Composting is a famous practice in home gardens and also it is a trend in organic farming. Now organic farming is a famous gardening method in the world. In this method, compost takes a huge portion. There are big composting sites at the organic farming yard. Also the municipal waste composting has made a solution for open dumping. Anyway this compost is finally used as a fertilizer for plants. It is a very nutritious natural soil amendment.
Compost is rich with nutrients. Specially, it is provide micro nutrients to the plants. These micro nutrients are doing a big role in plant’s body to grow and maintenance, and also compost has more humus amount. It is important to enhance the water retention capacity.
What is compost?
Simply, compost is an organic fertilizer that you make using dried leaves, straws, cow dung, any organic material form kitchen and other any residuals from your garden by an aerobic decomposition. It can be used as a soil amendment or as a medium to grow plants. Compost has a dark brown or black color and has an earthy smell.
There are many ways to make compost, but in here I am discuss easy three methods to make compost at your home garden. Let’s look at those methods of composting below;
Pit method Composting
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| Making a pit for composting |
First, we have to make a pit for this composting method. The pit should be made in a good drainage area and should have the facilities to provide water. It will be easy if you create this near to the garden or farm. The size of the pit consists of the available materials, required compost amount. Therefore you can adjust it as you needed. For a home garden, a pit with 30 feet long, 15 feet width and 2 feet deep one is enough.
What can we use as Materials to make compost?
Technically, compost may be made from any organic material. There are possible materials.
- Green Manures- legumes
- Animal Manures
- Kitchen waste
- Garden residues
- Farm residues-hay, straw
- Paper & cardboard
- Municipal solid waste
- Some amount of decomposed materials. (To introduce microbes)
The material’s size and shape are important to rapid decomposition. Small size parts make a rapid decomposition and enhance the physical property of the pile like Porosity and structure. And also it is easy to handle. The best size is less than 2 inches in the largest dimension.
Making a slurry solution for composting
This solution is helps to provide microbes, K+, nitrogen, like ingredients. They are helps to grow microbes. It is important to rapid composting. We need 5 Kg of wood ash, cow dung (if you can use cow dung from wild castles it is better, because, the farm animals are treated with antibiotics. So, the residuals of them is harm to microbial growth), and 10Kg of old compost or humus. You can change these amounts with your available materials and requirement. Finally you have to mix then in 25 litters of water and make slurry.
Filling of compost pit
Fill the compost pit with the materials up to 6 inches. Then spread out a layer of slurry solution on composting materials. Again put a layer of materials on that up to 6 inches and spread out a layer of slurry solution. Do this several time and got wet the pile with the slurry solution. After that, you have to enter some wood sticks in the pile. This helps to check the temperature inside the pile. (you can get it out and touch it to feel the temperature) You need to cover the pile with a black polythine. It prevents the emission of gasses like NH2, NO2 during the composting. Keep this up to 14 days and after that, you have to mix the pile well and keep for another 28 days and do the same and again in 56 days mix it well and finally in 90 days you can have compost for your garden.
The mixing of the pile gives a better aeration and aerobic bacteria can grow well. That means you can have compost very soon. If you can give aeration by tubes, you do not need to mix the pile. Simply you can enter some porous PVC tubes to the pile.
Heap method composting
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| Heap method composting |
In this composting method, should not make a pit for composting. Just put the composting materials and make a pile on the ground. The practices in above are done in this method also. Finally you can get well decomposed compost within 3-4 months.
Composting bin making
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| Composting bin |
In this composting, here you can make a bin like structure by using wood sticks like in the picture. And put the composting materials into the bin. No need to mix. But protect with heavy rain. After about 90 days you can have compost. You can collect the compost from the bottom of the bin.
