The down and dirty about composting

A compost is basically decomposed organic matter, and by building a compost (Or purchasing one) for your backyard, you can give yourself the best gardening head start as well as improve your carbon foot print.  Here are some of the best benefits that come with having your very own compost.

Reduce Fruit and Vegetable Waste

With your compost, you will be disposing of your fruits and vegetables in it.  Instead of adding them to the landfill you can take advantage of them in your gardens in the future.  You can put just about anything in a compost.  Things you shouldn’t put in your kitchen compost are citrus peels, meat, bones and fish, sticky labels on fruit and veggies, dog/cat poop, ash and anything that has been treated with chemicals.  I use something like this from amazon.com for collecting kitchen scraps.

You Can Make Money From Your Compost

If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, which you should be doing, you may have more compost than you know what to do with. Luckily, it is a marketable product and you can sell your compost to other gardeners, farmers, landscapers, sod producers, and many others who need quality compost. Who knew that your fruits and vegetable waste could do so much good, right? Check around with your neighbors that have chickens or other livestock. They love to feed scraps to them and who knows maybe you could trade compost for eggs.

Kills Potential Weeds

One of the biggest problems that people have when it comes to gardening or even just their basic landscape are those weeds, and having a compost in your backyard can actually kill weed seeds which will deter them before they even sprout. Gone are the days of picking weeds all weekend! As long as your compost temperatures are at least 104′ for a minimum of 2 weeks, you can garden and landscape while your compost destroys the weed seeds. This is one of the reasons that we love to Back to Eden Garden.  The yummy soil and the chips help to deter the weeds at the same time as developing great soil underneath.

Improves A Variety of Elements

With a compost, you instantly decrease the mass and volume of the manure when it is composted due to the reduction of moisture content. You can add your chicken or horse manure into your compost in small amounts and stir it in.  Don’t forget about that odor that comes along with manure, though. With a good compost you  don’t have near as much of a smell or fly problem!

Better Gardening

As I stated above, a better gardening is one of the best benefits of composting. One of the best reasons is due to the fact that when compost is added to the soil, soil erosion potential is reduced, as well as fertilizer requirements. How cool is that when you can save money and make your own for minimum costs.

Less Odor and Pollutants

There really isn’t a bad smell to compost as long as you aren’t putting the things in it that I mentioned. Composts release ammonia into the air which is what keeps the smell down. Composts decrease pollutants too because it releases nitrogen into the air and soil.

Getting your own compost is extremely easy. You can build your own or purchase one for minimal costs. Something this from amazon.com or like the one I showed in my video are easy to come by and make great dirt as you saw in my video.

Happy Gardening.

Comments

comments