By: greenorganic

Whether you have a large garden, a small yard, or only a few window boxes, good, fertile soil is essential for growing beautiful flowers and vegetables. But depending on where you live, good soil may be sparse and also be quite expensive. So it makes sense to take advantage of an ancient technique to create your very own garden soil: composting.

Composting turns kitchen and garden waste into fertile new soil. It’s so easy that anyone can do it, it’s safe, and it does not require much space or equipment. In addition, it can keep such a large quantity of organic waste out of our landfill sites, that many local authorities now run composting schemes. Along with instructions and advice, you may even be able to pick up a free compost bin, so it’s worth checking it out.

Compost bins make a sensible addition to any garden and come in many shapes, sizes and finishes. If you have some spare wood and are handy with a hammer, you can quickly create your own wooden frame and line it with overlapping planks to create an open wooden box. All you need then is a wooden lid or heavy-duty plastic cover for the top. If DIY is not your strength, both wooden and plastic compost bins are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased in any good hardware or garden store.

Bin sizes vary. A 4 feet (1.2m) tall bin will be fine for a family of 4. If you have a large garden, mow your own lawn, and prune your own trees and hedges, then choose a larger bin, as all the garden waste quickly adds up. Place the bin in a sheltered corner that you can access easily from the kitchen. If you have to trudge across a muddy lawn in the dark, you may not use it as much for disposing of your kitchen waste.

Fill the bin with ‘green’ and ‘brown’ waste in a ratio of 2:1. Green waste includes raw fruit and vegetable peelings, grass clippings, leaves, plant cuttings, tea bags, coffee grounds including the filter paper and eggshells, while sawdust, straw, shredded paper, animal bedding and wood (i.e. tree pruning waste) make up the ‘brown’ components of your bin.

Cooked food, meat and fish, used nappies /diapers, pet litter, perennial weeds, ashes and treated or varnished woods should not be added to your compost bin.

Fill the bin as you go along. It makes for better soil if you can balance the contents of your compost bin. As bacteria, beetles, and worms go to work to break down its contents, the bin will warm up. The contents of the bin will collapse and appear to shrink. This process can be very rapid in the summer, but will slow down in the winter months, especially during a cold snap. If you add too much green waste at once, for example all your lawn clippings, the bin can overheat and ‘weep’. To prevent this, always mix in some tree bark, hedge clippings, or even shredded paper with your green waste. That way, your bin will stay healthy and produce good quality, light soil.

Once you have been feeding your compost bin for 6-9 months, it will have become quite full and the contents will no longer collapse a long way down. When you touch the outside of the bin, it feels warm towards the middle, but cooler at the bottom. This indicates that there is a layer of soil at the bottom ready to be removed. Open the door at the bottom of your compost bin, if you have a wooden one remove one of the lower planks, and check the state of the new soil. It’s ready when it’s dark and crumbly and does not contain too many large bits of wood or identifiable components. Remove the soil carefully from the bottom upwards until you see the quality deteriorate visibly, i.e. there will suddenly be egg shells, tea bags and bits of tree or hedge in the mix. Stop there.

Close the bin up again and give it a shake or stir the contents up with a gardening fork to add some air. Then carry on composting.

The ‘harvested’ soil makes good mulch for all flower and vegetable beds. Just dig it in lightly and let your garden get to work.

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By: David Karlson

It takes just fifteen minutes of time to build a compost bin for your backyard. You would be more than surprised to know how easy and convenient it is to building a compost bin and that too in a short period. You can also make compost pile and get your compost in your apartment without any backyard. So, now your plants can enjoy homemade and extremely nutritious compost for your plants.

Here are steps involved in building a compost bin:



Step 1: Recycle or purchase a pail or bin that has a tight fitting lid of about 24 inches tall or in taller. Your pail would also require a lid in order to keep all the critters out and to keep the soil’s moisture intact.

Step 2: Make eight to ten small holes with a drill in the bottom of your container. This will help in aeration. You may also drill some holes on the sides and walls of the bin, if necessary.

Step 3: It is important to place the compost bin in a shady area. The area should be far away from your home. In case you live in an apartment and have no backyard, it would be wise to place your bin on the patio. Make sure the compost is not exposed in full sun. This will dry out your compost.

Step 4: You must place some shredded newspaper or dried leaves on the compost bin’s bottom. You may fill it to 1/8 – ¼ full.

Step 5: The dirt from your garden should be placed on top of the newspaper until the compost is filled to half.

Step 6: You may place all grape stems, coffee grounds and onionskins.

Step 7: Stir the compost a little with the help of a shovel. Make sure that you cover all your food scraps with dirt.

Step 8: Spray the components with lukewarm water until it gets moist. Do not soak it wet.

Step 9: Make about eight to ten small holes on the lid of the bin.

Step 10: Place lid on compost every day. Make sure you stir each time you add food scraps to the bin.

Step 11: Place a lid on compost and wait for about two to three months in order to use your compost. Compost can be ideally used as much in order to cover flowerbeds. These can also be used to pot soil and even sprinkled over your grass to serve as a lawn conditioner.



Some tips and warnings:

One of the most common problems you may face with a compost is its’ smell. In case, your compost starts smelling strong, it may be due to extra water. Ensure that you stop adding extra scraps for a few day and drill more holes if necessary.

The bin needs to be moist all the time. Fruit flies can be a great problem so make sure your compost bin is far away from your house. This is the basic guide to building a compost bin.

By: Paul Duxbury

Compost can act as a great fertilizer, enriching the soil with organic materials rather than making use of chemicals that can do more harm than good if used badly. Composting is a great way to save money as well. Using compost requires that you completely mix it into the soil, reducing compaction and providing oxygenation to the soil. Compost can help plants stay healthier, and that contributes to their ability to repel diseases and survive insect attacks. A healthy landscape can be achieved with a little help from composting.

It is critical to note that composting does require a little extra work. The mound needs to be turned, and you need to make certain that you have adequate break down of the items in your compost pile. You need to be selective in what you put in your compost: it ought only be items that will break down naturally. Plant matter (including pulled weeds) and various foods are excellent in compost and will add to the health of your soil, and so to your landscape over all. There is no reason, though, that your compost pile needs to be a true pile. A bin can help you better hold your compost and preserve it from being spread across your compound in a smelly mess by animals or a really ferocious downpour.

The first thing you need to do before you set up a compost bin is decide what your needs are. Numerous people in reality use a three-bin combination. The bins may be connected, or they may be individually lined up. Some people use the bins for distinct types of compost (regular compost, slow compost like woody plants, and leaves collected in the fall). Others like to have a three-bin system for the turning purposes. Move the compost from one bin into the next, allowing it to turn. Then you can start a pile in the newly vacated bin. By the time the compost makes it into the third bin, it is ready for use. Others find that a single bin is adequate for their needs, and just go out to stir it throughout now and then.

Next you need to decide what materials you will use to construct your bin. It is vital to note that some exposure to the elements is essential for more productive and quicker composting. Chicken wire is not especially good for compost bins as it can extend out of shape extremely readily and does not wear well. Materials like 16-guage plastic-coated wire mesh and hardware cloth are better choices, as is hog wire. Wood makes an interesting choice, but it is critical to note that it will eventually compost itself and will need to be replaced. Do not used pressure-treated wood, as it has poisonous levels of copper and chromium, and there is evidence that arsenic can leach into your compost. Different materials that are acceptable for building compost bins are spoiled hay bales, old cinder blocks or bricks, wooden pallets, snow fencing, and a discarded rabbit hutch. The hutch is desirable because there is very little that needs to be done to make it ready.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to build a compost bin is to build it from wooden pallets. Most warehouses, grocery, and hardware stores are more than happy to give these away for free, or for very inexpensive, as it saves them the trouble of having to discard them. You can use plastic ties to hold four of them together in a box shape. Joining another bin to make a system is easy: just attach three more pallets using one side of the already made bin to complete another box. Be warned: after about two years you will need a new bin, as this bin will be composting itself.

By: Office Clearance

How Composting Works…

Composting is what happens when you allow organic animal and plant materials to decompose into soil, enriching it with their nutrients. You can get these materials from all sorts of places such as plant trimmings and cuttings, teabags and eggshells. After composting, these eventually become a dark, crumbly sort of organic fertiliser that is packed with nutrients and does your garden no end of good.

The basic steps to composting are these:

1. Add your organic waste to the compost bin.

2. Bacteria and fungi naturally breed and break down the material.

3. This causes the compost heap to gain a little heat and under these conditions the microorganisms flourish.

4. The activity then stops and the pile cools down.

5. Worms and insects naturally enter and break down the tougher materials.

6. After 9 months your compost/fertiliser is ready.

The things that you should add to your compost pile include hair and fur, paper, straw, animal bedding, egg shells, plant matter, teabags and coffee granules, horse manure and leaves.

However, you should under no circumstances add meat or fish, coal ash, animal waste, nappies and other human matter, dairy products, cooked foods, coloured paper, treated wood, diseased plants or weeds.

How to Build a Compost Bin

Step by step instructions on building a compost bin:

1. You could skip all the work and buy one from a DIY or Garden Centre.

2. To build one instead, create a wooden frame with around 300 litres capacity (the size that you want your compost bin to be) and attach it to the ground by posts.

3. Create a wooden lid in order to keep the rain out.

4. Position the bin in a well lit area of the garden with plenty of drainage as well as being out of the wind if possible.

5. Place the compost bin on soil rather than concrete and break the soil beneath it up to allow drainage.

Many more environment tips can be found on abacus house clearance online

By: Vicki Duong

Before you start on your first composting project of the year, have you thought about what you were going to place your compost in? I don’t mean, “In my garden,” or even, “In my houseplant’s soil,” those are all moot points. I mean, have you considered whether you were going to compost out in the open for anything and everyone to see, or perhaps in a compost bin or compost tumbler? After all, these are important points to consider and they may hold the key to a successful composting project.

There are quite a few methods when it comes to composting; some use the open composting method by building a pile of compost out in the woods or yard, others use compost tumblers and bins. I prefer the compost tumbler method out of all of them mainly because I lead quite a busy life and can’t commit to watering down my compost constantly if it’s out in the open in addition to turning the pile on a regular basis. However, that’s not to say that a compost tumbler is better than open composting; both methods produce the same amount of compost in the same amount of time so long as you keep your compost heaps aerated.

Moving forward, compost tumblers have a lot of great benefits, the most obvious being that if you’re a busy person all you really have to do is toss all your food scraps and/or yard waste into your tumbler, turn it or flip it (depending on the design) about every few days and you’re good. Tumblers of course, keep your compost aerated which is very important; you never want your compost to stay stagnant because that would bore the little microbes in your heap. They should be actively eating and decomposing all the matter in the tumbler or bin!

Another reason I prefer tumblers over other methods is that it keeps animals and rodents away from your compost. Your pile will stay securely in the tumbler until it’s ready to be removed, which can be easily done. But the big reason why I like compost tumblers is because they’re fun! Sorry to the folks who have open compost heaps, but I don’t find using a pitch fork to turn my compost appealing at all. Something about spinning or flipping my compost tumbler while on a steady axis sounds easier. Call me lazy or what have you, but know this: my compost heap is still just as good as yours!