The wonderful world of compost

Building soil with black gold is as easy as 1 2 3! We will cover 3 easy ways to deal with our daily wastes that are compostable. What materials are compostable you say? Well anything you eat (veggies, dairy, meat, egg shells), paper and cardboard (shiny colored paper and cardboard are better recycled), straw, hay and manure (animal or human). First lets cover some basics..

Egg shells - important to replenish calcium in your garden, it is always best to crush them to speed the process. Tomatoes commonly have a calcium deficiency and can greatly benefit from this.

Dairy - Spoiled milk poured on the garden contains much needed enzymes for the soil biology

Browns - Leaves, straw, paper, cardboard, wood chips. These are high in carbon and low in nitrogen and typically are broken down by fungi

Greens - hay, grass, food scraps, manure. These are high in nitrogen and are typically broke down with bacteria.

Now we start!

Option #1
Make a 4' x 4' square or round using old pallets, blocks, wood or wire, make sure it is 4' tall as well.
We want to add a non PVC pipe with holes in it 4" to 6" x 4', this will allow oxygen in our pile.
We will now begin to layer our pile, we want to use a two to one ratio if possible but a 50/50 will work.
So we use 2 parts brown to one part green and we do this in layers adding a bit of soil each time, the soil contains the natural fungi and bacteria and will speed up the colonization process.
Make sure to shred your browns if possible, the smaller the size the faster it breaks down.
Keep the pile covered and moist.
Once the pile is full turn contents every week until materials are broken down.

Option #2
We will directly compost our materials, we can do this by using our paper and cardboard as sheet mulch, adding our hay and straw on top and putting our food scraps and garden waste directly under the mulch everyday. By doing this we let ALL of the natural goodness absorb into the beds, we lose some of the "tea" in our compost pile and the "tea" is very important. As time goes we create layers in the garden beds and the natural biology of the soil and our worm friends breaks this down into dirt. We must realize that it is actually the soil biology that feeds out plants, they are the ones that break things down into a usable form for the plants. Just because we think it is a fertilizer don't really mean it is in a usable form for a plant. Learn to grow soil and become blessed with the most healthy and productive garden.

Option #3
Worm tubes
Take 6" to 8" plastic pipe (avoid PVC) cut the length to 2', drill several holes in the bottom foot of the pipe. Use a post hole digger and dig a hole one foot deep and bury the pipe with the holes in the ground, next place a cap for the pipe on its top, this will keep bugs out. Put these tubes every six foot or so in your beds and each day you dump your food scraps and garden scraps in them. Again we want to make the size of material as small as possible for the worms to break down. What happens is the worms come in, eat and then carry the castings out into your garden deep into the soil, no fuss, no mess just fun.

ENJOY!!!