By: Chris Dailey

If you have been gardening for very long, and especially if you are an organic gardener, you know one of the best mulches or soil amendments that you can add to your garden is natural compost. One particularly good kind of compost is created in worm bin where red worms are added to a mixture of bedding and organic waste. One of the best ways to do this is with what is called a composting bin. Here are a few tips on how to use these special bins in order to get top quality compost every time.

Throughout history, it is common knowledge that any gardeners that use dark, earthy soil as a base for their garden is going to create a healthy harvest in just a few months based upon the nutritional content and texture of the soil. If you’re soil is not so lucky as to appear in this way, one of the best ways to improve its quality, soil fertility, and also to stimulate the health of the roots of your plants that you are growing is to add vermicomposting material created in a worm bin.

Although modern technology is a mainstay for most of us including cell phones, places to live that are interconnected with civilization, and of course the Internet, this modernistic focus has led to farming means that are not natural and can damage the soil that we are using. Using commercial fertilizers and adding inorganic salt based nutrients with inorganic forms of potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen, are ways that most commercial farmers ensure that their crops will grow. This practice has been shown to create runoff with excessive salts and nutrient depleted soils.

With this in mind, it is probably time based upon the amazing amount of organic waste that our modern society produces that we find a way to take all of this back to the farms and our own homes and start creating food that is better for us and more nutritious on not only an individual scale but a global scale. One of these ways is educating people on the use of compost bins.

They are actually very easy to acquire and also economical. Within the soil itself, you would add worms but these are not the only organisms that will be in the dirt aiding the composting process. Organisms such as worms are helps by fungi, bacteria, mites, arthropods, and even insects that will love to live in this dark, moist habitat. The breaking down of organic waste will be accentuated and what will be left is a soil that is light, crumbly and moist and ready to interject into the soil that you currently have.

If you live near a large growth of trees, you can use the leaves as long as you shred them to a size that will compost very quickly. These will provide a natural source of carbon that the worms it is need in the bedding of the soil in order to do their job. Make sure that you do not use live oak trees or even magnolia trees because of the acidic value with in this carbon base that can be poisonous to the worms. If the worms die, so does your composting process.

One other thing to consider with composting bins is where you put the organic material for the worms and how far the worms should be beneath the soil compost mixture when you start out. As a rule of thumb, and most average compost containers, you should place a bout a thousand worms or 1 pound of worms about 6-8 inches beneath the soil, place your organic material on top, and then place the lid on top of the container to begin the process. After a period of two to three days depending upon how many worms you started with and also the amount of organic material that they have to process, this should be a fine start toward the creation of your compost as well as a great breeding environment for your worms.

Although this is common sense, but the more worms you have the better and the more compost you will inevitably make. By taking the profits that you will receive from selling excess worms or possibly excess compost, you can then invest into another container and start the whole process over again with no additional out-of-pocket expense.

So go out and do your due diligence and find yourself an affordable compost bin that will allow you to begin the vermicomposting process. We must all do our part in order to protect ourselves from food that is contaminated by modernistic processes and go back to growing some ourselves which will make us healthier and happier.

By: Chris Dailey

Garden composting has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Due to the exponential increase in population and the demands that a industrial civilization require in order to sustain itself, the natural processes have been set aside in regard to fertilization of our soil in an attempt to ramp up the production machine and at the same time forget how we used to simply go outside and begin to plant our garden during the planting season.

With the rise of increasing amounts of pesticides and other chemical imbalances in our industrialized food, there is a quiet movement that is growing more loudly each day that is moving toward a more naturalistic society which involves remembering how we used to create the food that we ate everyday. Here are a few tips on how you can begin to create a very rich soil for your new garden through composting the easy way.

The first thing you should know about the purpose of compost is that it is used to enhance the very structure of the soil itself. For instance, a good garden soil does not have a hard, dry consistency to it but it is loose and capable of holding enough water for the plants as well as providing an adequate exit route for excess water and drainage. Good quality compost can even be added to the most clay filled soils and improve their soil structure enough to yield high producing quality crops. Moreover, garden composting will take your average garden and make it into an extremely fruitful and profitable garden if you choose to market your excess yields.

Another important aspect of the composting process is the release of necessary nutrients such as nitrogen to the soil and many who use compost produce excellent garden soil without the need of any kind of fertilizer at all. And while you are doing this, you realize that not only are you saving money by creating compost with recycled garden waste, but you are helping the environment at the same time by not utilizing our many landfills for the organic material that we are accustomed to throwing away.

Now let’s get into how we can use space in our garden to begin the composting process so that later we can begin to mix it in and easily move into the planting process.

Most organic materials will decompose. You should use in your compost pile things such as leaves, grass clippings, and any substance that is organically based such as straw or hay. From your kitchen, you should add things such as coffee grounds, egg shells, and that any organic material such as left over vegetables that were not eaten.

If you are a contractor, you can even add a little sawdust if you believe that your nitrogen to carbon ratio will be too high. Obviously, do not add residue from pets such as dogs in that they are very capable of passing disease into your compost pile. Also do not add things such as grease or any milk products as this will attract any nearby rodent populations which will again add diseases such as Haunta virus to what you are trying to create.

Once you are in a routine of adding these materials to your pile, you will have to wait several weeks for your ingredients to reach a certain temperature. It is during this stage that any remaining disease or organisms will be eliminated because the pile can reach temperatures of 160 .

Basically, this becomes kind of a balancing act between the ingredients that you have added and the results that you wish to achieve. For instance, if you have too much carbon-based material such as paper or well aged cow manure your in your pile, your compost pile will have trouble reaching optimal temperatures in order to eliminate the bacteria that you are trying to kill. Likewise, if you walk past your pile and smell the fresh scent of ammonia, more than likely you have too much nitrogen in the pile. However, in the end, given enough time, your compost will be created.

Once the compost pile is finished, you can then begin mixing this with your soil to enrich your garden area so that your crops produce bountifully and in record time. Other possibilities are that you could use a trashcan or a structure such as a box that you could make in order to hold your compost but if all you have is a tarp that you can place over the compost so that it does not dry out, you are in business in creating the best material on earth for a successful garden venture. Either way, following this very simple system for creating your own compost will take very little time or effort and will generate high yields for you and your organic gardening family.

By: Chris Dailey

If you have been gardening for very long, and especially if you are an organic gardener, you know one of the best mulches or soil amendments that you can add to your garden is natural compost. One particularly good kind of compost is created in worm bin where red worms are added to a mixture of bedding and organic waste. One of the best ways to do this is with what is called a composting bin. Here are a few tips on how to use these special bins in order to get top quality compost every time.

Throughout history, it is common knowledge that any gardeners that use dark, earthy soil as a base for their garden is going to create a healthy harvest in just a few months based upon the nutritional content and texture of the soil. If you’re soil is not so lucky as to appear in this way, one of the best ways to improve its quality, soil fertility, and also to stimulate the health of the roots of your plants that you are growing is to add vermicomposting material created in a worm bin.

Although modern technology is a mainstay for most of us including cell phones, places to live that are interconnected with civilization, and of course the Internet, this modernistic focus has led to farming means that are not natural and can damage the soil that we are using. Using commercial fertilizers and adding inorganic salt based nutrients with inorganic forms of potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen, are ways that most commercial farmers ensure that their crops will grow. This practice has been shown to create runoff with excessive salts and nutrient depleted soils.

With this in mind, it is probably time based upon the amazing amount of organic waste that our modern society produces that we find a way to take all of this back to the farms and our own homes and start creating food that is better for us and more nutritious on not only an individual scale but a global scale. One of these ways is educating people on the use of compost bins.

They are actually very easy to acquire and also economical. Within the soil itself, you would add worms but these are not the only organisms that will be in the dirt aiding the composting process. Organisms such as worms are helps by fungi, bacteria, mites, arthropods, and even insects that will love to live in this dark, moist habitat. The breaking down of organic waste will be accentuated and what will be left is a soil that is light, crumbly and moist and ready to interject into the soil that you currently have.

If you live near a large growth of trees, you can use the leaves as long as you shred them to a size that will compost very quickly. These will provide a natural source of carbon that the worms it is need in the bedding of the soil in order to do their job. Make sure that you do not use live oak trees or even magnolia trees because of the acidic value with in this carbon base that can be poisonous to the worms. If the worms die, so does your composting process.

One other thing to consider with composting bins is where you put the organic material for the worms and how far the worms should be beneath the soil compost mixture when you start out. As a rule of thumb, and most average compost containers, you should place a bout a thousand worms or 1 pound of worms about 6-8 inches beneath the soil, place your organic material on top, and then place the lid on top of the container to begin the process. After a period of two to three days depending upon how many worms you started with and also the amount of organic material that they have to process, this should be a fine start toward the creation of your compost as well as a great breeding environment for your worms.

Although this is common sense, but the more worms you have the better and the more compost you will inevitably make. By taking the profits that you will receive from selling excess worms or possibly excess compost, you can then invest into another container and start the whole process over again with no additional out-of-pocket expense.

So go out and do your due diligence and find yourself an affordable compost bin that will allow you to begin the vermicomposting process. We must all do our part in order to protect ourselves from food that is contaminated by modernistic processes and go back to growing some ourselves which will make us healthier and happier.