What is Composting?

Composting is recycling your kitchen waste and lawn trimmings and turning them into a valuable resource for your garden or houseplants.  What happens is that the process of composting is basically speeding up the natural process of decomposition.  If you are a keen gardener then composting is somthing that you should learn more about.

Don’t confuse compost with soil.  This is something that a lot of people beleive but it really isn’t anything like the dirt you find just lying about on the ground.  It is a substance that acts as a fertilizer (enriching the soil) to grow hardier and healthier plants.

If you have never done any composting before then you need to understand what options are available to you – what type of container and style suits your project, what you will be putting into your compost bin, and where you are going to be locating the bin.  No matter what choices you have to make, how you convert your waste into compost happens the same way.  Basically what happens is that tiny bacteria and fungi (microbes)break down the waste you have placed in the bin.

The microbes are the workers of the composting equation.  They need air, water, and food to do their job and it is up to you to supply it to them in the right quantities.  For great compost you should consider using worms.

It might be that if you are not familiar with owning a compost that you think that composts are all smelly horrible things it is most likely the result of not enough air circulating throughout the waste material.  Without air, the material will still breakdown but it will be done by anaerobic microbes (organisms that do not need oxygen) as opposed to aerobic (ones that need oxygen).  If you discover that your compost is emmitting a foul smell then you should add in some cardboads and also turn the compost with a fork to allow more air into it.  Wood chips or hay are good for the compost.

Composting is good for the environment and your garden – it eliminates the amount of waste you throw away and enriches the soil your plants grow in.