Use Compost for your Container Garden
Are your grass clippings and yard trimmings still ending up in the landfill?
Why not compost and improve your garden soil. The decomposition of plant remains, and other once living materials, makes a dark crumbly substance that is excellent for enriching your container garden soil. It is also a way to recycle your yard and kitchen waste.
Composting is not new, in the natural world composting happens as leaves pile up in the forest and begin to decay. The rotting leaves are returned to the soil where living plants can finish the recycling process by reclaiming the nutrients from the decomposed leaves.
There are a lot of options for containing your compost. You can use bins, boxes or a less formal binless method of composting by using the compost heap if you have access to a large yard.
The benefits of compost is that it enriches soil, has the ability to help regenerate poor soil, and can reduce the need for water and fertilizer.
A compost pile makes desirable compost only if conditions are proper. The temperature of the pile should be between 35 and 70 degrees celcius, larger piles usually work better, it needs to be damp, and it needs air. Turn the compost pile regularly to add air. Don’t add weeds from your garden if they have gone to seed, nor diseased plants because this will cause future garden problems.
What to compost: coffee grounds, manure, wood chips, eggshells, yard trimmings, leaves, grass clippings, tea bags, fruit and vegetable peelings.
What not to compost: dairy products, diseased plants, weeds that have gone to seed, fat, meat, and pet waste.
Let me know what products work for you.
Lori
