compost
Learn More About Composting
Composting is recycling your kitchen waste and lawn trimmings and turning them into a valuable resource for your garden or houseplants. This is done by decomposition, and this process which the materials you compost go through on their own can be sped up.
Compost is not soil. The end-result of composting is the dirt you find in the ground is just a common misconception. This substance enriches the soil and acts as a fertilizer to grow healthier and hardier plants.
Before you begin composting there are choices to be made what type of container and style suits your project, what you will be putting into your compost bin, and the location of your bin. How you convert your waste into compost happens the same way regardless of the decisions you make. It is a breakdown of waste materials as they are digested by microbes (bacteria and fungi).
There are workers in the composting equation and these are called the microbes. To do their job, what they need is air, water, and food and you’re the one who will supply it to them in the right amounts. If you have heard that having a compost bin or pile creates a foul odor it is most likely the result of not enough air circulating throughout the waste material. Without air, the material will still breakdown but it will be done by anaerobic microbes (organisms that do not need oxygen) as opposed to aerobic (ones that need oxygen). So if you do have an unpleasant smell coming from your compost bin or pile you can rotate the material to let in more air or add a substance to create more room for the air to circulate. Wood chips or hay are good for this.
Composting enriches the soil your plants grow in and it also eliminates the amount of waste you throw away, making it good for your garden and your environment.
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Want To Build Your Own Compost Bin? Then Here Are Some Tips For You!
If you would rather not purchase a bin for your compost pile, you should still devise a way to contain it. Building your own bin doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive and in fact, you can easily do it and it wouldn’t cost you a lot of money. This will give you more control over the size of the pile and can prevent unwelcome animals helping themselves to some free food.
Make sure that the material used for treating your recycled lumber (either it’s been painted or stained) are non-toxic materials. If you’ll be using it to grow food, then you don’t want anything toxic or poisonous to come in contact with your compost.
Twenty 3 foot sections of 1X6 and four 4 foot sections of 2X4 boards are what you will be needing. To begin, hammer the 2X4 lumber pieces into the ground using a sledgehammer at the corners of what is to become a 3 feet squared container with space at each corner post 3 feet apart. The next thing you need to do is to put five boards to every side and use nails to secure each end of the board to the corner post. Don’t forget air circulation, which is why you need to leave enough space in between each board. To cover the top, you can try using another flat piece of large material or a piece of plywood and make sure it’s large enough to act as a cover.
You can also build your own bin by using pallets that are either new or recycled. Find wooden pallets (you may be able to find them at a land fill site) and nail or screw them together to form a square. If you want you can add a fifth to give the bin a bottom, but this is not necessary.
Using a wire mesh, you can enclose the pile and this will serve as your other option. You can hammer the wooden posts in a circle around the pile and have the mesh secured to the wooden posts or you can create a circle with the mesh and secure the metal ties.
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Composting the Easy Way Using Red Wiggler Worms
You can fix a stalled compost pile or begin a new one by using red wigglers. Backyard gardeners complain that their compost pile just sits there not composting at or that they have a hard time getting it to heat correctly. Traditional compost methods were made for huge volumes and don’t work so well for smaller amounts. Fortunately you can compost with small piles as well using special methods. The best news of all is that you do not need an expensive compost tumbler and there is no need to frequently turn the pile.
You can use this method to compost large or small amounts. Using red worms you can even compost indoors using plastic storage containers. For the sake of this article we will assume that you have a backyard garden and produce a fair amount of compostables, but not enough to make a large pile needed to “hot compost.” The most difficult part will provably be building a structure to help contain the compost. A worm bin can be made like a sandbox would and about 16 inches or so deep. It could also be built similar to how a raised garden bed is built. The main thing is that it helps contain the compost and keep it neat and not spreading out. Brown are added next as a thick layer. Browns are substances like leaves, paper, cardboard, sawdust, or other fibrous materials. This layer is about 6″ thick. Next a thin layer of greens about an inch thick. Greens are stuff like vegetable scraps, grass clippings, weeds, manure, coffee grounds, etc. Then we add one more thin layer of browns (2″ or so). This is allowed to sit and compost slowly for 2-3 weeks until the greens start to rot well. This process can be sped up by adding a little finished compost into the layers. After this has started to pre-compost a little we are going to add some red wigglers. Th worms will speed the process up and make a high quality compost.
Now all that needs to be done is to add your compostables as needed. With a traditional compost pile it is necessary to have all the materials at once, but with the worms you just need to add to it whenever you have time and materials to compost.
Now you may be asking where to get the worms. They can sometime be purchased locally at a bait shop, but you will need about a pound of worms to get started. That would be over 16 cups of worms. This would be expensive. The best way is to find them online and in bulk. The following link is to a reputable worm farm in South Carolina know as Worms Etc. Here you will find red composting worms for sale and they ship all over the United States year round.
Choosing The Right Compost Bin
There are many sizes, shapes, and styles of compost bins to choose from. You can make one yourself or opt for not using one at all and create a compost pile or heap.
The compost tumbler will be a cylindrical shape, it will resemble a drum barrel. The two ends of the drum will lay on a base making it able to turn. By turning the drum you are rotating and aerating the materials at the same time. It will be a very simple process and great way to turn the pile.
A bio-orb container is shaped like a round ball and comes in various sizes. One great feature this design has is how simple it is to move, you can roll it over to your yard waste and roll it back to its base, and when you roll it you will be turning the material and giving it the air it needs. This bin will also have small holes for ventilation to let air flow in and out.
A wood box frame with the sides made out of wire mesh and one side with hinges to make one of the sides open can easily be built or bought. If you got four pallets that have no use, just tie them all down or nail them to form a bin that will cost nothing to build also you can just purchase wire mesh from a home improvement center. These types of bins will let air flow in and out of the pile as long as the material is not compressed.
If you do not want to use a bin, start with a pile of grass clippings or leaves and start to layer your food scraps on top. As time goes by and your pile continues to grow make sure you rotate and turn it frequently. Be warned though, it is not as easy to turn a pile that is not contained. They tend to grow in circumference over time as the pile spreads out after rotating.
If you need simple to understand details on how to compost or easy to follow along compost bin plans see this website.
Adding Natural Fertilizer To Improve Your Garden
To have healthy soil that will produce healthy plants, the soil will require organic matter. Organic matter will help in keeping the plants moisture and absorb more nutrients. If the plants can absorb the water from the soil easily, it is likely it will not die off. › Continue reading
How to Make Your Own Compost
Making compost can be great for your plants and is also great for the environment, making it can be so simple that any one can do it. Compost is simply a mixture of material that is decaying, such as lawn clipping and dry leaves, used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients, and learning how to compost can just mean being aware of how to get this process going which decomposes this matter to a point it can no longer be reduced. Composting can be a quick way to help the soil and bring back the nutrients, moisture and air for the growth of the homeowners’ healthy vegetables and flowers. › Continue reading
How To Make Your Own Compost
Starting a garden is great. By gardening you will be able to supply yourself along with your family with fresh ripe vegetables that are straight from your garden. You will not just save money by gardening, but the fruits as well as vegetables that you will produce can be free of chemical fertilizers as a result of composting. › Continue reading
5 Steps To Produce Mushroom Compost
Mushroom compost is a product which is used by gardeners and landscapers all over the world, the product you actually buy is the by-products of the growing process after the mushrooms are harvested. This article aims at providing you with the information so you can make your own mushroom compost and so you can cut out the middle man.
The ingredients you need to start to make mushroom compost is manure, hay, poultry manure, gypsum and mushroom spawn as well as a large compost bin and steam machine. › Continue reading
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