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If you have any type of houseplant, trees planted in your yard, a vegetable garden, or a flower garden, then you can use a compost pile. Making a compost pile is an easy way to dispose of grass trimmings, dead plants, (the ones from last years garden can be used too) tree leaves, sawdust, leftover food scraps,(garbage), and weeds. A compost pile turns these mateirals into rich organic soil which adds much-needed nutrients back to the ground it is used on.
To start your own compost pile, first, if you live in the city, you must check to make sure there is not an ordinacne against having a compost pile. Then, if there is not, you can choose a place that is out of the way in your backyard, or use a space in your vegetable garden. You can then buy a compost container which is espeically designed for this use or you can just create your own pile without using any structures. Either way works well and is fine.
Begin by making a pile of whatever waste materials you may havem, such as grass clippings. Then as you get more wastes, add them to the compost pile. Garbage from food should be buried inside the pile and covered up completely to keep unwanted pests away. This will keep hungry wild animals such as possums and ground hogs, raccoons, and more from begin too nosy and geting into your compost pile. It might be a good idea to add sticks in between the layers in order to allow the air to flow through the pile as it needs plenty of air.
The compost pile needs three things to support the earthworms, bacteria, etc that works inside it and breaks down the waste material. Thsoe three things are moisture, oxygen, and nitrogen. TO ensure that your pile stays moist, check the middle of it when you turn the pile over. If the middle is dry, then you will need to add some water to it. In order to add oxygen, you must use a spade or shovel and turn the pile over from time to time. Be sure to turn the compost pile over often. Through the process of breaking down the waste materials your compost pile will actually heat up to a temperature somewhere around one hundred and twenty degrees, and then it will cool back down.
In order to have a compost pile to use on your vegetable or lfower garden in the spring, a compost pile should be started in the autumn of the previous year. It will continue to decay and break down as the seasons change. The cold weather of winter will not hurt it.
Your compost pile will be ready to use when it looks dark in color all the way through. Its texture will be crumnbly, not at all fine. You might be surprised at the smell. It will not smell like anything like the materials that you added to it. IT will instead smell like the soil.
You can now spread your compost pile on your gardens or even pout some on your houseplants to help them even grow better. You have just made yourdelf some of the finest, richest soil additive that you will ever find.
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