Composting is in fact putting mother natures own proven recycling system at work to your advantage. This site provides an overview of the various composting systems and techniques available to you. This will help you to find the system with the best fit to your own specific situation.
Composting – What it is
When you compost your biodegradable waste, you produce humus nutrient rich mulch that will feed your plants and improve their root system. Using compost to fertilize your garden will enhance the soils structure and drainage.
Using mulch or humus is the best way to improve your gardens growth; you will see your fruit garden flourish in the knowledge that the whole harvest is naturally grown and free from chemicals.
We are all familiar with the old compost heap, and this is still a perfectly sound but rather labor-intensive way to compost. Compost bins are easer to use, and the regular turning of the heap becomes outdated.
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Compost Heaps and Compost Bins – Vermicomposting
There are various ways of composting your garden and one popular way is by using the vermicomposting system
Vermicomposting is having specialized worms eat away and break down your kitchen and garden waste. It consists of making or buying a special type of bin or bed that the worms live in while breaking down the waste that is food to them. Most often used are Red Wigglers (Eisenia foetida or Eisenia andrei), and European nightcrawlers (Eisenia hortensis). You will find European Nightcrawlers also under the name of Belgian Nightcrawlers. These worms are real specialsts and you won’t find them often in other than biological waste areas.
Advantages of Vermicompost
One benefit of vermicomposting that it requires little physical effort. With other forms of composting you will need to dig, which may be difficult for some people. This is especially so with a compost pile that should be turned over regularly – even if its not, you still need to move those large quantities of waste to the pile and then remove the compost when it is ready for the garden.
However, even ordinary garden worms do some composting, so if you cannot access those special worms, you can still benefit your garden by composting all the waste that comes from it. Kitchen waste that is suitable for composting can also be incorporated into the compost pile.
Newspaper and cardboard can be used in the compost heap or to help conserve moisture in the garden. Simply spread layers in the garden, cover with grass clippings and toss animal manure over the top. Keep it damp and you’ll see that worms will soon break it all down into a layer of nutrient rich compost that can be raked through the soil. This is an easy way to get a new garden without digging. Simply spread it on the grass, but the layers need to be thick and the edges kept down with rocks.
This is a good way to compost, but many prefer the comfort of one or two strategically placed special compost bins.
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