Tankage is another slaughterhouse or rendering plant waste consisting of all animal refuse except blood and fat.  Locally it is called meat meal.  See Hoof and horn meal.

Tofu factory waste. Okara is the pulp left after soy milk has been squeezed from cooked, ground soybeans.  Small-scale tofu makers will have many gallons of okara to dispose of each day.  It makes good pig food so there may be competition to obtain it.  Like any other seed waste, okara is high in nitrogen and will be wet and readily putrefiable like brewery waste.  Mix into compost piles immediately.

Urine. See Manure.

Weeds. Their nutrient content is highly variable depending on the species and age of the plant.  Weeds gone to seed are both low in nitrogen and require locating in the center of a hot heap to kill off the seeds.  Tender young weeds are as rich in nitrogen as spring grass.

Weeds that propagate through underground stems or rhizomes like quack-grass, Johnsongrass, bittersweet, and the like are better burnt.

Wood ash from hardwoods is rich in potassium and contains significant amounts of calcium and other minerals.  Ash from conifers may be similarly rich in potassium but contains little else.  Wood ashes spread on the ground tend to lose their nutrients rapidly through leaching.  If these nutrients are needed in your soil, then add the ash to your compost piles where it will become an unreachable part of the biomass that will be gradually released in the garden when the compost is used.

Wood chips are slow to decompose although they may be added to the compost pile if one is not in a hurry.  Their chunkiness and stiff mechanical properties help aerate a heap.  They are somewhat more nutrient rich than sawdust.

Wool wastes are also called shoddy. See Hair.

CHAPTER FIVE

Methods and Variations

A note to the internet reader:  In the the print-on-paper edition, this chapter and the next one on vermicomposting are full of illustrations showing composting structures and accessories.  These do not reproduce well on-line and are not included.

Growing the majority of my family’s food absorbs all of the energy I care to put into gardening.  So my yard is neat but shaggy.  Motivated by what I consider total rationality, my lawn is cut only when it threatens to overwhelm the lawnmower, and the lawn is not irrigated, so it browns off and stops growing in summer.

I don’t grow flowers because I live on a river in a beautiful countryside setting surrounded by low mountains.  Nothing I created could begin to compete with what nature freely offers my eye.  One untidy bed of ornamentals by the front door are my bow to conventionality, but these fit the entrances northeast aspect by being Oregon woods natives like ferns, salal, Oregon grape and an almost wild rhododendron—­all these species thrive without irrigation.