Sheet Composting

Sheet composting is a very good way to practice organic gardening. If you are following our articles you must be aware of what compost is. If you have no idea about compost and composting I suggest check out this article. Now for making compost you need to store composting ingredients in a pile. For a urban gardeners this is not a good news. Generally in urban areas space is a major constrain. Sheet composting solves this problem. This article will give you an idea about how to use it to your benefit.

In this method you don’t heap the ingredients into a pile; rather you mix it directly with the soil. You can use a spade or a tiller for this purpose. What ever ingredients you have planned to put into the compost heap will do. Grass clippings, manure, leaves, egg shells, tea leaves all will work. Try to use a balanced mix of Carbon (C) and Nitrogen (N) when adding to the soil. More on C/N ration in this article.

You need to add this ingredients couple of months prior to planting. As these ingredients are not decomposed while mixing in the soil, it requires couple of months to degenerate and to release the nutrients. You can also add a layer of leaves or black plastic to increase the process of decomposing.

You don’t need to confuse sheet composting with mulching. The basic difference between the two is that mulching is used basically (even if you use organic materials) for weed protection and to retain water. Though it also boosts up soil quality it is not the primary focus of mulching; whereas sheet composting is done to boost the soil quality.

Sheet composting is a very good process if your garden soil is of poor quality. It also saves the soil from erosion. It is a lot less time and effort consuming than traditional composting.

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Composting A Basic Know how

This is one of my sequel  from my earlier blogs about importance of going Organic and the real meaning of going organic. In this blog I want to share some thoughts about Composting.which is an integral part of Organic Gardening.

The word Compostcomes from two Latin roots, “Com” means “together” and “Post” means “to bring”. So basically compost means To bring together. You have to bring together various things and mix it altogether to form a compost.  Composting is based on the principle of return. As humans we reap things from the earth in the form of produce. But we are not alone, there are many other life forms besides ours that comes into play and make the total cycle run. Giving back to the earth is as vital as taking from it. Composting is a way of using up what we have in abundance to repay a long standing debt to the earth. 

Why Composting:

1.       Compost not only contains the major elements that your plants need for the ultimate growth such as Nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium(NPK) but also the trace elements that are sometimes overlooked by the gardeners such as Boron, Cobalt, Copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Molybdenum and Zinc. The more varied the material used to make compost is greater the variety of nutrients your compost will provide.

2.       The release rate of nutrients are suitable to your plants need. In the spring when the plants just start growth, the microorganisms in compost release the nutrients slowly. As the weather starts getting warmer plants growth become more rapid and so as the release rate of nutrients from the microorganisms. It is the nature’s way of controlling the release rate of nutrients.

3.       Compost increases the water retention capacity of the soil, as it holds water up to 200% of its dry weight.

4.       Compost add micro-organism and larger creatures such as earthworms and insects, which are natural soil builders.

5.       Compost binds with cadmium and lead and thus neutralize the toxin present in the soil and prevents plants to take up those material.

6.       Acts as a pH buffer as you can lower the pH by adding compost made from acidic raw material such as oak, saw dust etc.

Different type of organism generally present in the compost:

1.       Microorganisms:

Bacteria

Fungi

Actinomycetes

2.       Macro-organism:

Earthworms

Insects

Spiders

Nematodes

The rule of thumb for preparing compost is it should contain 2 parts of vegetable matter(grass, leaves, straw etc) and one part animal matter(manure). The greater the number of material in the compost the more the type of organisms will be at work. You can use any material to prepare composed just remember, the material should have just two qualities: (a) it should be bio-degradable, (b) it must contain things that is usable and available to microorganism.  

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