Thursday, March 5, 2009
If you want to have good soil for your planting this spring, then you should make a compost pile.
Composts require three elements, says Cassandra Ford, waste reduction and recycling specialist for the city of Lawrence. You need moisture, heat and “ingredients” to make a compost pile. The ingredients consist of brown waste, such as leaves or mulch, and green waste, such as grass. The brown ingredients provide carbon, and the green ingredients provide nitrogen, Ford says, which start the compost process.
Dig this: Making your own compost pile is a great way to get some good soil for your spring planting.
You can put most waste into your compost pile. Don’t put in meats or dairy products because these will rot, smell and attract animals. You can bury other food waste and it won’t smell.
As for maintenance, composts are pretty simple. You don’t even have to do anything if you don’t want to, but you can turn the compost material over to make it decompose faster. If you do this, then your compost pile will decompose in six months; if you don’t do anything, it will take about a year, Ford says.
To accelerate your composting efforts, buy or make a compost bin. Compost bins keep out animals, which may try to live in your compost during the winter because of the heat composting creates. Most plastic compost bins are black, which absorbs heat from sunlight and speeds up the composting process.
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