Using Compost for a Healthier Garden

Adding rich organic materials in the form of compost to garden soil is beneficial to any garden regardless of whether the soil is sand, silt or clay. Compost is the rich organic matter that forms when plant materials have broken down in the correct environment for a suitable length of time. The U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to compost when it says, “Successful gardening depends on good soil. One of the best ways to improve soil fertility is to add organic matter. It helps soil hold important plant nutrients.”

The Use of Compost and its Benefits to the Environment

Organic matter can be purchased in bags from a local garden store or it can be purchased in bulk from nurseries and farms, but it makes sense for a home gardener to make his own compost. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states, “Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 24 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream.” The E.P.A. suggests composting as an important solution to a growing trash problem. “Composting offers the obvious benefits of resource efficiency and creating a useful product from organic waste that would otherwise have been landfilled.”

When organic matter goes to landfills, it takes significantly longer to decompose in huge stacks of trash than it does in home composters or in small yard piles. This takes up even more space and adds to the problems that governments face trying to find space for landfills.

Composting’s Benefits to Vegetable Gardens

A growing number of families are turning to vegetable gardens to help supplement their food source and for the reassurance they receive knowing that some of their food is produced locally by them, and that they are in control of what nutrients or chemicals go into their food.

A large number of vegetable gardeners are trying to grow their gardens completely organically, without the use of chemicals for fertilization, pest control or for disease control. Using compost in a vegetable garden is one of the best ways to add important nutrients into the soil and it is done in the most organic way. Composting is man’s way of letting nature do what it does, but hurrying the process along.

Compost for Landscaping

Adding compost to the soil in landscaping around the home is a great way to enrich the soil. The nutrients that are found in the compost are very beneficial to flowers, shrubs and grasses found in most landscapes. Sprinkling compost throughout a lawn or adding it to the soil around shrubs and bushes in the spring will help deliver nutrients to the roots of these plants for months to come. Adding organic matter to soil adds carbon which promotes the growth of beneficial bacterias which help to ensure healthy plants while helping to prevent diseases and control pests.

Composting for Disease and Pest Control

When compost is added to the soil, plants become healthier. Under healthy plant conditions, the environment is also more conducive to beneficial bug habitats. Beneficial pollinators and predators of detrimental insects thrive in healthy gardens.

When plants become diseased or begin the process of dying, the pollinators and predators have less desire to be there and it invites the types of bugs that gardeners know as pests. Many of these bugs are there instinctively because it’s their job to help in the decomposition of plant matter by chewing, shredding and getting the plant matter ready for the decomposition process. When plants are very healthy, these pests are more likely to be elsewhere, working on other plants.

Composting has long been utilized by farmers and gardeners for centuries as a healthy, essential way to reconstitute the nutrients in their soil. The benefit of helping the environment by keeping these materials out of landfills added to the benefits to home gardens and landscapes should be enough to encourage each homeowner to start a compost pile or build a compost bin.