How Composting Helps You

Composting has always been a great way to enrich your garden’s soil and reduce the amount of waste in your household. By placing a compost pile in your yard or growing area, you will enjoy watching your flowers or your vegetables grow with a richer and healthier appearance. Many people jump on the composting bandwagon in a well-intentioned act of trying to help the environment, but oftentimes the goals and the ideas about why composting is helpful to us is either misunderstood or not understood at all. Knowing a little bit about composting will help you know why you should do it and make better decisions about how to have an effective composting pile.

The very basic idea behind composting can be explained by the following equation: food and biodegradable waste + yard materials and elements = a richer, healthier soil. Though it is not a fertilizer, one of the goals of composting is to provide natural nutrients to your soil to make it a better area for planting. Things such as peels from your fruits and vegetables and yard waste combined with a layer of soil are the basic ingredients for a natural compost pile. In addition to making your soil rich for growing, it also makes it look better. A nutrient-rich soil has a healthier appearance.

Another goal of compost piles is to attract insects and other beneficial organisms to your garden or soil. Earthworms are a great benefit to helping things grow because they help to enrich the soil. They crawl through the dirt creating holes that create ventilation for the soil. Earthworms eat the decaying matter in the compost and excrete it, creating organic matter that serves to enrich the soil. Other invertebrates that include nematodes will eat the fungus in a composting pile which also helps to create a richer and nutrient-laden compost.

Reducing the amount of organic trash that your household produces is an important goal of composting. First of all, composting will save you money because you will not need as many trash bags as you would need without composting. Since you can put all of your organic refuse in the compost pile, you will be surprised at how little trash your house will actually produce. This is also good for the landfills. It reduces the huge amount of trash taken to be piled up in the already crowded area landfills. Since the biodegradable trash is mixed with the non-biodegradable trash in landfills, it is difficult for the organic matter to be broken down into beneficial elements for the surrounding soil.

Composting not only saves you money by not needing to purchase the expensive chemicals that many people use for their gardens, but many experts say that natural ingredients provide the best benefits overall. Taking your food scraps and other natural waste to your pile instead of leaving it for the garbage truck and landfills provides an enriching and hassle-free way to recycle while making your surroundings a more beautiful place to live.

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