What keeps us from rotting?

This edition is gross. Sensitive readers are advised to delete without reading.

The other day my friend Grant ask me how mulch “works” in compost. “How do you get it to … break down?” he asked. “What do you do to it?”

I answered Grant by telling him the truth, which is “nothing.” I don’t do anything to the mulch. I add it to the compost pile and then microbes, already present, harvest the nitrogen and use it to break down the carbon…