Compost – Garden, Yard and Household Waste [A Crash Course]

Updated post from July 2009
iGarden {iCompost}

Large well made compost bin

Composting is easy, it’s a cheap and easy way to enrich you soil whether it be flower and shrub beds or your garden plot. Anything that has ever been alive can be composted. All that is needed is a place that is twice as large as your compost pile. If your very limited on space, you may want to opt for building or buying a barrel composter. I recommend a location near the back of your yard. Under the best conditions your going to have insect visitors at or near your compost pile.

Never try to compost any type of meat. Even when covered with compost materials meat eaters like dogs, cats, rats, wolf, coyotes, bears, skunks and other undesirables can smell the meat and will dig it out of your compost pile.

What can be composted? Anything that has ever been alive. Plant materials are most often what people compost but you can also compost all household garbage, vegetables, fruit, coffee, tea grounds, egg shells. With a flock of chickens to eat most of my kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable left overs my compost pile now consist mostly of garden plants, weeds, chicken/rabbit, litter and manure. I compost everything except meat and meat products to include fish, dairy products and my dogs droppings.
**Hint: Keep one of those plastic store bags handy in your kitchen to use as a compost bag and dump it into your compost pile once everyday or so. Then dispose of the bag as house hold waste.

Simple pallet compost bin

My staple compost materials are grass hay or wheat straw hay used as bedding in my livestock shed and as litter in my chicken coop. I don’t have very much in the way of grass clippings but that also go’s on the compost pile with any tree and bush clippings, tree leaves in the fall and all my old plants removed from my garden, flower and shrub beds. All that is needed is a place to contain your compost pile and make it easy for you to stir and rotate your compost pile. {Keep your compost pile ‘damp’ not wet and in a full sun location for quicker decomposition of plant materials.}

United States EPA Wastes – Resource Conservation – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – Composting web site. You are paying for it so please use it as a good reference site.

Composting will save you a lot of money buying fertilizers and your garden will be chemical free. Plants will grow better, faster and produce more while improving your garden soil year after year. Compost, then have fun and eat healthy.

Why is common sense so uncommon?
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