How To Maintain A Compost Heap

There's so much waste that is generated in gardens every day. You'll find leaves, dead plants, twigs and grass clippings. It takes too long and probably involves a lot to take it to a landfill so what do you do?

The simplest solution is to start a compost heap saving a lot of time and money, not only yours but others as well if you were thinking of paying the garbage disposal people and getting them to take it away. Especially when all this waste can be converted into excellent food for your plants.

Food that's better as far as your plants go than any fertilizer you can buy. The great thing is that every bit of all that stuff that you consider waste can be turned into nutritional and beneficial food. You get the best fertilizer going without having to buy it paying so much for it.

Unfortunately, compost usually means rotting heaps and awful odors to most peoples minds. This need not be the case if you mange your compost heap well. You need to maintain it so that it gives you great compost without smelling to high heaven.

What you need to make sure of is to see that the heap gets enough oxygen. For this, you will have to turn it over periodically. If you don't, you'll probably have the neighbors banging on your door or worse still, you could have the authorities coming to check what you're up to.

When you start off with your compost heap, try and make sure the area you allot for it is shallow and covering a larger area that a deep and smaller area. This is because there are more chances that the deeper it is, the less likely that the bottom portions will be turned out so that they get exposed to the air.

The best thing would be if you had some kind of a flat surface like the roof over your shed to spread it out on. This way, you get it spread over a large area.

Now, what goes into the compost heap? Any kind of organic waste from your kitchen or garden. So you could put in your vegetable peels, leftovers, leaves, grass, twigs and even newspaper ? but remember not too much of newspaper, just one-fifth of the total volume or it will take longer to compost. This is the easy part ? getting everything together. Now you need to get the compost going and that?s a little tricky till you get the hang of it.

Once you have piled up a whole lot of stuff in your compost pile or bin, you should wet it. It?s easier for the material to get moist if they have all been broken up or ripped up into small pieces. Soon, you'll find this moist mass beginning to meld together.

You need to prod it along by turning it over once in a while with a shovel and making sure it stays wet. You could also use one of those aeration tools you get and poke it into the mass, making holes in it. This is to get the oxygen into the pile as that makes for quicker decomposing.

Interested? Then start off by deciding where in your garden you would like your compost heap to be. It shouldn't be a source of intrusion or take away from the beauty of your garden in any way. Find a place where it is tucked out of sight and you are ready to begin.

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