GardenMulchMaking Your Own Organic Compost
To see more: http://ourcloverhouse.blogspot.com/2015/04/making-your-own-organic-compost.html
Clover House, DeeDee Blogger
Decatur, TX
This
is our third season to have our raised bed gardens. We decided the first year
we built them that we should be composting so that each season we would have
nice soil for our veggies. This year, we are using our very own homegrown compost
in our gardens!
Time: 12 Months Difficulty: Easy
This
organic compost was made over a planting season's time. This is our first try
at making our own compost and we think it turned out awesome! It looks very
lovely as dirt goes.
My
honey did all the research and decided to use this old trough we had for our
compost. It may be a bit too large for what we are doing, but hey, it worked
for us just fine! I failed to snap a picture of the cover he uses, but its just
a hinged (in the center) piece of plywood that he cover in plastic to help
guard it a bit from the elements. He hinged the cover so it would be easy
access for adding our saved organics, stirring and watering.
This
is our yield for saving all of our kitchen organics plus some yard trimmings
from one season to the next. One wheel barrow full, and its a large wheel
barrow too! Here's a list of things we save and add to our bin:
Vegetable trimmings or peels
Fruit trimmings or peels
Coffee grounds (including the filter)
Tea bags (I remove the staples from the tags)
Paper towel rolls
Toilet paper rolls
Dried leaves
Grass
trimmings
Small tree or bush trimmings from the yard
Small tree or bush trimmings from the yard
In case you're interested, I use a Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl to save all my kitchen organics in. I got mine at Wal-Mart. We do not put any cooked food in our compost, that's just a preference of ours.
Also, we live in Texas, so it's necessary to water your compost in the summer here. Like now in the Spring, if we know its going to rain, we just open one end of our bin and let it rain in. Make sure your bin has drain holes, because too much water is not good either. If its not the rainy season, we water and then stir about once per week or when it needs it.
We
have four raised bed garden sections and my honey added a little of the compost
to each bed and then thoroughly mixed it in. Some beds still needed more soil,
so this year we added Miracle Grow's Garden Soil because it was on sale at
Lowe's. Bargain!!
See
that luscious green stuff there on the right? That's our cilantro. Once you
plant it you have it forever! It really needs no help at all to keep going!
There were even a few plants growing in the rocked area, so I pulled those up
and put them back in their correct spot. Even though they looked wilted the day
I transplanted them, they are perfectly fine now!
This
is our tomato and pepper section. We planted the marigolds in the center isle
to help keep bugs away! Just a tip I learned from Pinterest!
We
use a soaker hose system that my honey hooked up so that all four beds are fed
by one connection. We have this hose connected to our condensate water
collector that you can read about HERE:
http://www.hometalk.com/4226331/rain-barrel-...
This
view is all four beds. You can see the water hose hooked up to the PVC line
that feeds all the connected soaker hose. He's pretty smart that honey bun of
mine!
Do you compost? If so, do you have any good tips for us? Please leave a comment.
Do you compost? If so, do you have any good tips for us? Please leave a comment.
