No, not urban legends at all. Just another form of compost. Good finished compost smells good and will not attract flies. Are you sure he's not confusing manure with compost? I know your DH is opposed, but compost is such a valuable product for your garden, maybe you should send him on a small vacation while you have some nice compost delivered. (he'll never know, except the black earth will look fabulous).

Crop rotation is another good soil builder. Legumes enrich the soil by adding nitrogen naturally. Next year you plant the corn where you planted the peas and beans. And, the peas and beans love the nitrogen depleted soil that grew last years squash (or whatever).

Cover crops during the winter will also boost your soil the same way, plant your cover crop legumes (not for eating) in the fall. In the spring, a month before planting, turn your cover crops in.

Still, compost helps!

thanks nwnatural. the thing is, we've been to this friend's place and their compost box is surrounded by flies... is that normal? yeah i really want to do compost because i HATE to waste my dropped fruits and what not. right now, i just let the dropped fruit and fruit peels sit on top of the soil hoping that they'll decompose.

The basic idea of organic gardening is that you introduce organic material into your soil, which is broken down by the bacteria, fungus, insects, worms and other critters in your soil into simple compounds your plants can use. So just about any organic material can be used as an organic "fertilizer".

However some materials pack more of a punch than others, making them better suited as organic fertilizers. You could consider composted manures (which won't smell any worse than compost), used coffee grounds (available for free at many coffee shops), or livestock feeds like cottonseed meal, soybean meal, or alfalfa pellets (you can get these at feed stores for around $10/50lbs).

I would also look at the label on the organic fertilizer you found at Lowes. It will probably be a list of things you can find elsewhere for cheaper.

used coffee grounds - i am a coffee drinker so i can save mine up too? that would be great!

A pile of material that smells bad and is surrounded by flies is not a compost pile. A compost pile should never smell repulsive, offensive, bad, and should not be something that attracts vermin of any find. Usually a pile that smells bad and has flies is too wet to properly be digested.
You could sheet compost, you could Lasaga garden, but the important thing is to get organic matter into your soil. Substituting an "organic" fertilizer for a "conventional" fertilizer isn't a good idea.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lasagna Gardening 101

Flies can be attracted when people compost food without an adequate covering of leaves.

Compost is hands down the very best thing to improve your garden and certainly using the Lasagna method will help. And/or you could use "composted manure" until you win him over with your charm.

Good Luck,
Gumby_CT - who hasn't used fertilizer in over 3yrs, compost, compost, compost

Lasagna garden sounds like something I can do :) But now that you confirm that a decent compost shouldn't attract flies or stink, I think I will revisit the idea!

You might also want to spend some time with the Florid Online Compost site to learn more about composting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Florida's Online Composting

I've stopped using commercial, composted manures because there's no way of knowing what these animals were fed. Also, commercial livestock feed is usually treated with chemicals before, during and after growing. So, I vote for compost and cover crops. Oh, and worm castings.

I can avoid smell and flies in my compost by always topping off with a brown to cover whatever new material I have added to the compost...water it well. Be sure to have some browns to cover anytime you are going out to add greens or green/brown mix. Otherwise will get smells...although I rarely get flies.

One possible option might be vermicomposting, with earthworms. When done right it's odorless enough to do inside your house (in the right kind of container) and you can tell your DH that instead of "composting" you are: 1) breeding earthworms for the garden (and they need to eat something so why not kitchen scraps, newspapers, etc?) and 2) creating worm casings which are an extremely nutrient-rich organic-fertilizer alternative to compost.

I did what you said you wanted to do. Stop using commercial fertilizers. I also use compost, but for the heavier nitrogen users, like peppers, etc., I tried soybean meal, and it has worked fine! From there, I have also used it on my lawn, which has been patchy from our drought, but now has been filling in. I also mix up a few gallons of compost tea, and that brightens up the plants also. I used to spend a lot more on chemical fertilizers anyway, so this hasn't cost me anymore, and I feel a lot better being in sync with my environment.

thanks all for suggestions. i tried lasagna gardening yesterday and it isn't so hard! except that i am not sure how to add in my weekly kitchen waste and dropped fruit etc. I guess in this regard, compost bins are better. I was searching on garden web and saw someone with rodent problem with compost bins! and i just saw one running on the cable between my neighbor's house and mine! so you think if i always add browns to cover up greens, it should discourage rodents too? thanks!

What kind of rodents are we talking about here? That can make a difference in how to prevent.

I know if you have a hot pile, you can add table scraps to the center of a "hot pile", you will not have any trouble. There are other tips & tricks you will learn along the way.

Or as mentioned above about vermiposting.

Good Luck,
Gumby_CT

I don't know what kind of rodent/mice/rat, in fact, I am quite scared of them so I didn't even try to take a clear look :(
By adding to the "center" of a hot pile, do you mean just digging a hole in the pile and add to it, and cover? That sounds doable, actually I've been wondering how to always cover green with brown if I don't stir, cuz you don't always have brown in hand but a lot of green (kitchen wastes)...

If you're close enough to the seaside you might also want to consider using seaweed as a non-compost-based organic fertilizer. (Of course if you do begin composting you can certainly add seaweed to the compost pile too.) I've never heard of rodents being a problem with seaweed though you might have some odor problems unless you can dry it out rapidly enough or turn it under quickly. You can also make your own seaweed-based foliar sprays for extra fertilization!

By adding to the "center" of a hot pile, do you mean just digging a hole in the pile and add to it, and cover?
Yes Exactly.

The idea is to keep some leaves or other browns on hand. Of course if you compost mainly leaves, I would think the likelyhood on having any rodent problems would be slim.

I have mostly kitchen wastes, dropped fruits and coffee grounds. I have some leaves but not as much as the greens. I suppose I can dump in some dirts too to cover things up when starting!

paper is a brown. i shred junk mail, envelopes etc to have to put on top of the compost pile when i need it. you can also tear newspaper into strips or crumble it and add over your greens. in the fall i salvage as many hay/straw bales i can from business's seasonal displays and leave them close to the compost pile to throw over greens. i have a claw shaped tool i use to mix the old greens and browns before i add more greens. i do not turn my pile because i am a little old lady and don't have the strength to do so. my piles get warm and produce compost...just slowly.

Not only do I not consider compost to be fertilizer, I am not a supporter of frequent use of it. The only use I see for compost is a one-time restoration of microbes to soil that has been damaged by chemicals or flood. If you take care of your soil with moisture and real food, you should not need much compost. The reason compost is no big deal is that most of the real nutrients in the compost has been spent.

The purpose of organic fertilizer is to grow and improve the health of the microbes in the soil. Waste materials from the microbes will feed natural fertilizer to your plants. Microbes are little creatures which need protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals to thrive. Mother Nature always provided that in the form of dead animals, dung, urine, and trampled plants. An easy way to approximate that is to apply a variety of ground up grains to your soil. My favorite is ordinary corn meal because it is the least expensive source of protein in my area. Many people use soy bean meal, alfalfa pellets, cottonseed meal, corn gluten meal, coffee grounds, or any other ground up nut, bean, or seed. They all have protein.

If you compare the ingredients of commercially bagged orgainc fertilizer and the ingredients of dry dog food, you'll find they are almost identical. If you want to try it, give it three full weeks to show results. Using the raw materials costs about 1/6 what commercially bagged fertilizers cost.

Your husband's problem with "compost" is really a manure problem. Manure is the raw ingredient to compost. If you take manure and let the composting process proceed, you will eventually have a material with a very fresh smell. The bad smell of manure is one of the three problems that scare people away from an organic program.

Composting is a great way to deal with a very large amount of what would otherwise be "waste material." A properly managed compost pile should not smell or attract pests. The basic rule, if it looks bad or smells bad, it needs more cover material. Also, composting does not need to involve much work, a continuous pile does not get turned. In our composting (I'm more of a sustainable gardener than an organic gardener) we will swipe bags of leaves off the curb before yard waste pickup day and use them for our cover material. We also grab bags of grass clippings. I know there is no way of knowing what was used on those yards and the leaves and clippings could have been sprayed with something not organic. I'll risk it since I see composting those things as better than throwing them away. And I use the compost that I can get from the county that would be made with those things anyway.

Back to the point of composting, Here are some links that tell about composting almost anything.
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html
And you don't have to compost human manure for this info to be useful.
Proper compost requires some variety in the materials, management to make sure it heats up and to ensure that it doesn't become a smelly heap. We take out trash only about once a month since all organic stuff goes to the worms or compost pile.

Another, free source of fertilizer is urine. In sandy soil especially near a river, be sure to use carefully since it can leach away just as chemical fertilizers do. It should be diluted between 10 or 20 to one. I've been using about a cup or urine to a gallon of water to fertilize some plants. There is some odor during mixing and application but you should not be able to smell in in the garden by the next morning. The fish oil spray I have to use on the sago palm lingers for weeks but urine isn't a problem so long as it is applied to plants, dirt, mulch etc. If urine is dumped on concrete or the like, the odor will linger.

I really like the ideas about using grains and mulch to boost up the microbe life in sandy soil. It's all so connected!