If you’re planning to start a garden this spring, nothing will give it the extra boost it needs more than a strong compost pile. Compost is a natural fertilizer and soil amendment that will moderate pH and fertility problems for your flowerbeds and vegetable gardens.
It will also help prevent diseases and build resiliency to climate change. It’s best to begin your composting process in the fall, when fallen leaves are abundant.
1. Clear and Clean Your Flowerbeds
Weeds can wreak havoc in your flowerbeds, and they take up nutrients that annuals and perennials need to thrive. So the sooner you clear weeds from your beds, the more time your soil has to soak up these vital resources.
To begin, make sure your flowerbed is clean of weeds and other debris like leaves, grass clippings and sod. This will help keep weeds from spreading and prevent diseased or dying plants from becoming buried under the snow.
Then, work in a layer of compost. Mix it in with a garden tiller or shovel, working the soil when it is damp but not wet. Compost is a great natural fertilizer and helps with moisture retention, air flow and soil texture.
2. Grass Clippings
Many homeowners throw away grass clippings from their lawns, but these are a resource that should be recycled. They provide a source of nitrogen and other nutrients that can benefit your lawn and garden.
Grass clippings also help preserve soil moisture and prevent weeds. Depending on how long you leave them on your lawn, they will usually decompose within a few weeks.
Composting grass clippings is easy. All you need is a little know-how and a lawn mower.
Mix fresh grass with brown material such as dry leaves, twigs, paper and branches to keep a balanced 30:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio. A pile with the wrong balance can take longer to break down, which means more time to wait before you see results!
3. Chickens & Farm Animals
Chickens produce a lot of waste and composting is a great way to manage this. Composting can be done inside the coop or in a separate bin.
The first step in utilizing this method is to clean out your coop and run. This helps get rid of any dust, ammonia and other harmful substances that can make your coop unsanitary.
Next, place several inches of litter in the coop. You can use wood shavings, leaves, grass clippings or any other finely chopped carbon-based material.
Once this base layer is established, add your food scraps and yard waste to the coop. Once this compost pile is fully aerated and has reached the temperature of 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, it can be added to your garden soil to boost nutrient levels.
4. Kitchen Scraps
Composting your kitchen scraps instead of trashing them reduces the amount of materials that end up in landfills and slashes your environmental footprint.
The process of composting is simple: mix dry, brown material (like leaves and shredded paper) with green waste (such as lawn clippings) to create an incredibly useful fertilizer for your garden. This dark, moist, nutrient-rich compost is free of chemicals and pollutants and adds essential structure and nutrients to the soil.
The key to composting is keeping a good ratio of carbon-rich material, or ‘browns’, to nitrogen-rich material, or ‘greens’. Too much nitrogen and your compost may smell; too little, and it won’t decompose as quickly.
5. Woody Materials
Many gardeners find themselves dealing with a lot of woody waste, particularly stems, twigs and smaller branches from pruning trees, shrubs or hedges. Shredding or composting these can be a valuable way of disposing of them and producing usable organic material for the garden.
Most domestic shredders will cope with stems of less than 3-4cm (1 1
Larger branches, tree trunks and stumps, however, can be problematic, especially if they are treated with fungicides or pesticides to extend their life. They may contain chemicals that are harmful to the environment or to human health when mixed with other organic materials, so it’s best not to include them in your compost pile.