So from our last segment, you’ve got those seedlings in the ground? Excellent. Now let’s get into how to keep your garden vibrant and productive.
Continually adding compost to your garden beds is crucial for sustainability. Fortunately, making compost is fairly easy – nature does most of the work.
There are many, many ways of making compost. If you recall, the BI (bio-intensive) method is a plant based system. And the two videos below give an excellent way to create compost from only vegetation sources.
This is the most classic way to make compost. This is one of the most simple and easy ways to make compost and you really do need to be having at least one.
I have numerous compost piles going on all the time. Compost is that important! And yes, this is definitely one of the many methods I use. As I said, this is a classic way to make compost.
Did you know that your homemade compost is almost always superior to commercially made stuff?
Why?
Simply because you will probably be putting in a much greater diversity of materials – different kinds of food scraps, a diversity of plant materials, and a greater variety of browns. All those different materials will encourage and feed a greater variety of soil microorganisms – and the more micro organisms, the better the compost.
Commercially made compost typically has only a few different source materials and their microorganisms are less diverse.
Making totally amazing compost is one of the many advantages you have a s a home gardener.
OK, ready?
Watch both of these videos, do the homework, and then take the quiz.
You are doing great!
Homework:
Well, this weeks homework is a no-brainer – start a compost pile!
First you’ll need to start gathering the materials. In every region there is usually one part that is more difficult to obtain than the other. For example, my main research center is in Central Texas which has an arid climate. Getting ‘browns’ (the dried plant materials) is easy for me in Texas, but there are only certain times of the year when large quantities of ‘greens’ are easy to obtain. So I tend to only make large piles like shown in the videos when I’ve got enough ‘greens’ together.
I’ve spent some time in Costa Rica which is a very wet place. During the rainy season, the ‘browns’ are very difficult to obtain so typically gardeners there will find a covered area to dry out green materiel to make it ‘brown’ and to keep it dry until they are ready to make a pile.
Here is a quick list of materials that are considered ‘browns’ and ‘greens’
Browns:
- newspaper (shredded)
- junk mail (shredded)
- old egg cartons, cardboard, and cardboard food cartons (shredded into small pieces)
- leaves
- hay
- old cotton or wool clothes (shredded)
- sawdust
- dryer lint (if not too full of synthetics)
Greens:
- coffee grinds
- vegetable scraps
- garden weeds
- landscape trimmings
- egg shells
- tea bags
- fresh corn cobs or husks
- stale bread
- grass clippings
- animal manures
- seaweed
Resources:
Want to see another way of making a super strong fertility boost for your garden? Check out this video.