Composting: A Beginner’s Guide
Compost is like gold for your home garden. It lets you put nutrients back into the soil instead of the trash and helps produce beautiful, healthy plants. There is little wonder that it is known as nature’s way to recycle.
Why Do Gardens Need Compost?
Compost is basically food for your garden. As good food keeps humans and animals healthy and encourages growth, it can do the same for plants. Compost improves the structure of soil, encourages ideal moisture levels, ensures that PH levels are correct, and discourages disease in your plants. Compost basically has all the essentials that your garden needs, so trying to grow anything without it seems pointless.
Recycle Your Organic Waste
The human race is producing a lot of waste and much of it ends up as landfill. Recycling is a great way to reduce garbage, but items like plastic and cardboard are not the only things that can be reused. Organic materials, such as kitchen scraps, are also adding to this problem. If you have your own garden at home, or you would like to create one, turning your household’s waste into compost is both financially smart and economically responsible. Buying compost is quick and easy, but it is costlier and does not help reduce waste.
How Composting Works
During the composting process, micro-organisms in the soil break down organic waste (such as your kitchen scraps) and convert it into simpler elements. Humus is left behind, which is the natural parts of the soil, and it is high in fibre and carbon. Heat is created during the process, and this speeds up decomposition. By creating a place for this to occur, you are merely making it easy for your wasted scraps to decompose naturally, so that they can be collected and fed your hungry garden.
What Can Go Into A Compost Pile?: A Quick Guide
Any material that is organic, meaning that it was once alive, can be composted. However – dairy, meat and cooked foods should not be used. Do some research before adding anything that you are unsure about, or you risk ruining a perfectly good compost heap. Try to use a variety of materials, including roughly equal amounts of browns and greens.
Soft greens, such as weeds and lawn cuttings, will decompose quickly. Use them when started a pile. Try to avoid adding too much of this type of material after the initial stages.
More mature and harder plant matter will decompose more slowly. This makes it the ‘backbone’ of any compost heap. Woody matter, such as twigs, sticks and bits that have fallen of trees or plants, are ideal. Be sure to cut them up or shred them before use, or they will not decompose well.
How To Get Started Composting
By simply making a pile of appropriate items, decomposition will start to take place without further effort. This method might take a long time, and there is no guarantee that the outcome will be much good for a garden. By adding some loving attention, the results can be improved dramatically.
Keeping everything in a container known as a compost bin is neater and easier to manage. Compost bins can be purchased from a variety of stores or simply made using a large container. There is absolutely no reason to spend much, if any, money unless you wish to save yourself some time and effort.
* Begin by laying down several inches worth of and dry brown matter, such as dead leaves or straw.
* Several inches of green matter are now added on top of the first layer.
* Some good-quality soil is now added on top.
* Add another layer of brown matter.
* Add some moisture to your pile but do not go overboard. Moisten it – don’t soak the heap.
Maintaining Your Compost
Continue adding a layer of green and then a layer of brown, while periodically adding some soil, until you have built up around 3 feet of compost material. It does not matter if there is too little organic material to complete the heap all at once. Keep adding layers until your compost is high enough.
Maintaining A Home Compost
This is where a shovel or garden fork will become very useful. The compost must be turned every two weeks in order to encourage balance. Move the stuff from the middle to the outer area of the heap, while moving the stuff from the outside to the middle. Steam might rise from the pile, and this is perfectly normal, since the process of composting creates heat.
In fact, it is a good sign that your waste material is decomposing, and your efforts are a success. Earthworms should appear after several turns of the pile, and the middle material the middle should be dark and crumble easily. While there will be a strong smell, it should not be overly unpleasant.
When this is all that is left behind – you now have something valuable that you can use to help your garden grow.
Congratulations!
And More On Composting From The Googlenet:
7 Basic Composting Secrets for Better Results. Compost or at least an attempt at it is becoming commonplace and that’s a great thing. Not only is it one of the greenest habits we can all adopt for the good of the planet but also the end result is something incredibly useful for growing a bit.… read on…………
