How Do You Make Compost For Your Garden?
Compost can be the simplest and easiest set and forget project for your garden or it can be complex and time and labor intensive.
It just depends on how you choose to make compost for your garden.
There are a variety of ways to make compost; bags, bins, piles, tumblers and all the methods have their advocates and detractors.
What we all agree on is that compost is the absolute best thing you can put in your garden to grow happy, healthy, pest-free plants.
My first time making compost was a combination of happy accident, forgetfulness and running out of time.
Several black plastic garbage bags full of slightly damp leaves got left behind the garage.
They were in a sunny spot and the black plastic generated lots of heat.
I forgot about the bags until the next fall.
Yuck, was my first thought when I went to drag the bags off to the trash.
One bag broke and out spilled this lovely black earth.
No smell, no trace of leaves, just wonderful rich, nutrient-filled compost for my garden.
I was hooked.
My leaves never ever went to the landfill again.
I gathered the leaves from my near neighbors every fall as well.
Thoughts of swiping bags of leaves off of stranger's curbs danced through my mind, but didn't want to explain that one to a homeowner or a cop.
This was before it was common to have a lawn service come and spray with pesticides and before we worried about filling up our landfills.
Luckily now people are more aware that yard waste can be turned into compost, even if they don't do it themselves, and neighborhood leaf/green waste pickup is more common.
On the flip side, it's also more commonplace for lawns to be treated with chemicals wholesale.
If you are working to improve your soil, eliminate chemicals from your life as much as you can, and raise organic vegetables you don't want to add someone else's chemicals to your compost, so know where your compost materials are coming from.
Some years I still use the black garbage bag "set and forget" method of making compost, but nowadays I also have active working compost heaps that I run experiments on how to make compost.
One is a chicken wire bin in the middle of my vegetable garden that makes it super simple to toss the garden waste into and let it return to the soil right there.
Another one is a black commercial bin that I'm trying out for kitchen waste and garden clippings.
Whatever method you try, remember you can't make a mistake.
Compost happens whether you help or not!
It just depends on how you choose to make compost for your garden.
There are a variety of ways to make compost; bags, bins, piles, tumblers and all the methods have their advocates and detractors.
What we all agree on is that compost is the absolute best thing you can put in your garden to grow happy, healthy, pest-free plants.
My first time making compost was a combination of happy accident, forgetfulness and running out of time.
Several black plastic garbage bags full of slightly damp leaves got left behind the garage.
They were in a sunny spot and the black plastic generated lots of heat.
I forgot about the bags until the next fall.
Yuck, was my first thought when I went to drag the bags off to the trash.
One bag broke and out spilled this lovely black earth.
No smell, no trace of leaves, just wonderful rich, nutrient-filled compost for my garden.
I was hooked.
My leaves never ever went to the landfill again.
I gathered the leaves from my near neighbors every fall as well.
Thoughts of swiping bags of leaves off of stranger's curbs danced through my mind, but didn't want to explain that one to a homeowner or a cop.
This was before it was common to have a lawn service come and spray with pesticides and before we worried about filling up our landfills.
Luckily now people are more aware that yard waste can be turned into compost, even if they don't do it themselves, and neighborhood leaf/green waste pickup is more common.
On the flip side, it's also more commonplace for lawns to be treated with chemicals wholesale.
If you are working to improve your soil, eliminate chemicals from your life as much as you can, and raise organic vegetables you don't want to add someone else's chemicals to your compost, so know where your compost materials are coming from.
Some years I still use the black garbage bag "set and forget" method of making compost, but nowadays I also have active working compost heaps that I run experiments on how to make compost.
One is a chicken wire bin in the middle of my vegetable garden that makes it super simple to toss the garden waste into and let it return to the soil right there.
Another one is a black commercial bin that I'm trying out for kitchen waste and garden clippings.
Whatever method you try, remember you can't make a mistake.
Compost happens whether you help or not!
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