How to Accelerate Your Compost Tumbler - Most every gardener knows some of the benefits of compost, but often they have a hard time making enough for their use. Here are some tips to getting your composting bin working faster.
We all want to have all the compost we can get for our gardens. Compost does good things for your garden in more than one way. It improves the tilth of the soil, which improves drainage while allowing the soil to retain water better in hot weather.
It buffers the pH of the soil, reducing that acidity of soils that are too acid, and reducing the alkalinity of alkaline soil. Sifted compost is a good seed starting medium, great for those small seeds like carrots.
While the exact ratio of high carbon to high nitrogen materials doesn’t have to be exact, it does help to make sure that we don’t have too much of one or the other. Avoid using all one type of compost material like leaves or lawn clippings. Ratios will vary , but an even mixture of green and brown materials will keep most compost piles heating up well.
The smaller the pieces of material going into your composter the faster it will compost. That cuts down on the work the compost pile hast to do, and it exposes more of the internal cell structure of the plant material to the activity of the pile. Chop down the size of the larger pieces with a pruner, or even use a lawn mower for larger amounts. You may want to buy a electric chipper shredder to do a thorough job.
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A batch approach works best for fast compost. Once you have a pile working, start another pile or keep your kitchen waste in a kitchen compost pail. One idea is to have a small compost bin near the house, and move the contents to a larger pile in the yard for a large batch of compost.
To get compost the fastest, it’s necessary to turn the bin or pile every day or so. This has the dual advantage of bringing fresh composted material into the hotter center of the pile, while improving the air flow throughout the pile as well, refreshing the oxygen supply to the microbial activity in the hot middle of the pile.
The ideal moisture level is a pile that is like a damp cloth. Don’t allow it to get too wet, which can lead to a soggy slimy mess, while letting it get too dry will have things grind to a halt. With this in mind, make sure that you can cover the compost pile when the rainy season arrives. Give a few of these tips a go, and you should have more compost the next garden season.
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