Compost in Your Garden Helps to Improve Soil Structure and Is a Source of Nutrients for Your Plants

Some people mistake composting for being stinky, complicated, or time-consuming, yet composting is easy and uncomplicated when done right. To make a productive compost pile, you’ll need a combination of components that give carbon and nitrogen, in addition to water and air, to aid in the decomposition.

Table of Content

1. Compost in your garden.
2. Getting a compost pile started.
3. Suitable material for your pile.
4. Nitrogen, carbon, and moisture.

Most yard wastes, including leaves, flower plant and vegetable parts, straw, and a small quantity of woody pruning, grass clippings, and weeds, can be composted.

Should your compost pile appear overly wet and smelly, add more brown things or aerate it more frequently. When finished, compost is high in organic matter, which is good for your soil.

Compost Is Beneficial Organic Materials

Composting is a terrific way to minimise your garbage and your carbon footprint, as kitchen and food waste account for up to a third of all household rubbish.

Commercially available compost activators contain fungus and bacteria that are also found in typical yard soil.

Depending on the system you use for composting, earthy, porous compost emerges after a few weeks to a few months, ready to enhance the soil in your garden.

Each planting season, make a habit of applying compost to your garden soil since it is high in nutrients and fosters soil organisms that encourage plant growth.

A compost pile of nitrogen-rich green and carbon-rich brown materials decomposes faster than a random mix of clippings.

A fast-composting heap can be created by combining grass clippings, green leaves, and wilting flowers with an equivalent quantity of leaves, straw, twigs, dried grass, and other dry plant waste.

It's Great for the Garden and the Environment

Compost is simply organic stuff, most commonly kitchen scraps and yard trash, that can be put into the soil to improve the quality of your soil.

Composting occurs in nature, and it may happen in your yard if you use organic waste in a bin or other composting device rather than throwing them away.

The amount of generated plant waste will decide the size of your pile, but three cubic feet is a decent starting point.

When you’re adding any plant waste to your pile, aim for a green-to-brown ratio of one part green to three parts browns.

If you don’t have greens and browns, start with browns, and then add greens when they become available.

Layer Alternate Green and Brown Materials

Keeping a pitchfork or shovel beside the pile to mix in the materials each time you visit will keep the pile active and well mixed.

Keep fat, meat, dairy products, and bones out of the pile because they can attract rodents. Don’t stress about getting the mix exactly right because adding material to adjust the performance of your pile is simple.

Furthermore, animal dung and fertilisers operate as activators, speeding up the piles heating and providing a nitrogen source for helpful bacteria.

If moisture is needed, insert your garden hose in numerous locations in the centre of the pile, or sprinkle the pile with water the next time you turn it.

If the pile becomes too wet, flip it more regularly to dry it out or add more dry brown materials to absorb excess moisture.

When the pile starts to heat up, usually about 24-48hrs, use a garden fork to move the material from the edges to the centre.

This Is Nutrient's Those Plants Can Use

Turning the pile restarts the heating process by adding oxygen and any material that hasn’t yet started to decompose into the centre.

It will be easier to maintain the proper moisture level if you use an enclosed container or even cover your pile with a tarp. To decrease moisture loss, keep rain or snow out, and retain heat, an old carpet or tarp can cover the top of the pile.

If the pile isn’t heating up properly, it could be because it’s too tiny, there’s not enough nitrogen or oxygen, or it’s too dry or moist.

Stirring up the pile by turning it will help it cook faster and prevents material from becoming matted down and developing an odour.

To construct your pile, either utilise alternating layers of high-nitrogen and high-carbon material or mix the two and form them into a pile.

You can also add a few shovels of soil to help get the pile started; soil contains often found decaying organisms.

Brown materials, which add carbon, include leaves, dried plant materials, shredded tree branches, newspaper, cardboard, straw or hay, and wood shavings.

Fresh plant materials such as grass clippings and fresh kitchen scraps such as potato and banana peel, eggshells, coffee grounds, and tea bags are examples of greens.

Layer Compost for Better Nitrogen Balance

Kitchen garbage, such as vegetable skins, is high in nitrogen, but yard garbage, such as dead plant debris, leaves, and straw, is high in carbon.

Carbon and nitrogen are found in variable quantities in all organic compounds. Coffee grounds, eggshells, fruit and vegetable peels and scraps are all excellent additions.

To reduce particle size, use a chipper, grinder, machete, or lay materials in a bucket and cut them into pieces smaller than a couple of inches with a square-end shovel.

Much of your water will come from rain, but you may sometimes need to water the pile personally from time to time.

If the pile becomes too wet, flip it more regularly to dry it out or add more brown materials to absorb excess moisture.

While turning and mixing, it should be clear whether the pile requires more green or brown ingredients or more wetness.

Adding Calcium or White Lime Will Deter Flies

Bury food leftovers toward the middle of the pile covering with dry materials to deter unwanted insects, rodents, and other scavengers.

The objective of turning is to encourage oxygen to the microorganisms and merge undecomposed components into the pile’s centre.

Nitrogen and carbon work together to maintain needed nutrients within the soil and boost plant development. Green materials such as leaves, grass clippings, coffee grounds, and eggshells are high in nitrogen.

When combined with water and oxygen, the carbon from brown yard waste and nitrogen from food waste feed living bacteria and fungi.

Composted Manure Is Easier to Spread

However, suppose you do not add carbon to the pile. In that case, it becomes messy and smelly due to the damp, nitrogen-rich green material.

Many people simply strive to achieve a decent carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. This is by maintaining the pile keeping it well aerated and moist, and waiting until everything appears to be well broken down.

Blood and bone meal and livestock manures from plant-eating animals are examples of animal products that can be used as organic nitrogen sources.

• Compost nutrifies the soil, which plants readily use.
• You can include your compost in your indoor and outdoor gardens.
• Adding kitchen waste should come with an equal number of brown items.
• Wood chips or small twigs at the base will improve drainage and aeration.
• Appropriate composting techniques can help to control soil-borne diseases.
• House and garden waste, water, and air generate beneficial bacteria and fungi.

Carbon-rich materials include leaves, straw, and sawdust, whereas nitrogen-rich materials include grass clippings, manure, and vegetable scraps. Too much carbon can stymie decomposition, but too much nitrogen might produce disagreeable odours.

Red worms, manure worms, and branding worms are all dynamos for breaking down organic materials, particularly kitchen leftovers. Earthworms will multiply in soil that has enough organic content, is adequately aerated, and has plants that are actively developing.

While soil mineral components are mainly stable, soil organic matter levels can fluctuate. This all depends on what we do, what grows, and how well we treat our soil.

Compost Helps Sandy Soils to Retain Moisture

It is considered crucial to organic and sustainable food production, whether it is tilled into garden beds or used as mulch around plants and trees.

Compost is an abundant and consistent source of plant nutrients. In addition, unlike many chemical and organic fertilisers, compost in your garden will release these nutrients slowly with time.