Introduction
Composting is the natural process of allowing organic matter to break down into a nutrient-rich material called compost. It’s a super useful product that can be added to soil, thereby boosting your plants’ health and helping you grow healthy and vibrant gardens. But in addition to being good for plants, composting is also good for the environment. As it turns out, yard waste makes up about a third of all landfill waste in the US, according to data from the EPA. By repurposing food scraps and other organic materials as plant food instead of throwing them into our landfills, we’re both reducing our local landfill waste (which helps our communities) and decreasing the amount of methane gas produced by rotting trash (which helps our planet). And luckily for us all, composting at home doesn’t have to be complicated—it just takes some effort!
Compost is a useful product for home gardens.
Compost is a useful product for home gardens. Composting is a great way to recycle organic waste and use it as fertilizer for your garden. Compost can be used to improve the texture and fertility of soil, which can help plants grow more quickly and thrive more easily in the long run. The organic matter in compost makes it an excellent source of nutrients for growing plants, so using compost will help you get better results from all your hard work in the garden.
Yard waste accounts for about a third of all landfill waste in the US.
It’s a big problem that we’re throwing away so much yard waste. Americans throw away an estimated 36 million tons of yard waste each year, enough to fill up eight Great Pyramids of Giza!
This is a big problem not just in the United States, but around the world. In Canada and Europe, for instance, about one-fifth of all municipal solid waste comes from organic materials such as food scraps and yard trimmings.
And it’s not just because we’re lazy—yard waste recycling rates have been steadily increasing over the past few years (in Canada it doubled between 2000 and 2014). But despite this progress, about one third of all landfill waste in North America is still made up of organic materials like leaves or grass clippings that could otherwise be turned into compost or used as fertilizer for agriculture and landscaping projects around your home instead.
A compost pile has to be tended to carefully.
Composting is a natural process. It’s the way that organic waste breaks down into compost, which can be used as a natural fertilizer for plants. Composting can also reduce the amount of waste you produce, by recycling your organic waste instead of throwing it away in the trash. When you throw away food scraps and other yard trimmings in your home, they get sent to landfills where they sit buried beneath tons of other garbage for years before they are eventually covered up completely and sealed off from oxygen indefinitely—a good way to make sure nothing ever decomposes! When you compost at home using a pile or bin, though, you’re doing something different: you’re turning those same scraps into nutrient-rich soil that literally feeds your plants!
Compost can help improve soil texture and fertility.
Compost can help improve soil texture and fertility. If you have ever tried to grow a plant in your garden, you may have noticed that the soil feels dry and hard to work with. This is because the soil lacks organic matter such as compost or mulch that would make it easier for a plant to take root and grow.
By adding compost into your garden, you will be able to loosen up the hard packed dirt in your garden so plants can thrive more easily. Compost also adds nutrients like nitrogen and potassium to fertilize plants which will increase growth as well by improving nutrient uptake by plants
Starting a compost pile is relatively easy.
In order to start a compost pile, you need to collect three ingredients: nitrogen-rich materials, carbon-rich materials and water. The most common type of container for a compost pile is a bin which can be purchased from a garden center or made from wood yourself. It should be large enough so that the material in it will not become anaerobic—a condition that occurs when organic matter decays in an environment devoid of oxygen.
To keep your compost pile moist while decomposing requires regular watering with either rainwater or tap water (not chlorinated). You should never use wastewater as it contains harmful chemicals like chlorine that can kill off decomposers in your soil. Remember to mix up the contents of your container every few months so they don’t stagnate by turning them upside down once every three weeks or so.
If you want to encourage sustainability, start with the food scraps in your kitchen.
As a society, we are getting better at reducing our carbon emissions and water use. But if you want to encourage sustainability in the home, start with the food scraps in your kitchen. Food scraps make up the single biggest source of waste in landfills—and they’re also responsible for approximately 40 percent of US methane emissions (a greenhouse gas). Composting is one way to cut back on these things: it reduces landfill waste by turning organic matter into compost; it reduces food waste by making use of fruits and vegetable scraps that would otherwise be thrown away; and it even helps fight climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Conclusion
Compost is one of the best things you can do for your garden, and it’s also a great way to reduce waste! If you’re looking for even more ideas on how to be more environmentally friendly, check out our other blog posts about green living—there are so many beneficial choices available right at home.