There are a great many benefits to making your own compost at home.
You get to save a ton of money by avoiding the purchase of store-bought fertilizers, you get to help Mother Nature by using one of her own natural processes to recycle organic materials, and you get to keep your garden and vegetable patch looking as lovely and healthy as possible.
Best Kitchen & Backyard Composting Tips
Doing you own backyard composting is a great way to save money and to have a hand in the growth of your home plant life. And it’s really not as difficult as you may think!
A lot of people won’t bother with making compost at home (or even gardening at all) because they think it is so terribly time-consuming that they’ll never have an opportunity to do it.
It is this same defeatist attitude, however, that is shorting the lifespan of our earth, laying her to waste slowly but surely.
Do your part by making compost at home! It’s really not as hard as you think it is, and it’s incredibly rewarding.
Below, we’ll go over what exactly you can put in your backyard composting system. And then, we’ll go over a brief and simple step-by-step guide to getting your own compost at home off and running.
Compost at Home: What Can You Put in There?
So, you want to start composting at home, but you don’t know what exactly you can put in there. Let’s go over just a few of the great many organic materials that you use in your own backyard composing system.
- From Nature – You can compost grass clippings, fallen leaves, branches, dead shrubs, dead flowers, and weeds. Just about anything you no longer have a use for in your backyard can be put to use in your compost at home.
- From Inside – Composting food scraps is an easy way to keep your bin nice and full. Also consider using your used coffee grounds. Not only does the nitrogen in these grounds help your soil to no end, but it has been said that the acidity levels in them will also keep pests away from your beautiful flowers and wonderful fruits and veggies.
Generally speaking, any organic waste is good composting material.
Backyard Composting: A Step by Step Guide
Okay, now you know what you can put in it. So, how do you get started?
Easy! Here is a step by step guide to composting at home:
- Pick out a place in your kitchenor your yard that you can stand to keep your bin.
- You can either buy a bin from your local home and garden store or you can build one yourself out of spare wood, chicken wire, or other mesh material.
- The two things you need to make sure you have a good amount of are green and brown garden materials. The green is made up of old flowers or grass clippings, while the brown contains mostly dry leaves. These two will work together (in a one part green to two parts brown ratio) to make your compost at home a successful one.
- Add materials until your pile or bin measures about 3 cubic feet.
- Your pile should always be a little moist.
- Turn the pile with a rake, pitchfork, or other tool once a week.
- You will have a finished compost heap in just two short months. At this point you shouldn’t be able to recognize any of the organic matter and the pile will no longer heat up.
- Use your compost at home in your garden or veggie bed, then start the whole process again!
And that’s it!
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