Composting the easy way

Thanks to the ausis.info team for this article about composting.

For those with dirty minds:

The art of composting… Includes instructions you will need to get started and helpful tips to help you get the best results the easiest and most cost and time efficient way.

What you will need.

THE GREENS: Scraps of food. THE BROWNS: Paper and leaf materials example grass.

Somewhere to compost: Something to compost in example a bin or hole even an old bucket.

Water, this can be recycled from your air conditioner, tea pot, dish water or whatever.

Garden spade and fork; gloves optional. To aerate Twigs, Sponge rox, bark chip and the like.

Composting is one of the practices I can honestly say I have had a hand in since a very tender age. Though this is the case, the first heap I gave birth to was the first heap my husband & I made. Our neighbours thought we were nuts as we were rental tenants, soon they saw how smart we actually were as we used it in pot plants & gardens.

Each place we move to we start a heap, though now days some of the compost bins and or heaps are a bit more sophisticated. Let me share with you our first heap or should I say heaps as we actually used both of the following to get them started. The first was a hollow or shallow hole in our yard, not too close to the house & in a spot that gets plenty of sun in winter; instead of filling it with dirt we saw a perfect composting bed ready & waiting.

The second heap I found it a wise move to dig a shallow hole where we wished to have our second compost heap. Having the heap in a hole or hollow just speeds it up a little as the worms are attracted to it a little faster & they are as important in composting as the scraps you compost, & the good microbes that help the composting process are.

Now that we had our chosen sites prepared all we had to do was add our scraps to start the heap. By scraps I mean garden waste, the dust from your vacuum, just about any food scraps, paper, cardboard; but not meat, seafood, chicken or dairy for obvious reasons of health & pest problems.

That was easy as I had just weeded the garden a few days before & not thrown them out & my husband had been cooking all sorts of yummy food & making kitchen scraps, plus the cardboard boxes I tore up & the cuttings…

Getting the point now…

They all went in the compost bed. Now all we had to do is keep adding to it turn it with a garden fork every so often & keep it moist, six months later we were starting use of the second bed & using the compost from the first bed. That is how simple it is; just remember the more attention you give the heap the quicker it pays.

A couple of tips:

1. You should really try to add your items in layers adding a layer of THE GREENS following a layer of BROWNS and a bit of dirt or almost finished compost

2. If using a bin use 2 the first one you add fresh scraps etc into and after a few months add some of the content from the bottom of the first bin to the second to allow it to age better and makes it easier to use.

3. For bins that sit flat on the ground with little or no holes in them you should use three brick or so to raise the bin up to allow more air flow and giving an easy access point at the bottom to pull out the compost.

4. We prefer to boost macro & micro nutrients in our compost with super grow nutrients also use sponge rox which are a natural mineral rock which helps make it sustained or slow release available from ausis at the link below

So as you will see following these instructions will give you the greatest nutrition for your plants, some exercise and also you may end up with a worm farm which goes nicely with compost. To see some results of vegetables grown in our compost enriched gardens and some extra nutrient and other hints visit the links below or in the author box.

ausis info super grow nutrients

ausis sponge rox

About The Author

The ausis.info team are part of the ausis group and are team are professional Solutions consultants and Colour restorers who specialise in a wide number of topics.

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