The Complete Home Composting Video Guide; Gardening Nature's Way: Composting For the 90's--A Reason And Method For Everyone; Gardening Nature's Way: Pond Construction & Natural Filtration

"Compost happens," goes a popular T-shirt saying, and that's true enough, but good compost takes a little human elbow grease. Two new videos offer viewers ideas for turning their own backyards into composting factories. The better of the pair, The Complete Home Composting Video Guide, takes a straightforward no-frills approach: host Howard Stenn, an ecological horticulturist, points out the differences between pile and bin composting (and bins can be anything from thrown together trucking pallets to deluxe plastic domiciles that your kids would be happy to use as a fort), the essentials of successful composting, tools to use, what does and doesn't belong in a compost heap, pest control, and potential problems (and solutions), among other topics. There's even a segment on worm composting (which is a little yucky to contemplate, though it probably would have delighted Edgar Allen Poe). Not terribly flashy, the program is definitely filled with solid information.Composting for the 90's, on the other hand, from the Gardening Nature's Way series (VL-10/92), while it does cover much of the same basic material as The Complete Home Composting Video Guide, also contains a lot of extraneous material. Good tips about composting kitchen scraps, for instance, are lost in the repeated references to the "Envirocycle," an admittedly useful-looking product whose name is mentioned about a dozen times in a three-minute period. Ditto for the "Green Cone." There's also a tendency to combine advertisement with testimonials (there are two interview segments featuring people praising the compost made by Arizona Soils). This bouncing back and forth between documentary-like (though occasionally commercial) interviews and good hands-on guidance for creating composting solutions hurts the program overall.Pond Construction and Natural Filtration, another entry in the Gardening Nature's Way series, while using a similar format to Composting for the 90's is far less commercial, though it too has a few problems. Whether building a pond for koi or for water gardening or other uses, the program points out, similar elements need to be considered: available sunlight, water filtration, and sound environmental principles. Viewers will learn a lot of good basic information, as well as how to construct a concrete pond and two different water filtration systems. Unfortunately, the narrator/host has a tendency to speak too rapidly when she is doing voice-over and after all the figures and formulas that fly by, the viewer learns that plans may be ordered from the producer for a nominal fee. But the biggest problem here is that a fair amount of science and hard facts are being offered and much of it is delivered without good accompanying visuals (this is a fairly low-budget production). a better choice here would be Earth Ponds: Introduction to Pond Design and Construction (VL-5/92).Of the composting videos, The Complete Guide to Home Composting Video Guide has the advantage and is recommended. Composting for the 90's and Pond Construction and Natural Filtration are optional purchases for larger collections with lots of interest in the subject matter. (R. Pitman)