Green Gardening

Should You Spread Compost in the Spring or the Fall?

You probably already know that adding compost to your garden is an ideal way to replenish the soil.  Plants always use up organic matter and nutrients as they grow.  These important soil elements should be replaced each year so that your plants continue to thrive.  But here's a question for you: Should you add compost to the garden in the spring or the fall?  In fact, you can do it either way, depending on the circumstances.  Let's look at why you might choose to spread compost in either the spring or the fall. Fall application of compost Suppose you've been making compost all spring and summer and you now have a gigantic pile that you want to put to good use.  When it comes to adding large amounts of compost to the garden, autumn is the best season for the task.  Anytime after the first hard frost is fine - just make sure you add it before the ground is frozen. The ideal way to incorporate large amounts of compost into the garden is mix it into the soil, by hand or by machine.  If that sounds like too much work, it's perfectly acceptable to just spread the compost over top of the ...

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How to Use Compost in the Garden

Compost is a versatile natural substance that can benefit any yard or landscape.  Experienced gardeners have all kinds of tricks for using this nutrient-rich organic matter as a soil amendment, fertilizer, and mulch.  If you find yourself with a lot of the stuff, you may be looking for things to do with it.  Here are some suggestions on how to use compost effectively in your garden. For general soil improvement, spread one to four inches over the entire growing area in the fall or spring, mixing it thoroughly into the top twelve inches of soil.  Well-decomposed compost also makes an excellent mulch material.  When spread in one- to six-inch layers around the base of plants, it provides nutrients, controls weeds, stabilizes soil temperature, and reduces the need for watering. Before you plant a new lawn, till a two-inch layer of well-decomposed compost into the soil.  A top dressing of screened compost will also nourish an existing lawn.  It's best to apply it in the fall or spring after aerating the lawn. When building new garden beds, mix four to eight inches of compost into the soil before planting anything.  Existing annual flowerbeds can be kept in growing shape with the incorporation of one ...

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How to Start a Compost Pile

Enriching the soil with compost is perhaps the single most important action you can take to improve the health and productivity of your garden.  Recycling plant debris and kitchen waste into nutrient-rich compost is also a smart way to do something good for the environment.  With all the positive things you've heard, you can't wait to build your own compost heap.  Here are some tips for getting started with composting. First of all, decide on a spot for your compost pile.  The spot should be somewhere that gets sun for much of the day.  It's often convenient to put the compost pile near the garden area and near a source of water.  Buy a compost bin or make one yourself by hammering cedar posts into the ground and wrapping wire mesh around them.  Throw a few handfuls of sticks or twigs on the bottom to elevate the pile and allow air to circulate. Now, you can begin to add the ingredients.  Put in a thick layer of dried leaves, shredded paper, or straw.  These are carbon-rich materials known as "browns."  Follow this with a layer of fresh grass clippings, garden trimmings, or kitchen scraps (no animal products or oils).  These are nitrogen-rich ...

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Compost Materials That Need Special Handling

It's a good idea to use a variety of materials in your compost heap.  Common sense will suggest that different ingredients contribute different nutrients and value to the finished product.  Usually, the raw materials in a compost heap will begin to rot very quickly once mixed together and moistened with water.  However, some plant and vegetable debris is slow to decompose or can interfere in some other way with the composting process.  Here are some raw materials that need extra attention if you want to add them to your compost bin. Corncobs, cotton stalks, sugarcane leaves, and palm fronds are slow to rot.  They should be chopped up and mixed with materials that break down easily.  Citrus rinds are surprising tough and should be chopped into pieces or burned to ashes before composting. Apple pomace (waste material from cider-making) is excellent for composting, but because it contains a lot of moisture, it should be spread in thin layers.  The apple seeds may survive even through the heating of the pile.  Similarly, hops (brewery wastes) add value to the compost but can make the pile excessively damp.  Add an extra layer of dry material to balance things out and keep an eye on ...

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Meet the Microorganisms that Create Compost

If you think about it, that compost pile you built so carefully in the back yard is actually a teeming mass of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms.  That may sound a little disgusting, but it's really a good thing.  The organic material that you put into the compost pile contains elements that plants need to grow.  But those elements are locked up, unusable until bacteria and fungi break down the material.  Let's take a closer look at the microscopic life forms that cause decomposition to happen. The microorganisms involved in making compost need just four things to live.  They need an energy source.  This comes from carbon-rich materials such as dried leaves and straw.  They need a protein source.  This comes from nitrogen-rich materials such as kitchen waste or manure.  And they need oxygen and water.  If we expect to get compost, it's up to us to provide all of these elements.  Many composting problems can be attributed to a deficiency in one of these things. Thousands of different bacteria are at work in a compost pile, but for this discussion we are interested in three main categories.  Each group works within a different temperature range.  When bacteria digest organic matter in ...

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