Gardening Withdrawal
Now this is a sight I terribly miss!
Summer can’t end soon enough!
This photo is from my spring garden
Archive for the month “July, 2012”
Chicken wire composting
Ive recently started composting in chicken wire bins which I easily made.
The wire is sold in rolls and is very easy to work with.
This method has proven more successful in my case, than the plastic bins. As the compost is by far hotter than before. I’ve never had actual steam blowing in my face when digging into my compost before.
I made sure the bin is in the shade, as to not lose moisture so quickly.
This method is cheaper to set up, and in my case cooking compost better. I can’t wait to fill the entire thing, and have my future plants happy and well fed.
Not too wet
I’ve been juicing fruits and vegetables everyday and since then, I’ve been tossing all of the left over juice pulp in y compost
This is probably giving my compost too much nitrogen all at once, so it started getting soggy and matted, and once that happens in your compost for whatever reason, it will start to stink a little.
It’s because anaerobic bacteria; the bad guys will decompose matter where there is no oxygen and high moisture. They give off a bad smell and slimy green stuff.
To get the good guys back in, you should introduce oxygen back to the mix. This could easily be done by either laying out the compost for a while, and mixing it back together.
Compost does happen fast in Kuwait, so do take advantage of the hot summer.
Summer Composting
It’s very hard to enjoy outdoor gardening in the summer, this is why after clearing my raised beds of sun-burned plants, I now leave the beds to bake in the heat.. I will not bother to save my plants if I will not take care of them. it’s too hot for me to do a good job.
This makes summer my composting time. I’ve been having kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, garden prunings, and grass clippings piled over the last few months, and guess what? It’s perfectly matured.
Since I will not be doing any gardening until September, I decided to mix this mature compost into new compost ingredients to speed up their process.
These are some dried up grass clippings from my lawn. I made sure to dry them up into a crispy brown, so they would contain more carbon than nitrogen.
Grass clippings don’t go in alone (although they can), I toss kitchen scraps like fruits and vegetable wastes, tea bags, tissues, egg shells (which are excellent for root development) and coffee grounds.
After mixing the ingredients and filling the bins, I add enough water to keep it moist, but not soggy.
And that’s all it takes to make crumbly, rich compost, which my vegetables love.
Homemade compost will not only reduce your carbon foot print, it will make your vegetables grow larger, healthier, and tastier.
You may find some bugs in your compost, and this is why no one should compost indoors, in my case I have ants, wood lice, and spiders.. It’s completely normal, and I’m especially happy to have wood lice shredding away at my compost, and helping it form. They’re really harmless.
To have bug free compost before using it in your garden, just lay it out in the early sun, and most insects will go away from the heat, while others get picked by hungry birds.
Get composting!
Update:
Just 2 days after mixing, look what I have..
Look at how quickly everything is breaking down, and this isn’t even the middle of the bin, so its cooking even faster inside. With a quick and simple composting system, I got brown results in 2 days, so I must be doing something right.
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Alzainah
