Enrich Your Garden By Making Compost

Through out time, composting has always been the preferred way of fertilizing gardens. Learning how to compost certain food scraps and yard waste and turn it into a natural  fertilizer is the  most money saving method of fertilizing. And what’s more, it helps you reduce waste. Once finished, compost is a dark, crumbly mixture of decomposed organic matter. Compost will replenish lost nutrients in the soil, improve the plants, eliminate the use of chemical fertilizer, retain water better, and improve bad soil.

So what are the steps required to make your own compost? The most common way is this: separate the material into two categories, browns and greens, mix two parts browns to one part greens.

The compost pile contains many micro organisms that will break down the organic matter and turn it into compost. You will need two parts brown material, such as leaves, or anything that contains carbon, to get the micro organisms going. This will then be mixed with one part green material that are nitrogen rich, such as grass clippings, and you have yourself a natural  fertilizer, when the brown material is mixed with green it will stimulate the micro organisms making the material heat up and producing compost fast.

Use The Following Materials For Composting The Brown Parts:
dried grass, leaves, branches and twigs that have been shredded, straw, newspaper

Use The Following Materials For Composting The Green Parts:
Lawn grass, green leaves and hedge trimmings, plants, fruits, vegetables, used coffee grinds

Material You Do NOT Want To Use:
Plants and weeds that have been treated with chemicals, plants with disease, weeds that carry seeds, pet feces, grains or breads, oil, grease

Best Compost Pile Size:
To speed up the composting process, chop or shred large items. The smaller you can get the material, the faster it will be done. To cut tree branches and twigs smaller, use garden shears. For shredding, use a chipper shredder or lawn mower.

For even faster composting, your compost pile should be at least 3 foot square in size. Why would the size of the compost pile matter? Because composting actually happens with the heat generated from the millions of microorganisms in the soil. So, if you want hot, fast composting, use this minimum size.

Giving Water And Air To The Compost:
Like every living thing, water and air is required. Micro organisms must have air and water to complete the composting task. Add a little water to the pile. If possible, make them as damp as a wrung out sponge. Also make sure there is plenty of air passages for air flow.

If you need information on how to make a compost bin go to this site, and check out the new project added, how to build a shed.