How to make a compost pile to make "golden soil" for growing plants

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By Sharon Neth
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make a compost pile to make "golden soil" for growing plants

Here is a tip for making an old fashioned compost pile that my parents taught me. This is a simple and great way to make the most of your garden with little work since the critters do it for you. With this "golden soil" you can have larger plants and vegetables PLUS, you know what is going into your garden because you know that it is without all of the chemicals that some fertilizers have.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Shovel
Branches
Leaves
Grass clippings
Rail road ties or snow fencing
Good old sunshine

Step 1

Layer ties

Locate a spot in your yarn that has equal amount of sunlight and shade.
Step 2

Dig a pit two feet wide and six feet long. It should be about two feet deep to encourage soil creature to get into it.
Step 3

Make enough room

Erect a wall around the pit. Old railway ties stacked on top of each other make an attractive box. Or is you can't get railway ties snow
fences work well too. The wall should just be high enough to reach over
comfortably so that you can turn over the rotting material once a week
and push a stick down in various places. This lets in the air, which
speeds up decomposition.
Step 4

Layering of garden waste

Now you are ready to add material to the compost. Start with a layer
of branches, then leaves, then grass clippings, weeds, spoiled vegetables and fruits and coffee grounds. If you will chop up leaves and
branches they will decompose faster.

Comments

vikki9 said

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on 7/29/2008 Great idea - thank you!

Ceile said

on 7/19/2008 Natural compost, less garbage in the landfills, less money spent on fertilizers, better plants...I could go on and on about why it's best to have a compost pile such as you have written about here! I have one similar. This is really a great plan for a compost pile, thank you!

CCrock said

on 4/6/2008 I've been using a compost pile as long as I can remember. My mom was always making my go out there to add scraps to it and I hated that job because it was stinky and icky, but now that I'm older I can really appreciate what it's worth.