Organic Gardening

Since compost is mostly decomposing plant material, along with a few other materials, you don’t have to go out and purchase a compost bin. It’s rather simple to build a homemade compost bin using only a few materials that are easy to find. Compost bins make the garden area neater, and many gardeners prefer to use a bin instead of letting the compost decompose on the ground.

Materials Needed

First off, you’ll need the following items before getting started:

• Bricks or wood to build a base
• Garbage can
• Material to put in a compost bin
• Water

Instructions

Alright, let’s actually turn the garbage can into a compost bin.

Step 1: Punch holes in the lid and throughout the garbage can. Oxygen is part of the process needed to decompose the material.

Step 2: Chop up all the debris and materials you’re putting into the compost bin. The makeup should be about 50% green materials (grass clippings, manure, etc) and the other 50% should be brown materials (newspapers, saw dust, etc). You don’t have to fill the garbage can all at once; you can add material in whenever it becomes available.

Learn how to make compost.

Step 3: Spray water on the material until it’s damp. Don’t spray too much though; you don’t want it all the way soggy.

Step 4: Put the lid back on the garbage can and sit the garbage can on some bricks or a platform of lumbar. You don’t want the garbage can to get rusty or rot.

Step 5: Mix up the materials on the garbage can by shaking it daily, or at least once or twice a week. You can add more plant material whenever you get it.

Step 6: Make sure the material is always slightly damp, like as dry as a rung out sponge.

Step 7: In about a month you can harvest your compost material to be put on your crops.

Finished compost is dark, rich in nutrients, and crumbly. Compost is made from many different things such as recycled garden and kitchen waste, and can also include paper products. Compost has many benefits to a garden, including helping root growth, increasing the yield of the garden, and helping to hold water in the soil. Close to 40% of the average trashcan contents are suitable for making compost.

Some consider compost making to be a complex process, but it’s rather simple it the long run. All you really need to do is supply to proper ingredients and then let nature take over from there.

Where to make compost bin?

You can buy bins from the store designed to make compost in, but really they are all just the same. A compost bin isn’t even necessary as you can build a compost heap and cover it. On the other hand though, bins have a neater look and are easier to manage. You can buy a compost bin from any type of gardening store, or offline. You can even create your own compost bin if you’d like.

Ideal compost bins have the following features:

• a lid or cover
• easy accessibility
• no gaps in the sides
• possibly insulated with cardboard or straw

The location of your compost bin should be:

• directly on the soil or ground
• away from water sources
• in a sunny or slightly shady spot

What materials can be made into compost?

• Anything once alive can be composted. Items such as meat, dairy, or cooked food should be avoided as they can attract vermin and pests.
• A mixture of things works best. With experience you will learn the right balance, but a good start is to use equal amounts of greens and browns.
• Things that rot quickly such as grass clippings and young weeds. This will get the compost started, but own their own will decay to a smelly mess.
• Older plant material rots slower and gives body and mass to the finished compost.
• Wooded items decay very slow, and are best chopped or shredded first.

Compost Ingredients

The following are green or nitrogen rich ingredients:

• Urine (diluted 20:1 with water)
• Nettles
• Grass cuttings
• Comfrey leaves
• Tea bags and leaves
• Coffee grounds
• Raw vegetable peelings
• Soft green prunings
• Manure from herbivores (cows, horses, etc)
• Poultry manure (chickens, turkeys, etc)
• Young weeds (do not use weeds with seeds)

Brown, carbon rich ingredients:

• Newspapers, although it’s probably better to just recycle them
• Glossy magazines, although it’s probably better to just recycle them
• Cardboard (cereal boxes, egg boxes, etc)
• Waste paper and junk mail (shredded confidential waste works too)
• Cardboard tubes
• Sawdust
• Woody prunings
• Bedding (hay, straw, etc) from vegetarian pets (rabbits, guinea pigs, etc)
• Hedge clippings
• Wood shavings
• Fallen leaves

Other items that can be turned into compost:

• Egg shells
• Wood ash (in moderation)
• Hair and nail clippings
• Natural fibers (100% wool or 100% cotton)

Items that shouldn’t be in compost:

• Fish
• Meat
• Cat litter
• Cooked food
• Dog feces
• Coal ash

How do I make compost?

Compost is a very easy thing to make although many believe the process is complicated. All you really need to do is add the items that are mentioned above to your compost pile whenever you feel like it. All of it will eventually turn to compost even though some of it may take a long time. If the mix is unbalanced, the end product may not be very good. If you pay extra attention to the process you can improve the quality of your compost by a lot. To make good compost, you need as close to an equal amount of greens and browns by volume. Also, include small amounts of the ‘other ingredients’ found in the above section.

You can go with two different methods of making compost, the hot heap or cold heap. The hot heap produces more compost in a shorter amount of time, but requires more effort put into the process.

When is my compost ready?

Compost can be made in as little as six to eight weeks. Usually though, it takes a year or longer. A general guide is the more effort put into producing the compost, the quicker you get the compost.

You’ll know when your compost is ready when the materials in the compost bin have turned into a dark brown, earthy smelling material. Try and leave it for another month or two to make sure the compost has fully matured. If the compost isn’t fine and crumbly, don’t worry. It can still be lumpy, sticky, or stringy with bits of eggshells and twig in it, and still be usable. Sieve the material if you’d like and put any large bits back into the compost heap for a later time.

Compost is a huge part of organic gardening, and can determine a large part of the outcome of your crops. Organic compost is a combination of organic matter and / or manure, which after decomposing resembles a rich soil. Compost is very healthy for plants and may look gross, smelly, rotten and dirty, yet isn’t.

Compost doesn’t only provide great nutrition to your plants, but it also holds water in the soil so that your plants are always properly hydrated. Compost also assists with soil drainage which helps prevent rot and depletion of nutrients in poorer soils. Another great feature of compost is that many components may bind to toxic chemicals, which prevents these chemicals from entering your plants.

You can purchase compost at any gardening store or major hardware chain, such as Lowe’s or Home Depot. It’s also very easy to make your own compost at home by using things that would usually be thrown away.

Learn how to make compost.

Here are some other benefits of purchasing or creating your own compost for use in your garden:

• Making it is cheap or free
• Helps retain soil water
• Improved soils texture, structure, and aeration
• Stimulates healthier roots
• Improves soil and plants
• Great way to dispose of leaves, organic debris, grass clippings, food waste, etc
• Helps the environment
• Increases a gardens yield

Organic gardeners use organic gardening materials such as compost, mechanical barriers, physical controls, companion planting, cultural strategies, biological controls, and some sprays that are organic. They use these special growing methods to grow plants that contain no harmful chemicals. When organic gardening is done correctly, it can produce stronger effects on the flower, vegetable, or herb garden than using non-organic chemicals. Organic gardening can be practiced all year long by applying organic growing methods to greenhouses, houseplants, outdoor gardens, or even a hydroponic garden.