If you love transforming trash, such as kitchen scraps and grass clippings, into a beneficial soil conditioner, then you need to start composting.
Complete the circle of life right in your backyard with your own composter. You want to use green scraps, including fruit and vegetable peels, and brown scraps, such as wood chips, newspaper, and wood shavings.
You can learn how to make compost in your backyard by mixing live (green) organic materials with (dry) ones.
What Is Compost?
Compost is earthly, loamy soil. It smells like the forest and has a boat-load of nutrition that benefits your lawn as topdressing or fertilizer for your vegetable garden.
When you mix greens and browns, they create heat, which breaks down the scraps into compost. Plus, worms and other soil organisms work to help with decomposition.
Making compost has the following benefits:
- It naturally recycles kitchen scraps, lawn litter, dried leaves, and other organic debris from your property.
- It transforms into free topdressing or compost to use for your lawn and garden.
- It saves you money because you’ll have less trash to take to the curb.
Read more: How to Add Edibles to Your Landscape
- It helps with taking care of the environment by reducing the trash that sits in a landfill.
- If you have kids or grandchildren, it’s a great science lesson on the circle of life, decay, and the production of well-aerated soil.
- It reduces erosion, improves soil structure, and holds more nutrients in the soil.
- It keeps moisture in the soil for a longer time.
- It reduces the need to use commercial fertilizers and soil conditioners—which, in turn, saves you money.
How to Make Compost
While you can buy compost at your local independent garden center, it’s less expensive to create your own in a compost bin or pile.
You can find different designs and instructions for making your own compost pile or compost bin. Alternatively, you can buy an outdoor compost bin.
Here’s how to make compost:
- Find the perfect spot where there’s well-draining soil to place your compost pile.
- Build a simple compost pile with chicken wire and landscaping fabric, or build a wooden structure with slats for air circulation. Don’t place your compost area near any wood.
- Start your compost pile by putting down brown matter, such as straw, wood shavings, newspaper, or decomposed, chopped leaves.
- Add green scraps, including eggshells, fruit peels, vegetables, and any landscaping or houseplant that you’re throwing away. Chop up green scraps, so they decompose quickly.
- Include any potting soil with the plants you’re throwing away. Also, you can add dried-up weeds that don’t have seedheads or tubers.
- Add some moisture—but not too much. If the compost pile becomes soggy, you’re going to have a mess in the end rather than loamy earth.
Read more: Get Those Leaves Off Of Your Lawn: Here’s How to Do Easy Leaf Removal This Fall
- Make sure you alternate between green and brown materials.
- Stir your compost so that air can circulate between the layers.
- Cover your compost bin, so critters don’t dive in after hours.
You can put chicken, horse, or rabbit manure into your compost bin. However, don’t put in cat or dog feces or litter from the litterbox. Cats and dogs’ feces carry pathogens that will make you sick.
Also, here are other products that you shouldn’t put into your compost tumbler:
- Plants that have mold or mildew
- Live weeds or other plants, such as potatoes that can take root in your compost bin
- Any kitchen scraps that have oil, sugar, or butter on them. Scraps should be just the old produce with nothing on it.
- Any meat —they don’t break down into loamy soil. Instead, the meat will rot, stink, and invite rats to your compost bin.
How long does it take for these organic materials to break down and become compost? About three to four months, if you regularly turn the compost and keep it moist.
Compost piles or bins don’t need to be one-time recycling units. Indeed, you go to the bottom of the pile to pull out the loamy soil. Then, you can continue putting in brown and green debris throughout the year.
How Brinly’s Lawn Care and Garden Attachments Create a Beautiful Property
If you love working on your property, you need Brinly’s lawn care and garden attachments to help you create a beautiful property.
For example, our lawn sweepers will gather leaves, twigs, pine needles, and grass clippings for you to take directly to your compost bin. Our dump cart lets you put in lawn debris and other growing materials, such as mulch and straw, to bring to your backyard garden.
Finally, if you’re creating your first garden, you need our ground engaging equipment to dig rows and turn over the soil.
You can buy your next Brinly lawn care and garden attachment online. If you have any questions about your Brinly product, contact our customer service today by dialing 877-728-8224 or filling out our contact form.
Sources:
Extension.OregonState.edu, Compost in the Backyard.
Extension.PSU.edu, Home Composting: A Guide for Home Gardeners.
Ibid, Compost: How to Make It and How Much to Use.
