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How To Compost Your Waste
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Compost is truly a gardener’s delight. It’s so simple to learn how to compost, and it always strikes me as amazing that we can turn our waste into such rich material. All that waste from our food that we can’t use in the kitchen can be recycled into a great food source for the plants in our garden.
In fact, if we look at the cycle more closely, it’s never ending. We grow vegetables in our gardens, take them into the kitchen for food, and the parts that we cannot eat come back out into the compost pile to create fertilizer to make next year’s crop grow even bigger, stronger and healthier.
Feeding the soil with compost not only provides plant food, but it can improve the plants’ resistance to disease and pests too.
Most people create compost in one of two ways. First, you can have an open compost pile or heap. You simply throw your waste onto it and leave it to rot, usually until the following year.
Second you can use an enclosed container such as a compost bin. This has several advantages:
- The container keeps the compost warm and moist which helps everything to rot down faster. Open compost piles can become too cold in cool climates and too dry in hot climates.
- The compost bin keeps out rats and other vermin, which can otherwise be a problem as they scavenge your waste. Rats visiting your open compost heap can make you very unpopular with your neighbors!
- It looks tidier, which is especially important in a small garden where everything is visible through the windows of the house.
- It also keeps any bad smells from the compost sealed inside.
- With most purpose designed compost bins you can access the garden-ready compost from the bottom through a flap or door. Open compost heaps must be turned with a fork to get at the good stuff.
So when you are considering how to compost, do look out for a good compost bin. It makes your composting much easier to manage.
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