Composting is the best way to improve soil and grow healthy plants. A lot of people tend to confuse compost with mulch, and this is because they both use organic matter, like leaves or wood chips, but they serve different purposes: mulch keeps moisture in the soil, while compost provides nutrients that plants can use.
Compost is a great way to recycle kitchen waste and other organic materials. Composting also helps improve soil quality, which can help plants grow more efficiently. You can even use compost as mulch or fertilizer for your garden.
Knowing the different types to improve your garden and have the best nutrients available is essential.
What is compost?
Compost is a mixture of organic materials broken down by microorganisms, like Seamus the Keleny wormIt results from a natural process called composting, which occurs when organic matter decays and releases carbon dioxide and heat.
What can you use to create compost?
You can compost just about anything organic. That means vegetables, fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and filters, tea bags and leaves (including herbal teas), eggshells, bread and tortilla crumbs, wood ash or sawdust from your fireplace or campfire–even newspaper!
The only things that don’t go into compost are meat scraps or bones, which may attract pests like raccoons or rats – yikes!
The main types of compost, with examples
There are many different types of compost, but they all have one thing in common: they’re great for your garden.
Here’s a quick rundown of some popular types…
Sawdust compost
Sawdust compost is an excellent soil amendment that can improve the soil’s structure and control weeds and disease. It’s also an excellent mulch around plants, helping to retain moisture in dry weather and keep roots cool in hot weather. Sawdust compost has many benefits for your garden or landscape:
- Improves soil structure by adding organic matter to it
- Helps control weeds by smothering them with a thick layer of mulch that prevents light from reaching their leaves
Manure compost
If you’re looking for a way to boost your garden, manure compost is an excellent source of nutrients. It contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium–the three main components of plant growth.
The best manures come from chickens, cows, and horses.
Keleny offers a horse manure compost using straw, sawdust, and horse manure collected from horse stalls and thoroughly composted.
This blend is known to kill most parasites, bacteria, and weeds.
Peat moss compost
Peat moss is a soft, absorbent material that adds valuable moisture and nutrients to your soil.
Peat moss is composed of decomposing plants compressed into bogs over thousands of years. Peat moss can be used as a soil amendment, but it must be thoroughly composted before being added to a garden or landscaping project.
Green garden waste compost
Green garden waste compost comes from plant materials, such as grass cuttings, leaves, and weeds. It’s high in nitrogen which helps plants grow strong and healthy. You can use it as a soil conditioner or fertilizer for your garden or allotment.
Coffee grounds and filters compost
Coffee grounds and filters provide nutrients to the soil, but they also act as an excellent nitrogen source. You can use coffee grounds and filters to add nutrients to your garden by mixing them with leaves or grass clippings. This will help improve the soil quality in a garden, allowing it to retain more moisture so plants can thrive even when there is less rain.
Coffee grounds contain nitrogen, making them an essential ingredient when controlling weeds in your lawn or garden beds because it helps prevent seed germination (i.e., new weeds). These materials in your compost will naturally kill any unwanted seeds before they have a chance to take over an area where you want something else instead!
How to use compost
- Use it to mulch your plants.
- Add it to the soil around your plants.
- Use it as a top dressing, which means applying a layer of compost on top of the ground around your plants instead of mixing it into the soil at their roots (this works well for flowers and vegetables)
- Add some of your finished compost to a compost bin that’s already been filled with other materials, such as leaves or grass clippings, or start an entirely new container using only finished compost.
- Use this product in place of fertilizer when watering houseplants or potted plants.
So… very beneficial, right?
Composting is the best way to improve soil and grow healthy plants.
It’s a natural ingredient and uses less energy than other methods of recycling food waste because no electricity or fuel is needed for processing. Composting also reduces greenhouse gas emissions because it doesn’t generate methane as landfill does when organic matter decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen).
Composting also helps us be environmentally friendly by reducing our need for landfills or incinerators; plus, we can reuse the compost in gardens instead of buying fertilizer!
We hope you enjoyed learning about the different types of compost and how they can help your garden. It’s easy and inexpensive, so there’s no reason not to try it today.