Your Backyard Garden Needs Compost!
Posted: Tuesday, January 10, 2012
by Bob Alexander
http://www.bluemarlinbob.com
It is winter in most parts of the country and it’s time to plan for your summer garden. The first step is to make natural mulch, called compost. It’s a little extra work to make it, rather than buying an inferior product ant the garden store. Besides giving you a distraction from the cold, mulch in the garden can increase the value of your harvest.
Black plastic mulch is very effective in reducing the amount of weeds in your garden, although it is not very attractive. If you like to show off your gardening skills, the way you present it is very important. You want it to be very attractive and ugly black plastic will not win you any points for beauty.
We have an abundance of leaves at our house and I bag a lot of them in the fall. If I am growing bush beans, I spread the leaves around the leaves around the plants in the summer. I wait until then because mulched soil is cooler and I don’t want to stunt the growth of the bean because the soil is cool. Down here in the south the right time for mulch is June.
Providing mulch for weed control as well as a nutrient for you plants is not very hard to accomplish. Just rake and bag leaves from the trees in your yard. If you are reluctant to pick up the rake, drive around your neighborhood and pick up the leaves that have already been bagged by your neighbors. Save them until next summer when you really need them.
I have made several homemade compost bins that stay in constant use, providing rich, soil like compost for my garden plants. Best of all, instead of spending money, I make the mulch out of things I ordinarily would have thrown away.
It is really quite simple to make a compost bin. Many of us have an old trash can that we can’t use because the bottom has worn out and it leaks. Cut the bottom out of the can and drill ¾ inch around the can from top to bottom in any kind of pattern you would like.
Now turn the bottomless can upside down in a spot in the corner of your backyard and you have a perfectly good compost bin. Begin by tossing some of the leaves you have saved into the upside-down trash container. Make a good layer of leaves and then throw in a layer of dirt combined with a topping of fertilizer. After that, toss in table scraps, peelings from potatoes, carrots, apples and other vegetables you may have around the kitchen.
When that is done, repeat the process until the bin is full. The trash can lid makes a good top cover for the compost container. After about two months, empty the container and pitch the whole mess back into the bin, starting from the top of the compost heap, down to the bottom. This will cause the materials in the compost pile to decompose faster.
In three to six months you should have some very usable compost mulch to spread around the vegetables in your garden. It won’t cost you a lot of money and you will have a lot of fun and a lot of stories to tell when you are bragging to your friends about the mulch you use to make your vegetables county fair winners.
Bob Alexander is a son of the south. Besides having acccumulated great knowledge in the arena of marriage and relationships, he has gained expert status in eating barbeque, telling fishing stories and leisure living.
Visit his site at: www.redfishbob.com
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hi Bob thanks for sharing. There is no shortage of leaves in my garden, in fact so many it leaves my husband depressed at times (forever moaning), even though he has the tools to make getting rid easier. Never thought about using them to put round veg because we dont growm them, however because my garden is 60ft by 50 ft I supose I could put this to my husband about growing vegetables, therefore it may help stop his moaning.
Keep well Kacy
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