Composting
Now that the growing season is over, it's time to take down the garden and put dead plants to use. Make compost out of them!
Composting is the process of letting microbes work on organic matter like leaves, plants, vegetables, and fruits to turn this organic matter into a nutrient-rich addition to your garden soil. I do not let potato peels, apple peels, apple cores, dead tomato and pepper plants, rotting tomatoes, peanut shells, eggshells, and cucumber peels go to waste. I compost them along with grass clippings and leaves, then I use the compost to enrich my garden soil in the spring.
There are many excellent websites about composting, with this being the first one I found on a Google search: http://vegweb.com/composting/ . Go there, read up, and start putting those scraps to work!
posted by Alex Bratu @ 3:57 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Do you perform any maintenance on your composting materials over the winter? I've already ordered most of my seeds for this coming spring, but I've never used compost before and I'm a little afraid.
Elaine,
I do no maintenance on my compost over the winter. I just let my finished compost sit in a plastic garbage can with a lid on it.
My "in-process" unfinished compost is in a composter that spins on its axis so the material can be mixed. During the winter not much is happening in the so-called active composter because the temperatures are so low, but the low temperatures do it no harm either. When the weather warms up the composting resumes.
I also have another composter that I use as a staging area just to hold materials that I want to compost later. In this staging area I do not mix the materials, water, or add any compost starter, but still some composting takes place. That's okay!
When a batch in the active composter is finished, it gets moved to the plastic garbage can to sit until I use the compost in the garden and a fresh batch from the staging area (already a little composted) goes into the active composter to cook. I add compost starter, water, and mix it every now and then. In a couple of months the batch is done and I start the process over again.
What makes you fearful to use compost?
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