The Easiest Way to Make Great Garden Compost - I’m eager now and summer is just over but in late winter/early spring I start thinking actively about my flower and vegetable gardens.
I haven’t been the best at getting planting time right and am either too late or get impatient to get new plants and seeds in the ground and sometimes I start planting too soon.
This year we plan to plant a little earlier than last year but we will cover the plants at night until the chance of frost has gone.
We are turning a room in our basement into our own little nursery so we can start from seeds indoors this year instead of buy plants.
We Are Using Our Compost Area Now
One thing that helps prevent myself from losing good seeds and young starter plants is to occupy myself with basic gardening preparation tasks instead. And the easiest one I know of which brings the greatest rewards is making compost.
Our compost bin was here when we bought the place, just hiding, unused, behind the garage. Well it’s getting good use now.
Beginner Tips for Making Compost
If you don’t know how to make compost don’t worry, this is super simple and easy to do particularly throughout the winter time. I have a fireplace and since that’s used frequently in the winter, it must be cleaned out about once each week.
Those fireplace ashes make a valuable contribution to garden compost piles though so I don’t just throw them away. Instead I collect them in a bucket or pail, take them outside, and dump them in to a corner of one of my garden beds.
I do the same thing with my used coffee and tea grounds too, because flowers and plants thrive with these. In fact there are times where I’ll simply spread used coffee grounds directly at the base of container or flowerbed plants throughout the year, or mix them into potting soil as I’m preparing for new plantings. They don’t have to be fully decomposed to provide excellent compost benefits to any type of flower, fruit, or vegetable plant.
I drink coffee daily so I usually just add the used grounds to a small kitchen jar for a week or two. As needed I’ll take that jar outside and dump it into the same place where I’ve been collecting the fireplace ashes. I mix the the pile a bit too.
As warmer spring days start I’ll also begin adding other organic waste. Usually this is pulled weeds, dead flowers from the previous year, and old grass, hay, or mulch materials. I add these to my pile of fireplace ashes, coffee grounds and tea grounds, then mix it all together. I usually make sure I’ve added this bit of yard waste before the last hard freeze, because the freezing weather seems to help everything break down and decompose at much faster rates.
Once I’m ready to start planting my flowers or vegetables, all I do is spread out the pile I’ve made and mix it into the dirt. It doesn’t matter if it’s not fully composted, because it will continue breaking down naturally over time.
Get a Compost Tumbler For Your Home Garden
In fact, once the ground is fully thawed and ready for planting, the undecayed compost material attracts fat worms who start doing a wonderful job of breaking everything down even faster.
Even without the worms though, the end result is rich, fertile compost and wonderful gardens with very little work!