Posts Tagged ‘Compost Tumbler’
What is Compost?
You hear the word all the time, but what is compost? Let’s take a couple of minutes to talk about it and why it’s so very beneficial to your vegetable garden.
What is Compost?
Compost is decomposed organic matter. It can be made up of leaves, wood chips/shavings, lawn clippings, weeds (as long as they aren’t blooming), kitchen scraps, eggshells, used coffee grounds, manure — anything organic except most fats and proteins.
As all these things sit, beneficial bacteria go to work to transform what could be a smelly pile to a rich, sweet-smelling mixture that vegetable plants adore. Compost lightens clay soils and “plumps up” sandy soils.
Making compost is a form of recycling. Instead of throwing organic matter into the garbage, you can recyle it into the best kind of gift you can give your veggies (not to mention just about every other plant in your yard).
What Compost Isn’t
All by itself, compost is not a fertilizer. Although compost does contain nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (along with trace elements), you usually still need some fertilizer to give your plants their best harvest. (If you’ve been reading on this site, you probably know that I favor organic gardening techniques over chemical.) However, compost does help hold the fertilizer you do give, closer to the roots (where plants need it most).
Kinds of Compost
There are all kinds of ways to make compost; a few of the most common ways include:
There is also a cool kitchen gadget that takes your scraps and creates compost from them within 2 weeks. Seeing as most ways take a month or more, it’s kind of neat (although a bit on the expensive side). Still, if you don’t have room for a bin or a tumbler, and don’t have a cool enough spot for worms, you may want to consider a kitchen scrap composter.
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