Composting in your garden?

One of the most important recommendations I will suggest to anyone who is eco-minded is to start your own garden. I’ve spoken about this in past blogs. Start from the beginning and work your way up.

I consider the compost pile a true achievement of mine and a true necessity in any well nourished and living garden. This pile of black gold, yes gold, is in fact the reason for any success in growing an organic garden. Organic gardening means that no harsh chemicals are used to grow any plants. Chemical-free gardening gives any garden a well-balanced diet of nutrients, minerals and micro-organisms to help sustain the soil. Therefore you get just that - a well balanced eco-system that is perfectly capable of maintaining itself and being sustainable on it’s own.

I’ve become somewhat of an expert in maintaining a good working compost pile, thanks to many tips from friends, lecturers and professional gardeners such as Jim, an Amish gardener, and my own toiling and experimenting in my many gardens. My first compost piles were primitive in their own way. I created a cylinder shape out of chicken wire and steal posts. Layered it with grass clippings and leaves to the top and waited. After a few weeks I noticed that my pile had compressed. This was good because it meant that my green materials were decomposing.

What I didn’t know back then was that it was food for what would later turn out to be my best friends in the garden - worms. Worms will grow big and fat and plump if you feed them right. What’s amazing is that as they poop they are delivering the best manure possible (mind you I’m not talking about pet waste) right in the pile which will then be added into your growing beds. Love that!

That particular compost worked fine but I now need more. The need has multiplied because I now take care of more gardens. My husband built me a three compartment system that I copied from Crockets Victory Garden. It works very well for me. The idea is each compartment is filled and maintained with different degrees of decomposing material. At the end of a few weeks at the bottom of each compartment you should have nice compost ready to be sifted through a screen and then added to your garden.

All of my kitchen scraps such as vegetables, fruit peels and coffee grounds add depth to my soil when decomposed in the compost pile. I also incorporate anything that is back yard waste like grass clippings, leaves, deadheads of plants once they’ve withered and died. Because my compost is made up of decomposing material and I’m managing it by turning it and keeping it wet, it’s operating at its optimum level, so I can rest assured there are no strong orders or vermin. Quite the contrary - what I do have is a sweet smell of fresh earth.

Compost piles can be started very easily and with minimal work on your end, yet the rewards are significant. Compost piles are a way of taking responsibility for your families waste and recycling what would be garbage into useful material that will be reused to nourish your garden and your family. A big problem is often when these kitchen scraps end up in our landfills. All of this garbage, 7.9 pounds of waste per person per day to be exact, is left to rot. While this rotting is taking place, it produces gassy substances which are often toxic can easily enter the air or water. So why then wouldn’t we take charge and do our part in protecting our families as well as the earth.

Start small and get your leaves and vegetable scraps in the compost pile. If you need help in starting your own compost pile, any garden center would be happy to assist or send me an e-mail at gbcstyle@hotmail.com.