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Make Your Own Compost

Creating your own compost not only helps the environment, but it is one of the key tools of the successful gardener. Compost helps to improve the quality of your soil, that helps plants to flourish. Once you establish a pattern of collecting the materials for your compost, it becomes an easy process that has numerous benefits.

The Benefits of Compost:

• It is an easy and environmentally friendly way of recycling waste
• It balances your soil type for the best planting conditions
• It retains water and nutrients in the soil to water and feed your plants
• The organic matter in compost helps to feed the organisms like earthworms that live in the soil (these organisms are also very good for healthy soil).
• Compost or mulch helps to maintain the pH level of your soil
• Adding compost makes your soil texture crumbly and light
• You can never get enough compost! Your plants will continually benefit from adding this rich source of food.

Can you over-apply compost? No! It is doubtful that you can ever over-apply compost, as plants will use exactly what they need, when they need it. Compost is the perfect thing to spread around when you are starting a new garden, seeding grass for a new lawn area, or planting trees, shrubs, bushes or flowerbeds. Compost can also be scattered around plants during their growing season to encourage good growth. You can even add it to indoor plants to enrich the potting soil. In short, it is a wonderful tool for anyone who wishes to make the most of their garden.

How To Make Compost:

Organic matter can be turned into compost through enzymes, fungi, micro-organisms, and soil life-forms (e.g. earthworms, mites, woodlice etc.). Maintaining a good environment for these  beneficial organisms will make the process of decomposing the organic matter into compost very short; in some cases only a couple of weeks! To create rich compost in the shortest time possible, make sure to include the following elements in your compost:

1. Nitrogen: Nitrogen provides protein-rich components that micro-organisms need to grow and multiply. Examples of nitrogen-rich matter include freshly cut grass, pulled weeds, dead plants, over-ripe fruits and vegetables, kitchen scraps (potato peelings and vegetable ends) and seaweed, other fresh green matter. Other protein-rich matter that can be added includes manure and animal by-products such as bone meal, fat and blood.
   
   
2. Carbon: Carbon is a good source of food and energy for micro-organisms. You can identify carbon-rich plant materials as they are usually shades of brown, and are dry, tough and fibrous in texture. Examples of carbon-rich matter include straw, hay, sawdust, dry leaves and shredded paper.
   
   
3. Water: Water is an essential element, however you should be careful about the amount of water you use I your compost. Too much and you will drown the micro-organisms, and too little will dehydrate them. A rule to guide you is that you should try to keep it as wet as a well-rung sponge – moist to the touch but without water flowing out of the matter. Covering your compost with a tarpaulin or containing it in a bin (many of these can be bought from your local garden centre) ensures that you maintain the correct level of moisture.
   
   
4. Oxygen: Like most organisms, micro-organisms require oxygen to survive. To work at their maximum efficiency, micro-organisms require lots of oxygen. When your compost pile is first assembled, there will be a lot of oxygen trapped between the different matter. However, as the decomposition of the matter begins, this trapped air will be consumed by the micro-organisms. The matter will visibly compact together. In order to ensure that enough oxygen is in your compost, you should turn your compost with a spade or fork now and again. Neglecting to do so will make the composting process longer, as the micro-organisms will become more sluggish as they run out of oxygen.
   
   

Levels of compost elements: To create the most successful compost, you should combine the nitrogen-rich elements to carbon-rich elements in a ratio of 1:25 (therefore, you should have 25 times the amount of carbon-rich matter as you have nitrogen-rich matter). If you cannot achieve this ratio, at least ensure that you have a compost heap that has more carbon matter than nitrogen (therefore more “brown” matter than “green” matter).

Several ingredients to create compost


A compost bin

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