Millstone Times July 2022

HOME IMPROVEMENT Your Home Garden Tips For Composting Correctly By, Lauren Kowlacki

Composting is a process used instead of dumping many organic items such as coffee grinds, veggies and grass clippings in the trash. Composting is a form of recycling and used for soil amendment. Recycling organic materials at home helps keep tons of food waste and yard debris from going to the landfill each year. Consistently maintain your compost makes for faster the composting happens usually within 3 weeks. In a passively managed compost pile, where the material is simply piled and left alone, it may take a year or longer to complete the process and will cause odor and unwanted animals. The process: As microbes consume ingredients in the pile and convert raw ingredients to compost, they generate heat. The interior of the pile becomes warm to the touch and gives off steam. When the compost is ready, it stops building up heat and the finished compost is dark and crumbly with a pleasant and earthy aroma. Composting microbes consume nitrogen as they work through the pile. If they’re not finished and you turn them into the soil, the microbes compete with plants for all available nitrogen. This will stress your plants and counteract the positive effect that the finished compost could have had. Avoid the temptation to use unfinished compost. Use a store-bought compost sifter and you can make one with a few pieces of scrap lumber and some ¼-inch hardware cloth. It’s important to remember compost is a soil amendment, not a soil replacement. On its own, it holds too much water and provides no real structure. Few plants thrive in that environment. Compost is most effective either incorporated into the soil or applied at the soil surface. When you have more finished compost than you need you can store it in compost containers that are made specifically for composting. They are breath able. You can also make your own with woven bags or plastic containers with air holes punched in the sides. These containers should be stores in a cool, dry location. Your home-made compost is excellent for indoor plants or any potted plant. Use 1-part compost and 3-parts soil/ perlite or vermiculite by volume. Com post alone holds too much moisture. Perlite or vermiculite will balance out the water retention properties. For outside garden use, mix 1 to 2 inches of compost into your garden beds. When planting a tree or shrub, make a uniform mixture of compost and soil from the planting hole. This combination creates a transitional growing environment where roots can easily expand from the potting mix, while also flour ishing into the local soil. Composting is great for your garden and the environment. The compost enriches the soil structure and nutrient retention ability of both sandy soil and clay soil. Additionally, it improves root development, drought tolerance, and disease resistance in garden plants.

16 The Millstone Times

July 2022