Compost - Your Free Garden Gold!

Hello again!  With the help of mild pain killers, and the passage of time, I'm able to sit up straight enough to type for short periods of time. And for that, I am very grateful!

You may have purchased bags of commercially produced compost in the past to feed any or all of your garden plants. But compost is an excellent all purpose plant food and soil conditioner that you can produce on your own in or near your garden area.  There are two primary ways for the home gardener to make compost. The first is to buy any of a large number of "compost tumblers" available at garden centers, through catalogs, or via many, many websites. They come in various sizes to fit your needs. The picture below shows what might be an average size model that a neighbor of ours uses. I believe it's a 37 gallon model. Some models can be as large as 90 gallons. 

Kitchen scraps and organic yard waste such as leaves and grass are put into the tumbler. Do not put meat scraps or vegetable dishes with sauces, etc. into the compost mix. Ideally, you will have a mix of 1 part green (kitchen waste & grass clippings) materials and 2 parts brown materials such as dried leaves. This mix will keep a good ratio of nitrogen to carbon in the finished compost. The gardener then turns the tumbler on a regular basis to mix and speed up the process of turning the waste into "garden gold".

Most gardeners who use tumblers also use a "compost starter".  These starters are helpful bacteria which greatly speed up the process. Another good starter is a shovel full of good soil from your garden because it has those helpful bacteria, too - and it's a lot cheaper than buying commercial starters.  If done correctly, when the materials in the tumbler have rotted sufficiently- into a fine, dark soil like substance -  your compost is ready to be applied to your garden. The composting process generates heat when working properly. You may notice that warmth when adding to the tumbler or when emptying it. If you choose to buy a compost tumbler, it will come with full instructions on its proper use.

The other method of making your own "garden gold" is to build your own compost heap somewhere out in your yard. That's what we've done. Its simple and cheap! Over the  past five years now, we've probably harvested several hundred pounds of good, dark, worm filled compost. As an example, even though I had pretty much emptied the heap in the spring, last fall I dug five 5 gallon buckets of compost out of the heap and poured it back onto the asparagus and tomato areas so it could be assimilated into the soil over the winter. As you can see in the picture above, we've been tossing stuff in ours all winter - garden stuff, kitchen scraps, Christmas greens and so on. Now that the heap has thawed out, I'll be turning it regularly.

Next Time - Build Your Own Low Cost Compost Heap!