Making your own gardening compost is very easy. You get the benefit of producing natural fertilizer for your plants.
Compost contains decayed organic material. Things such as manure, leaves and un-eaten food are left in a compost pile to decay and decompose. Organisms within the soil will slowly turn this decaying pile of scrap organic material into fine soil material that can be added to your vegetable garden soil.
You can make your gardening compost pile in a circle or square. The shape doesn't really matter as long as the length of each side is 3 meters or 10 feet. If you are making a circular pile, make the diameter also at 10 feet. Begin your pile by throwing in any waste from your garden like grass cuttings or dead leaves. Look for any other organic material that you can find to place on the pile.
The target height for your compost pile is a minimum of 3 feet and a maximum of 5. Flatten down the top of the pile then make a small indentation where a little water can trickle in. Just a small indentation. The purpose of the water is to help along the decomposition process. Air is also needed during decomposition but too much water will drive the air out.
The oxygen is used by the organisms decomposing your pile of organic material. The pile should be packed slightly so that heat does not escape it. There is a certain stage in decomposition where heat is required for certain chemical activities to take place.
You can also add some inorganic material to your compost pile. It is a good idea to layer your compost pile for every foot in height as it grows. You can use phosphate and limestone to layer the compost pile. For the whole pile of compost, you could have added a total of 1 pound limestone. You can also use manure to layer the compost pile. For every 12 inches of compost height, you can add a couple of inches of manure to layer the pile.
Of course, using manure is even better than compost when it comes to fertilizing your vegetable garden. If you have access to that much manure anyway, you should just use the manure and give up the idea of a compost pile. The reason why you want to add or layer your compost pile with manure is that it will give your compost better nutrients to stock.
After a few weeks, you might want to try and stir the contents of your compost pile. The reason for this is that the organisms decomposing your compost may have concentrated on a few areas instead of being evenly distributed throughout the pile. The idea of stirring the pile is to make sure that the job of decomposing is done as evenly as possible. This way, when the compost is ready to spread, the components of the compost have been decomposed properly.
This would also mean that the compost you spread in one part of your garden has the same nutrient component as the compost you spread in another part of your vegetable garden.
Ideally, 25 pounds of gardening compost is enough for a hundred square feet of your vegetable garden. If your compost production isn't enough to cover all the areas of your garden, you can choose to selectively fertilize the parts of your garden where your favorite vegetables grow.
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