the urine from the cattle shed-in the form of urine earth—­and all wood ashes from any source on the farm were also included.  Being in the tropics, compost making went on year-round.  Of the result, Howard stated that

“The product is a finely divided leafmould, of high nitrifying power, ready for immediate use [without temporarily inhibiting plant growth].  The fine state of division enables the compost to be rapidly incorporated and to exert its maximum influence on a very large area of the internal surface of the soil.”

Howard stressed that for the Indore method to work reliably the carbon to nitrogen ratio of the material going into the heap must always be in the same range.  Every time a heap was built the same assortment of crop wastes were mixed with the same quantities of fresh manure and urine earth.  As with my bread-baking analogy, Howard insured repeatability of ingredients.