Organic Gardener's Composting by Steve Solomon

_Cottonseed meal_ is one of this country's major oil seed residues. The seed is ginned out of the cotton fiber, ground, and then its oil content is chemically extracted. The residue, sometimes called oil cake or seed cake, is very high in protein and rich in NPK. Its C/N runs around 5:1, making it an excellent way to balance a compost pile containing a lot of carboniferous materials.

Most cottonseed meal is used as animal feed, especially for beef and dairy cattle. Purchased in garden stores in small containers it is very expensive; bought by the 50-to 80-pound sack from feed stores or farm coops, cottonseed meal and other oil seed meals are quite inexpensive. Though prices of these types of commodities vary from year to year, oil cakes of all kinds usually cost between $200 to $400 per ton and only slightly higher purchased sacked in less-than-ton lots.

The price of any seed meal is strongly influenced by freight costs. Cottonseed meal is cheapest in the south and the southwest where cotton is widely grown. Soybean meal may be more available and priced better in the midwest. Canadian gardeners are discovering canola meal, a byproduct from producing canola (or rapeseed) oil. When I took a sabbatical in Fiji, I advised local gardeners to use coconut meal, an inexpensive "waste" from extracting coconut oil. And I would not be at all surprised to discover gardeners in South Dakota using sunflower meal. Sesame seed, safflower seed, peanut and oil-seed corn meals may also be available in certain localities.