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What is compost?
Compost
is the end product of a natural process which reduces organic waste
to humus. Compost contains a good range of major and minor plant
nutrients, trace elements essential for healthy plant growth, as
well as soil microbes and organic fibre for building healthy soil.
Unlike chemical fertilizers, compost has a built-in time release
mechanism, which chemical fertilizer manufacturers try to duplicate.
What are
the benefits of using compost?
Compost returns organic matter to the soil in a usable form. This
improves plant growth by loosening up heavy clay soils so that
air and water may get in, helping sandy soils to retain water and
nutrients, adding essential nutrients and soil organisms to all
soil, and killing plant diseases and harmful organisms.
How is compost
used?
Compost can be used:
-
in the
flower and vegetable garden or on the soil around trees and
shrubs;
-
for house
plants and planter boxes (after baking in a conventional
oven at 82 degrees C/180 degrees F for one hour);
-
as part
of a seed-starting mix;
-
on the
lawn as a top-dressing (when screened);
for making compost tea;
-
dug into
a garden when preparing the bed for planting, in the spring
or fall;
-
spread
in seed furrows, or added to each transplant hole; and
-
as a "top
dressing", placed on the soil around flower and vegetable
plants, shrubs and trees.
Note: For
plants to receive the full nutrient value of finished compost,
make sure the compost is well decomposed before using.
Making compost
tea
One way to make use of your finished compost is to make compost
tea. Place the compost in a burlap bag and put it in a barrel of
water. Your mixture should be one part compost to five parts water.
Let it steep for ten days to two weeks. Squeeze the burlap bag
to extract all the moisture. Empty the leftover compost on the
garden as a mulch or add it back to your compost pile.
Use the tea
to water your garden and plants. Also, use it as a nutritious
foliar spray (feeding through leaves). Treat bare spots on the
lawn, heal problem plants and trees, or perk up indoor plants
with the tea. Compost tea sprayed on tomato, pepper, grape, beet,
potato, strawberry and bean plants reduces up to 90 per cent
of the harmful effects of downy mildew, botrytis molds, late
blight and powdery mildew.
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