The no-fuss Compost Method
For large quantities of organic matter, such as leaves, grass clippings, and garden residues, don’t go to the trouble of making a compost pile if you have a good roto-tiller.
Scatter the material to be composted over your garden area and till it into the soil. This is known as sheet composting.
It’s the simplest way to compost organic matter. The leaves and plant wastes will rot quickly, since tilling chops them into fine pieces which are easy for soil life to work on.
Sheet composting has a big advantage over pile composting. Compost piles lose nutrients to leaching before they can be used in the garden. With sheet composting all the nutrients go into the soil.
There are a few things to watch out for when sheet composting. Be careful about using materials that could contain weed seeds, such as weedy mulches and manures. Don’t overdo it when you add materials that decay very slowly, such as sawdust, pine needles, or bark. They may tie up the nitrogen in the soil for a long time.
Don’t use any plant material that is severely diseased, and never use anything that an earthworm won’t eat or that has been sprayed with herbicides.
Trench Composting is ideal for Kitchen Garbage
Another way to compost is the trench method, which is excellent for disposing of kitchen wastes. Dig a trench across your garden, either by hand or with a tiller. Every time you have kitchen garbage, dump it in one section of the trench and rake dirt over it. (Don’t dump meat scraps or bones because they attract animals.)
When the trench is filled, till or turn the row thoroughly to mix the composted garbage with the soil. Then start another trench.
You’ll be surprised how quickly the garbage in the trenches will be decomposed and digested by soil organisms.
If it’s close to planting time, I don’t recommend planting a root crop immediately over the trench because a few parasites or undesirable bacteria might have been present in the garbage. It’s safe to plant leafy and cote crops.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Sheet Composting
- Garden Compost without a Pile
- Making Precious Composting Count
- The Convenient Garden Compost Pile
- Gardening Compost, Start a Wormery
- Compost, the Free Wonder-Working Plant Food
- Composting
- Organic Composting Garden Celery: How I grow this Challenging vegetable
- With Garden Tiller Tool Planting a Green Manure Crop takes only minutes
- Gardening, get a Head Start
- Freezing Organic Garden Vegetables or Fruit, how to keep them fresh?
1 packet of Hungarian hot wax chilli seeds 1 packet of jalapeno chilli seeds, 1 packet of Anaheim chilli seeds, 5 starter growing pots made from coconut husk, 5 natural coconut husk compost discs which expand when watered, 5 wooden plant markers and Chilli plant growing tips. … Natural Coconut Husk Compost Discs
Using scarlet runner beans and rhubarb chard in the bed, the gardeners matched the colours of the two vegetables; the red of the chard stalks matches the red of the blooming bean flowers. … Household Name
It warms soil; blocks weed growth and retain soil moisture like black plastic mulch, but also reflects the far red part of the light spectrum up into the heart of the plants. … Compost Mulch