Feeling like you need to spruce up your garden this coming spring? One thing you can do to completely revitalize your yard vegetation is cultivate your own compost!
Composting is the controlled decomposition of organic waste. For gardening purposes, compost adds a much needed boost of vitamins and nutrients to your yard or garden. In just a few easy steps, you can create a natural additive to your garden to ensure optimal growth. Best of all, the practice is environmentally friendly, adding one more incentive to start utilizing the practice.
This spring, try composting instead of spending loads of cash on chemical-filled fertilizers. Here are a few tips and tricks to get you started…
And now for the composting!
You’ll need a large container, or something simple like a trashcan to gather all the recyclable scraps you’ll be making your compost out of. The bin acts as an incubator to accelerate decomposition. The decomposition breaks down organic matter to release nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that are essential for plant growth. Some of these minerals and nutrients include nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium, and potassium among others.
You can add yard trimmings and leaves to your compost as well. This vegetation will also decompose and break down and help cultivate and enrich your compost. It is also a great way to use yard trimmings in a productive, organic way instead of just leaving it out on the curb.
Use all the organic waste produced from what you eat and when you cook. Your kitchen’s food scraps will create a great deal of your compost soil, as you add it daily after cooking and preparing meals and snacks.
According to Professor Rot of Home Composting, the average household throws away about 474 pounds of food per year. Food scraps unfortunately make up about thirty percent of this country’s total waste stream, leaving a lot of room for improvement when recycling or composting. You can add vegetable stems, fruit cores, coffee grounds, old grains, eggshells, or rotting fruits and vegetables. You could also add the leftover water used to cook rice and pasta. Do not add meats, oils, or dairy to your compost, as it will imbalance the nutrient-rich structure of the other organic material. Meats and dairy can also attract maggots and rodents, ruining your compost.
And then you wait. Composting is not a complicated, labor-intensive process. You can add organic waste from time to time and let the process move forward on its own. However, you could also accelerate the process by adding water, and turning the soil on a biweekly basis. The latter method will have your compost ready in one-two months.
Composting can be a fun and environmentally friendly way of managing and discarding your yard and kitchen wastes. So, don’t let your waste go to waste, and try composting instead!
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