Where Can You Find Good Compost Ingredients?
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If you look hard enough, you should be able to find good compost ingredients in your area. If your community is exceptionally clean and neat, finding such items may be difficult, and you may need to purchase some nice, inexpensive biodegradable materials. However, for the most part, such materials should be rather easy to get by. The wider the range of materials we can find, the better. This is because some materials, such as hay, contain a lot of carbon and will take a long time to decompose. Other items, such as grass clippings, are broken down by anaerobic bacteria, resulting in a stink. Alternatively, something like leaves will cover the compost and prevent oxygen from reaching it.
Some Compost Ingredients May Find Near You
Let’s have a look at some organic compost ingredients that you might be able to locate in your neighborhood or purchase locally.
Newspaper
Newspapers are one of the easiest resources to come by in the house. They can also be added to your compost pile. Newspapers aren’t particularly nutritious, but they do create good compost material when mixed up with other materials. Simply shred the newspapers into small bits before using them because it takes a long time for them to degrade. Also, your compost pile must be adequately heated because newspapers may contain dyes that must be heated in order for them to evaporate and not harm the soil.
Pine Needles
Pine needles are common compost ingredients. They take a long time to break down and don’t supply many nutrients, but they do give the compost a nice texture. They can make the soil somewhat acidic, but this should not be an issue when used in conjunction with other compost components.
Weeds
Adding weeds to your compost pile may appear to be a horrible idea, but they are one of the best sources of organic matter. You just have to make sure they’re in a compost pile with a temperature of roughly 135 degrees Fahrenheit. The weed seeds will be killed and prevented from developing as a result of this. The more weeds you put to the compost pile, the more nitrogen-releasing stuff you’ll need to add so that temperatures rise and the seeds die. You should also place such weeds in the pile’s middle, where the temperature is the maximum. It’s possible that if you lay them on top, they’ll start germinating in the compost.
Straw
For the compost ingredients, you can buy hay or straw from farms. When these materials aren’t weathered, however, they require a lot of nitrogen to degrade. As a result, you must obtain weathered hay or straw. This means they should have gone gray and be deteriorating, rendering them unfit for ingestion by animals. If you can only find unweathered hay or straw, add a tiny amount to your compost pile to allow bacteria to break them down without requiring a lot of nitrogen.
Ashes
In your compost pile, ashes are a good source of nutrients. You can’t use coal ash since it’s hazardous to plants, but you can use wood ash from a fireplace instead. They feed the compost pile with a lot of potassium and phosphorus. Adding multiple layers of ash to your compost is the best method to use it. This helps to keep the potassium from being washed away by rain.
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