How to Compost
With the world’s current state and the environmental crisis, it’s important that we contribute to our world’s ailing health in our own way. Making compost is also a great and economical way to provide fertilizer for your plants to make them grow healthier. Here are some easy ways to make your own compost.
What Is Compost?
Compost is known as brown manure, and has many uses other than adding nutrients to soil, a characteristic it has due to its porosity. Compost can also be used as landfill cover, as erosion control and wetland construction. Compost can also affect the acidity of your soil makeup, depending on the materials you use when making it.
Where to Compost
Many people are turned off by the idea of making compost as it may seem time-consuming. However, simple composting is easily at hand. You will only need these items.
Where to Put It? Compost is ideally done in a bin, but some people can simply dig out a trench in their gardens around 8″ deep. Kitchen wastes and other compost materials can be simply left buried there to rot for a few months. You can then go ahead and plant on the soil.
For compost bins, simply find a spot where the bins won’t get in the way of your daily activities but at the same time will be easily accessible. Compost bins can be made from a variety of materials, typically cinder blocks, lumber or steel posts with wire fencing. Your bin must be at least 3 feet deep and across.
Another option is to have a “build-on” bin where you have hollow squares of wood that you can put on top of one over another to make a taller or shorter bin as needed.
Keep your compost bin in a shady area where it won’t be exposed to too much sun or rain. The key to making good compost is to keep the compost damp, but not moist. It should also be well-aerated.
Compost Materials
While compost materials generally consist of things that used to be living, there are still some certain items that you shouldn’t just throw in the compost bin, and these are:
Meat scraps
Fish
Food leftovers
Dog and cat feces
Diapers
Fatty trash
Wood ashes
Sawdust
Plants that died with disease
Weeds and weed seeds
When making compost, factor in the fact that you are going to use it on growing plants, so introducing weed seeds and disease is definitely not a good idea! Meat and hard-to-compost items such as wood ashes and sawdust will also make your work harder, so try to avoid them.
Compost Away!
Now the stage is set, all you need now are the players. Some common compost materials found in your household may include:
Greens. Greens are simply used to describe most of the plant life that you throw in your compost or items rich in nitrogen. These include tea leaves, prunings, coffee grounds, young weeds, and herbivore or poultry manure.
Brown. Paper, used cereal boxes and woody branches all make up the “browns” of the compost. These are also known as carbon rich items, and are slow to rot.
Other Items. Crushed eggshells, hair and nail clippings are other things you can add to your compost pile.
Once you’ve been able to gather enough materials to start (you can even ask for your neighbors’ trash if yours aren’t enough). If you can, try to make sure that your materials are shredded.
Start with a layer of raw compost materials, mainly shredded leaves, crushed eggshells, old vegetables or coffee grounds until you have a layer six inches thick.
You should then add another six inches of soil, manure or finished compost. Ideally, this should go on until you have three feet of compost and soil, but you can simply just add on layers as the days go by.
For quicker composting, you can use a shovel or a compost aerating tool to turn over the pile once a week.
You can tell if the materials have been successfully turned into compost once they have taken on a homogenous, dark brown color resembling soil. You can then take out the compost from the bin and place it on your plants. Put in more items to compost on top and repeat the whole process.