George Washington was America’s first composter
The Green, Brown, and Beautiful Story of Compost
By Aaron Sidder
National Geographic
Sept 9, 2016
Excerpt:
Dennis Pogue, a historical archaeologist and the former director of archaeology at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, explains: “In one of his letters, [George Washington] says, ‘For the United States to succeed, we need to become better farmers.’”
To Washington, better farming included active care of the soil through crop rotation and soil amendments. Washington famously experimented using Potomac River mud as a fertilizer—the results were disastrous, says Pogue—but he eventually settled on compost as his preferred soil augmenter.
As related in John Spurrier’s book The Practical Farmer, Washington instructed his farm workers to, “Rake, and scrape up all the trash, of every sort and kind about the houses…and throw it…into the Stercorary.”
The stercorary—a dung repository expressly designed for composting—was situated directly across from the stables to ease manure transfer to the compost heap, and was the hub of Washington’s compost operations. Located around the corner from the main house, the structure was undoubtedly used to supply compost for the garden, says Pogue, who oversaw the excavation of Washington’s dung repository while working at Mount Vernon.
