Benefits of Composting

Composting is an excellent way to take unwanted garden and household material and turn it into a nutrient rich soil amendment for your garden. Composting is not a new idea. In the natural world, composting is what happens as leaves pile up on the forest floor and begin to decay. Eventually, the rotting leaves are returned to the soil, where the roots of other plants and trees can finish the recycling process by reclaiming the nutrients from the decomposed leaves.

Today, composting is a great way to recycle your yard and kitchen wastes. It also helps to reduce your volume of garbage and benefits our environment. The use of composting to turn organic wastes into a valuable resource is expanding rapidly in the United States, as landfill space becomes scarce and expensive, and as people become more aware of the impacts they have on the environment. In ten years, composting will probably be as commonplace as recycling aluminum cans is today.

You can contribute to the "composting revolution" by composting your own yard and kitchen wastes at home. Composting is easy, with a compost bin. A compost bin keeps moisture and temperature under control so there is less guesswork. Most composting bins are dark in color to absorb heat. They have a top lid to load the plant material and a small shoot at the bottom to remove the finished compost. You will need to turn the material inside and keep the plant material moist (but not wet). Overly wet compost will rot and will not have been raised to the temperature required to stop seed germination and kill other unwanted organisms.

You can compost nearly any plant material provided you follow a few simple instructions. Compost is produced by the microbial breakdown of plant matter. It is important to have plenty of material handy when you start your compost pile. You should have equal parts of green and brown debris and be certain your pile has plenty of nitrogen. Lawn clippings and plant material from your kitchen are great for composting. Keep the pile moist and depending on conditions, you can have super rich compost in 1 to 3 months. You will need to periodically mix the pile to help keep the reaction going, but the extra work is worth the effort.

The easiest way to produce compost today is through the use of a Compost Tumbler. These types of compost bins allow you to easily rotate the compost using a small crank. Composters come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, but the most common is a cylinder that has an easy to load door for adding plant material and can be turned whenever mixing is required. These composters take much of the guesswork out of the process and help to produce excellent compost. Look for a composter made of hard plastic to keep the weight down. Keep in mind a fully loaded composter can get very heavy and the center of gravity can be a factor. You want to find a composter that is low to the ground for easy loading and is not likely to fall over. You also want a composter with solid construction so it will provide many years of service.

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