The Natural Remedy Guide

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Composting is a great way to recycle your yard and kitchen waste.  It is also the best mulch you can add to your garden and house plants.  There are many ways to compost. You can do it without a bin, you can use a wormery, you can build your own or you can buy a commercial compost bin.  Ultimately it depends on your space and how much waste you will have.

It’s pretty easy to make organic compost.  To understand how to compost, you only need to remember 4 essential ingredients:  brown stuff, green stuff , water and air.  The green stuff includes all grass clippings, fruit and vegetable waste, weeds and such.  The brown stuff is comprised of dead leaves, hay or straw, wood clippings, old mulch and sticks, etc…     The pile must be damp like a wrung out sponge, so you will add water if necessary.  Turn it every couple days to aerate it with oxygen.  The more air it gets, the faster it will decompose.  This is why a tumbler compost bin comes in handy with home composting.  Otherwise you will need a shovel, pitchfork or a compost turning tool to mix it up.  That is it in a nutshell….in 3 to 4 weeks you will have nice rich brown garden compost  or use as mulch.

There are a  couple key things to watch out for.  To keep the animals away you don’t want to add any dead animal bits. bones or dairy products.  Also, The ratio of brown to green materials should be about 6:1.  If within 24 hours the pile doesn’t heat up ( you will see steam), then you will want to add more green.  A compost thermometer is good to have.  Aim for an internal temperature between 150-160 *F.  If you smell an ammonia type smell, you will want to add more brown clippings. 

When you think your compost is finished, you can run it through a riddle.  This is a screen that will separate the bigger pieces that you will throw back into the bin for further decomposition.  Then add it to your garden, mulch or plants.  Be sure to save some of the finished compost to begin your new batch.  This ensure your next batch will breakdown even faster.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Composting, Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.