Compost to Save the Environment

It's funny that as humans evolve, things get back to the basics. This is especially true in the environment front. We have learned that if we want a hospitable planet for our children's future, we must protect the Earth now. Every grade school child knows the importance of reuse, reduce, and recycle; what better way to help the planet and learn about biology than with composting right in your own backyard garden? It also saves you money as you won't have to worry about buying commercial fertilizer. It's all in your kitchen scraps! How does composting work? Compost is really the end product of the breakdown of organic matter. Microorganisms feed off organic matter and what's left is compost. When people say they want to compost, there are two options. One can decide for a passive process or an active process. As the name implies, there is little work to be done in the passive process. One just needs to collect compost material such as grass clippings and kitchen refuse and put them in an closed off pile in the backyard. Make sure that the kitchen scraps are well covered with other organic material to avoid animals looking for a free meal! While little effort is required in the passive approach to composting, it is indeed slow and you might be waiting well over a year or two for complete decomposition. Active composting requires more work, but not much with the proper equipment. Active composting is just helping nature along by providing the right conditions for the decomposition process. Decomposition is faster when the organic material is kept in a warm, damp and well oxygenated environment. By having a compost bin, not only does it provide a neater appearance in your backyard but it also offers a controlled environment in which to produce your compost. Add a thermometer to a compost tumbler to turn over the compost and it's got a great mix for composting. As you can see, the effort involved in composting is not that much but the benefits of using compost are many. The byproducts of microorganisms breaking down organic material provides great nutrients for plants as well as the compost is nitrogen and potassium rich which helps maintain ideal soil condition. Compost also improves water retention in the soil as well as texture and aeration. Other benefits of composting include the reduction of wastes into our landfill. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it's important that our children inherit a healthy planet. And what better way to pass on our gift than by involving our children in the process as well. Every school aged child knows about reduce, reuse and recycle. Composting involves all these steps plus the benefit of watching your garden grow! What a practical lesson for any child.

 Print this page 

del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Feed Me Links Technorati Newsvine Socializer Stumble Upon Google Bookmarks Squidoo BlinkBits BlinkList blogmarks Netvouz Ma.gnolia RawSugar Rojo Simpy Spurl Shadows Wists Yahoo! Co.mments! Scuttle!