Creative Gardening

Posts Tagged ‘Compost Pile’

Composting is absolutely one of the easiest and most environmentally friendly things you that can do, since food waste accounts for over 25% of the waste collected in the United States. Composting is as easy as collecting food remnants and yard trimmings and allowing them to decompose. This decomposed matter, called compost also known as humus, is also an excellent amendment to your soil. It adds important nutrients to your soil, helping you to grow healthier and more productive plants. You can even use compost as a potting medium.

Composting takes placeon it?s own, naturally, however if you residein an area with composting restrictions, or if you are looking to have your compost to mature faster, there are a few things you can do to expedite the process. Below are three tips to help you compost more effectively.

1. Use a compost bin. Today numeroud locations require the use of a compost bin rather than just allowing you pile up your food waste and yard trimmings. Food scraps attract rats and other animals; obviously, this is a problem. You can prevent animals from getting at your compost by using a compost bin. There are many different types available of compost bins for sale, but the most common is a black plastic bin with a lid on top for adding your organic matter, and a door at the bottom through which you can retrieve your compost.

2. No animal products in the compost. When we talk of food waste to be composted, that means the waste from fruits or vegetables; i.e. apple peels, onion peel, carrot peels and leaves, etc. You can also include eggshells (wash them off first to prevent the risk of salmonella) and coffee grounds and tea leaves (remove the bag first). It is critical to never include any meat or waste that has been cooked in oil or butter.

3. Build your Compost Pile. After putting in your ?green? scraps (food waste or yard trimmings) to your compost pile, you should add a ?brown? layer to the bin. The layer of ?brown? could be either strips of newspaper, leaves, straw, or even sawdust. Layering is an important way to build nutrient-rich compost. It also helps to keep the bugs and other animals down.

Using these three steps, you can easily create healthy, nutrient-rich compost at home. This will eliminate the need for costly soil amendments and will help to save the environment. So maintaining a compost bin helps lower your expenses by decreasing the amount of money that you are spending on gardening amendments; you know exactly what is going into your garden because the elements that make up the compost comes directly from your food; and you are helping the environment. It absolutely is like a great decision to make.

You can find compost bins for sale on the Internet. What are you waiting for? Get out there are start composting!

Access expert info about how to install suspended ceiling – this is your own guide.

If we could garden without any interference from the pests which attack plants, then indeed gardening would be a simple matter. But all the time we must watch out for these little foes little in size, but tremendous in the havoc they make.

As human illness may often be prevented by healthful conditions, so pests may be kept away by strict garden cleanliness. Heaps of waste are lodging places for the breeding of insects. I do not think a compost pile will do the harm, but unkempt, uncared-for spots seem to invite trouble.

There are certain helps to keeping pests down. The constant stirring up of the soil by earthworms is an aid in keeping the soil open to air and water. Many of our common birds feed upon insects. The sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles are all examples of birds who help in this way. Some insects feed on other and harmful insects. Some kinds of ladybugs do this good deed. The ichneumon-fly helps too. And toads are wonders in the number of insects they can consume at one meal. The toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us.

Each gardener should try to make her or his garden into a place attractive to birds and toads. A good birdhouse, grain sprinkled about in early spring, a water-place, are invitations for birds to stay a while in your garden. If you wish toads, fix things up for them too. During a hot summer day a toad likes to rest in the shade. By night he is ready to go forth to eat but not to kill, since toads prefer live food. How can one “fix up” for toads? Well, one thing to do is to prepare a retreat, quiet, dark and damp. A few stones of some size underneath the shade of a shrub with perhaps a carpeting of damp leaves, would appear very fine to a toad.

There are two general classes of insects known by the way they do their work. One kind gnaws at the plant really taking pieces of it into its system. This kind of insect has a mouth fitted to do this work. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are of this sort. The other kind sucks the juices from a plant. This, in some ways, is the worst sort. Plant lice belong here, as do mosquitoes, which prey on us. All the scale insects fasten themselves on plants, and suck out the life of the plants.

Now can we fight these chaps? The gnawing fellows may be caught with poison sprayed upon plants, which they take into their bodies with the plant. The Bordeaux mixture which is a poison sprayed upon plants for this purpose.

In the other case the only thing is to attack the insect direct. So certain insecticides, as they are called, are sprayed on the plant to fall upon the insect. They do a deadly work of attacking, in one way or another, the body of the insect.

Sometimes we are much troubled with underground insects at work. You have seen a garden covered with ant hills. Here is a remedy, but one of which you must be careful.

This question is constantly being asked, ‘How can I tell what insect is doing the destructive work?’ Well, you can tell partly by the work done, and partly by seeing the insect itself. This latter thing is not always so easy to accomplish. I had cutworms one season and never saw one. I saw only the work done. If stalks of tender plants are cut clean off be pretty sure the cutworm is abroad. What does he look like? Well, that is a hard question because his family is a large one. Should you see sometime a grayish striped caterpillar, you may know it is a cutworm. But because of its habit of resting in the ground during the day and working by night, it is difficult to catch sight of one. The cutworm is around early in the season ready to cut the flower stalks of the hyacinths. When the peas come on a bit later, he is ready for them. A very good way to block him off is to put paper collars, or tin ones, about the plants. These collars should be about an inch away from the plant.

Of course, plant lice are more common. Those we see are often green in colour. But they may be red, yellow or brown. Lice are easy enough to find since they are always clinging to their host. As sucking insects they have to cling close to a plant for food, and one is pretty sure to find them. But the biting insects do their work, and then go hide. That makes them much more difficult to deal with.

Rose slugs do great damage to the rose bushes. They eat out the body of the leaves, so that just the veining is left. They are soft-bodied, green above and yellow below.

A beetle, the striped beetle, attacks young melons and squash leaves. It eats the leaf by riddling out holes in it. This beetle, as its name implies, is striped. The back is black with yellow stripes running lengthwise.

Then there are the slugs, which are garden pests. The slug will devour almost any garden plant, whether it be a flower or a vegetable. They lay lots of eggs in old rubbish heaps. Do you see the good of cleaning up rubbish? The slugs do more harm in the garden than almost any other single insect pest. You can discover them in the following way. There is a trick for bringing them to the surface of the ground in the day time. You see they rest during the day below ground. So just water the soil in which the slugs are supposed to be. How are you to know where they are? They are quite likely to hide near the plants they are feeding on. So water the ground with some nice clean lime water. This will disturb them, and up they’ll poke to see what the matter is.

Beside these most common of pests, pests which attack many kinds of plants, there are special pests for special plants. Discouraging, is it not? Beans have pests of their own; so have potatoes and cabbages. In fact, the vegetable garden has many inhabitants. In the flower garden lice are very bothersome, the cutworm and the slug have a good time there, too, and ants often get very numerous as the season advances. But for real discouraging insect troubles the vegetable garden takes the prize. If we were going into fruit to any extent, perhaps the vegetable garden would have to resign in favour of the fruit garden.

A common pest in the vegetable garden is the tomato worm. This is a large yellowish or greenish striped worm. Its work is to eat into the young fruit.

A great, light green caterpillar is found on celery. This caterpillar may be told by the black bands, one on each ring or segment of its body.

The squash bug may be told by its brown body, which is long and slender, and by the disagreeable odour from it when killed. The potato bug is another fellow to look out for. It is a beetle with yellow and black stripes down its crusty back. The little green cabbage worm is a perfect nuisance. It is a small caterpillar and smaller than the tomato worm. These are perhaps the most common of garden pests by name. Read more other articles about beautifully modest wedding gowns and wedding bubbles.

Get valuable experiences in the topic of how to install suspended ceiling – your individual knowledge base.

Most gardeners use some type of fertilizer to ensure that their soil contains an adequate amount of minerals and nutrients to provide their gardens with enough food to grow healthy plants.  In fact, fertilizer is so widely used that a single gardening center may carry several varieties to accommodate individual gardening needs.  But buying fertilizer can be expensive, especially if you have a large garden.  The good news is that you can make your own fertilizer by starting a compost heap.  By doing your own gardening composting, you will have unlimited compost year round.

Why Do Gardening Composting

Making your own garden compost has several benefits, the most obvious one being that it’s extremely cost effective.  So much so that it won’t cost you anything whatsoever.
Using compost improves not only the texture of your soil, but also the soil’s ability to retain water.  It also increases the fertility of your soil without the use of chemicals which can be dangerous to animals or humans.  Compost can also do a great deal to fix common soil issues, such as loosening clay soils and making sandy soils a bit more water retentive. 
From a broader point of view, gardening composting also is very helpful to the environment.  It helps reduce landfill loads.  With space in landfills becoming harder and harder to find, creating your own compost means that more unnecessary waste won’t be added to the already overfull landfills.

What To Use In Gardening Composting

Any type of organic material makes for good compost.  Typically, a good compost pile will be composed of both “brown” and “green” materials.  Brown materials are things such as dead leaves, straw, and wood chips, whereas green materials are fresh items such as grass clippings and scraps from your kitchen.  The type and ratio of these materials can make a difference in the rate of decomposition, and it may take you a while to get the right ratio down.  A general rule of thumb for gardening composting is 25 parts of browns to 1 part of greens.

When it comes to natural yard waste, there are a few you’ll want to avoid using in your compost pile.  Black walnuts trees, sumac, poison oak and poison ivy are all toxic and should be avoided at all costs.

If you use pine needles, be sure to chop them up because their waxy coating makes them slow to decompose.  Grass clippings make wonderful compost, as they break down quickly and are rich in nitrogen.  To avoid them turning sour, you can spread them out on the driveway and let them sit in the sun.  This will dry them out and make them ready for the compost heap.

When it comes to kitchen scraps, pretty much anything is suitable for use in gardening composting.  Vegetable matter like melon rinds, any type of peelings, etc., can be used.  Meats and fatty foods can also go into the compost heap, but keep in mind that these will create a rather unpleasant odor as they decompose, and may attract pests to your compost pile.
 
Other additions to your compost pile can include things like ashes from your wood stove or fireplace, plants or weeds pulled from your garden, hay or straw, and even manure.
 
Conclusion

Doing your own gardening composting not only providing yourself with a ready source of food for your garden; you’re also helping reduce landfill refuse and saving yourself a lot of money that could be spent elsewhere.  Once you know what to put into your compost heap, all that’s left is to choose a spot or a composting bin to start it in.