Composting Tips

Hints, Secrets and Guidelines from a Certified Horticulturist

Composting Tips to Try:

• Composting can be done in a black plastic bag to solarize weed seeds from horse manure.

  Put weeds, moist horse manure, fall leaves, and other garden waste along with a shovel full of garden soil into a large peat moss bag or other sturdy bag, roll to mix, then let it heat up.

  Several to many of these can form a retaining wall, keeping the soil behind warm for tomatoes, peppers and other heat loving vegetables.

  In the fall, dump out the bags onto the bed, and the compost will be dark, loose and friable.

• Shred leaves in a metal garbage can with the string trimmer (weed whacker) or run them over and pick them up with a ride on lawn mower.

  The small amount of lawn clippings picked up at the same time aerates the leaves which tend to pack down, and if you add some soil from the garden the worms and other microorganisms will proliferate.

  By the time spring arrives, your compost will be ready.

• Here’s a composting tip for the really eager: put your kitchen waste in small containers such as ice cream pails, yogurt containers or milk jugs, and put them in the freezer. Once the waste is frozen, it will break down much quicker. Thawed and added to the worm composting bin, or the compost pile it acts as a quickly available source of nutrients.

• Make compost tea with a bag of manure from the garden center – simply poke some holes in the thick plastic bag, sink it into a rain barrel to ferment, and when the bag is exhausted, add it to your compost pile.

  The well soaked manure will seep down into the pile, and add much needed nutrients for the micro herd.

• If your compost pile starts to smell really bad, like rotten eggs, it’s too wet. Sprinkle some dry sawdust or wood chips, peat moss or shredded leaves on it and mix it in to the top layer. Stop adding water, or cover if it’s raining.

  Use some compost activators to help accelerate the process.

  Don’t worry, the pile will dry out, but anerobic composting smells really bad; it’s also recognized that the nutrients lost during anerobic composting are substantial.

• To keep your compost pile going through the winter if you’re in a cold area, make two rings of fencing, one about 40-50 cm smaller than the other.

  Fill the space between the rings with fall leaves, and start adding your compost ingredients to the center – bury your kitchen scraps in a hole, and the heat from decomposition will keep the pile from freezing in even the coldest conditions.

  Keep some bags of dry leaves handy to cover each addition of kitchen scraps, which will help to keep the compost pile warm.

Do you have any composting tips to add to the list? Share them here:

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