Gardening For Beginners - The Value of Compost
It's feeding time again for the garden.
I had some older gardening books here and was reading up on fall activities for the garden.
Without getting to far into numbers, there were a lot of suggestions for fertilizer with ratios.
For example: 20-20-20.
These numbers refer to the percentage by weight of the major nutrients that plants require.
These nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium or N-P-K.
The order is considered to be just that - nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
A 10-15-10 bag (if there is such a thing) would have 10 percent nitrogen, 15 percent phosphorus and 10 percent potassium by weight.
The rest of the amount in the bag would be filler or other nutrients.
The bag will list the other ingredients.
Likely they are things like calcium, magnesium, and iron.
It depends on your personality and your feeling about fertilizer.
For flowers, you might feel that fertilizer will produce big healthy plants and you don't have to worry about eating them so whether they are organic or not does not matter.
Or you might be right into organic gardening and not want anything that hints of chemicals near your plants.
Organic fertilizer consists of things that will rot into the soil and nourish it.
Some examples are seaweed, bone meal, compost, mulches, worm castings, and manure.
Compost is wonderful because you can create it naturally in your own kitchen (or back yard because it can go through a smelly phase) and it provides excellent nutrients for your garden.
An added bonus is that it is free.
You make your own from garbage.
This time of year is excellent because you can use leaves from your yard.
All year around you can use things you would otherwise throw out such as coffee grounds, egg shells, vegetable peelings, paper towels, tea bags, and fruit peelings.
Don't use cat litter, cooked food, fish, meat, or disposable diapers.
You can set up a compost bin and just keep turning over these things as they decompose.
You will end up with a lovely rich material that feeds the soil.
You can also just buy compost already composted for you.
This time of the year (fall) I buy compost and peat and dump them on the garden in equal measure.
There are still plants in the garden but I dump this stuff on the garden and used the little rake to push it in around the stalks of the plants still standing.
Then all winter, the elements will drive this stuff into the ground and feed the new flowers for spring.
I had some older gardening books here and was reading up on fall activities for the garden.
Without getting to far into numbers, there were a lot of suggestions for fertilizer with ratios.
For example: 20-20-20.
These numbers refer to the percentage by weight of the major nutrients that plants require.
These nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium or N-P-K.
The order is considered to be just that - nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
A 10-15-10 bag (if there is such a thing) would have 10 percent nitrogen, 15 percent phosphorus and 10 percent potassium by weight.
The rest of the amount in the bag would be filler or other nutrients.
The bag will list the other ingredients.
Likely they are things like calcium, magnesium, and iron.
It depends on your personality and your feeling about fertilizer.
For flowers, you might feel that fertilizer will produce big healthy plants and you don't have to worry about eating them so whether they are organic or not does not matter.
Or you might be right into organic gardening and not want anything that hints of chemicals near your plants.
Organic fertilizer consists of things that will rot into the soil and nourish it.
Some examples are seaweed, bone meal, compost, mulches, worm castings, and manure.
Compost is wonderful because you can create it naturally in your own kitchen (or back yard because it can go through a smelly phase) and it provides excellent nutrients for your garden.
An added bonus is that it is free.
You make your own from garbage.
This time of year is excellent because you can use leaves from your yard.
All year around you can use things you would otherwise throw out such as coffee grounds, egg shells, vegetable peelings, paper towels, tea bags, and fruit peelings.
Don't use cat litter, cooked food, fish, meat, or disposable diapers.
You can set up a compost bin and just keep turning over these things as they decompose.
You will end up with a lovely rich material that feeds the soil.
You can also just buy compost already composted for you.
This time of the year (fall) I buy compost and peat and dump them on the garden in equal measure.
There are still plants in the garden but I dump this stuff on the garden and used the little rake to push it in around the stalks of the plants still standing.
Then all winter, the elements will drive this stuff into the ground and feed the new flowers for spring.