Welcome to part two in a series of blog articles about various soil additives and amendments! I am writing these to offer clarification on the different types, discuss the differences between them and talk about how each one benefits the soil. I will be posting them over the next few months so stay tuned to get the latest installment! My first installment on Fertilizer can be found here. The other additives coming up in the series are Soil Amendments, Soil conditioners, Alaskan Humus, Worm Castings and Compost tea!
If you have a comment or question about any of these soil supplements, please feel free to leave a comment below!
Part 2: Compost.
What is it, how is it used and how do you make your own?
Compost is the one thing we add to our gardens that most closely mimics the time-honored processes of nature. It is just purely and simply decomposed organic materials, transformed by worms, insects and billions of microbes. You can find inches of compost on any forest floor! If you look around, you can see its development from leaves, animal waste and other forest litter into nutrient-rich compost that feeds the plants of the forest. We can mimic this process quite easily in the garden and it’s worth it!
Compost has many benefits for the soil. It adds in large amounts of nutrients that are readily available to plants (in that, it is somewhat similar to a fertilizer). It can also help to alter the structure of the soil. Soil that has too much sand or clay will not sustain life for very long. By adding in lots of compost, we can fundamentally change a soil’s structure and make it more loamy and sustaining. Additionally, compost contains all those billions of microorganisms that continue to work and contribute to plant health, once they are incorporated into your garden soil.
Commercial composts, like Black Gold Garden Compost, can be made out of all sorts of organic vegetable matter and may also include humus, peat moss and manure from chickens, horses or cows. They are processed quite thoroughly (usually under high heat) to ensure a uniform appearance, a minimal amount of odor and (most importantly) no transference of harmful weed seeds, pests or disease-carrying microorganisms. This is a definite advantage over composting at home.
However, it is still beneficial to make compost at home! It’s free, relatively easy and a great way to recycle scraps from the home and garden. The average home compost pile contains food scraps, grass clippings, yard debris and billions of tiny decomposers who work hard to change all those ingredients into dark, rich (mostly) odorless compost.
Here are three tips for home composting:
1. Balance the C/N or green/brown ratio: green materials (like food scraps and grass clippings) have large amounts of Nitrogen. These ingredients need to be balanced by brown, Carbon-heavy ingredients (like wood chips and leaves). A good rule of thumb is to try to have twice as many brown ingredients as there are green and you will have a healthy pile!
2. Keep out meat and dairy of all kinds: These will attract harmful forms of bacteria, maggots and even rats to your home. When it comes to home composting, keep it vegan!
3. Keep it hot, moist and well-turned: Make sure your pile has plenty of Nitrogen to keep it warm. You can also cover it to trap in heat. Keeping the pile moist will increase decomposition, as will the occasional turn with the pitchfork. Turning the pile stirs the ingredients and gets air into the middle, which most decomposers need to thrive.
Leave a comment with your thoughts and composting tips below!
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