Tips on Composting from The Chef's Garden:
The best thing you can do for your garden is to add a good layer of compost every season to help add nutrition and to create that wonderful loamy texture that we all strive for. Adding compost and worms to your garden protects them from many diseases and insects and gives the soil air and helps it hold moisture in during the hot dry season. Any experienced gardener will tell you that the only way to correct poor soil is by adding compost year after year.
An easy way to create your own compost is just to begin piling up yard waste in a section of your yard that is out of the way but still gets rained on. You can use all types of bins which help keep it tidy but none of them are necessary. Hay bales work fantastic to contain a pile and they actually break down along with the composting material to make even more compost. Layer more materials, a few inches at a time to feed the compost pile. You will be amazed when your full pile compresses to only a few inches in a short amount of time.
Compost happens no matter what but it helps to speed things along by occasionally turning the pile, and aerating the pile for the worms, bugs and bacteria. This also helps break down all of the material well.
What to put into the pile:
leaves (plenty of those lying around)
shredded newspaper
grass clippings
farm manure
garden waste
sawdust
vegetable peelings
egg shells
cardboard, torn into strips
bugs & worms (they will find your pile quickly on their own)
Keep in mind that an ideal compost mix is 50% green (or still live items) and 50% brown (or dead items). This makes for a good blend of microorganisms to break everything down evenly and assures a good amount of nitrogen in your final compost.
A good compost pile will be moist but not too wet, algae and slime will form if there is too much moisture. If this happens, just turn the pile more frequently until it dries out some. If your weather has been very dry, watering is a good idea, like you would shrubbery.
You can tell when the compost is ready by the color, it should be black and there should be a consistent texture which resembles dark rich dirt.
Posted by kjohnson at October 12, 2003 09:00 PM | TrackBack