5 Reasons to Make Compost in Your Garden and How to Do It

Compost is a type of plant food made from decomposed organic materials. Many people buy the compost they use, but did you know you can make compost from household waste?

Here are five reasons you should make and use compost for your plants.

• Compost feeds the soil that feeds your plants

As our plants grow, they take up nutrients from the soil. Eventually, nutrients need to be replenished to keep leaves healthy and flowers blooming. Adding compost to soil is a natural way of replenishing the nutrients as the compost breaks down slowly to form humus. 

This way, compost acts as a nutrient reservoir to feed your plants over several months, and you won’t have to worry about weekly feeding. Read more about feeding your plants here. 

Compost also acts as soil conditioner improving the water-holding capacity of dry soil, as well as the soil structure.  

• Making compost reduces the waste that goes to landfills

Refuse collection is a challenge for fast-growing cities, like Lagos where I live. So when we make compost at home from everyday kitchen and garden waste, we reduce the amount of garbage carted away to landfills. Heaps of unsorted garbage in landfills can become a health hazard for people living and working around them.

• Compost does not burn plants 

Compost is a safe way of feeding your plants without the risk of burning them. Compared to inorganic fertilisers (NPK formulations), organic compost acts slowly, which is good.

Soil microorganisms are needed to break down the compost further and gradually release nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for your plant’s roots to absorb. The nutrients don’t get to your plants all at once.

Inorganic fertilisers, on the other hand, release these nutrients immediately the fertiliser salts dissolve in water. The advantage is that fertilisers act fast, quickly getting nutrients to plants. However, the downside is that inadvertently adding too much fertiliser, either too concentrated or too frequently, can harm your plant.

I once burned a peace lily with an inorganic fertiliser feed. Also, I burned a Monstera deliciosa with cow manure. I’ll explain this in another post. 

• Homemade compost saves you money 

Now who doesn’t like the sound of saving money to buy more plants instead of plant food? Even if you don’t produce all the plant food your garden needs, you can reduce the amount of money you spend on feeding it if you make your compost.

• Composting helps the environment

Composting is an integral part of sustainable gardening. We return to the soil what the plants took from it. This natural recycling process went on for millennia before humans arrived on earth. So, it’s our duty not to interfere with it.

But if we garden without composting, we lose all the nutrients plants have stored to landfills. It is worse when we burn plant material and lose the nutrients forever.

So, now that we’ve seen the reasons to make compost let’s see how to do this easily in our gardens.

• What can we use for compost?

Just about everything that was once a part of a plant can be composted. This includes, fruit and vegetable peels, leaves, grass clippings from your lawn, shredded, stems and branches. Also paper, cardboard, coffee grounds, and teabags.

You can also use whole fruits that got spoilt while you weren’t looking. It happens! When adding fruits remove seeds so they don’t sprout in unwanted places later.

Do not put pest infested or diseased plants in your compost to avoid spreading the problem. 

As a precaution against inviting scavengers, I like to avoid animal waste and animal produce except egg shells which I add. Although meat and fish are great sources of nitrogen and sulphur for plants, they will attract rats and give off an offensive odour that neighbours are bound to complain about.

I bury meat and fish waste instead and use the soil to plant vegetables.

How to make compost for your plants

• You will need several containers or sacks to collect your kitchen and garden waste as generated. Cut up materials into small pieces so they break down faster.
• If you have a section of your garden that you can use for making composting heaps without containers, that’s perfect. I do this is in a section of my garden, but I use sacks to keep things tidy.
  

  

• When filling the sacks/containers or piling up the heaps, alternate between kitchen waste (the green materials) and dry leaves, twigs, and cardboard (the brown materials). Do this to allow air pockets form between the green materials.
• Airflow is necessary to encourage aerobic decomposition to take place. This way, the composting materials will not stink.
• Once your sacks or containers are filled sit back and let nature take its course. Insects, earthworms, and microorganisms do the work.

  

   

• You can cover the pile or sack with a layer of brown materials to avoid attracting flies. Flies breed maggots, and they are not very pleasant to look at.
• It takes several months to completely breakdown the materials, but the wait is totally worth it. The once unattractive decomposing mess becomes a rich, crumbly material resembling soil.
• Turning the heap with a garden fork or overturning one bag/container into another empty one will hasten the process as it re-introduces air to the mix.

  

How to use homemade compost for plants

To use your homemade compost, mix compost with garden soil in a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio, depending on the quality of the soil, before planting in it. You can also mix some compost into already potted plants or spread it over sections of the garden where you have plants growing. Read more about soil quality here. 

I like to use my homemade compost in my outdoor garden only. It’s because it still harbours insects that I’m not interested in seeing indoors.

Typically, commercially produced compost is free from insects. The composting process is different and does not employ insects. Some producers heat the compost to kill off weeds, insects, and worms to be sure.

And there you have it! Making and using compost is good for the environment. Help spread the word.