Compost is very important for your garden. It provides all the natural minerals and nutrients your plants need to grow. Composting is very hard work and time consuming, depending on the size of your garden.
You should have a compost bin by your garden. This will be a great place to keep all of the composting materials you will collect. Making a bin is easy. You will need to make it out of boards, 2x4's and 1x4's, alternating them as you build the compost bin. You can use big 4x4 posts to put on each corner of your bin to keep it supported. Be sure to leave a 2 inch gap in between each board for air circulation. The bin should be about 5 feet wide, 4 feet tall and about 5 feet deep. Making the bin with only 3 sides is a great idea, keeping the front of it open for easy filling and removing of composting materials. You can use the clippings from when you cut your grass, trim hedges or rake up leaves. Put these materials in the bin, placing them into 6 inch layers, alternating between them. Keep alternating between the green and brown materials. If you have plants that have died, you can dump them and their soil right into the bin too. When the bin is full, you will need to buy potting soil or mulch and cover the compost materials. You will need to turn the compost over every few weeks.
Composting works by heating up the material, turning the leaves, grass, soil and hedge clippings into a composting material. This process will break down the material, infusing them together. Water and other tricks of mother nature help with this process. If you have a garden hose and sprinkler, you should spray the compost with water for about 2 hours every day. Keeping the material moist will hasten the composting time. By turning the compost over every three weeks, this will ensure that the material on the edges will break down completely. The material in the middle will break down easily, but the stuff on the edges is what needs to be turned into the center.
One of the great ingredients for a good compost is to use shredded bark. You can buy rough, hardwood bark from your garden dealer. Put the bark into a low pile, not very high, because if it is too high, it will shed off rain water. The point is to keep the bark very wet at all times, this is what helps it to rot and break down. The more wet the bark is, the faster it will break down and the faster you can put in in with your other composting material. Do not use up all the rotted bark completely, because you will need to use it to mix it in with your future compost. As you use up a portion, get more bark and start the decomposing process over again.
Composting is hard work indeed, but will benefit your growing garden.
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