Importance of Compost Piling by Sophia

                                                           

Have you ever wondered what the importance and benefits of composting is? Composting is basically just making a pile or heap of green waste and stirring it until it is broken down. Green waste is simply wetted down organic matter, such as leaves and food waste. Green waste normally breaks down after a course of weeks but can also take as long as months to break down. Compost is a key ingredient to organic farming.

There are many cool and unique ways to compost food waste. After it breaks down it is recycled and used as fertilizer and soil amendment. Compost waste is rich in nutrients which it is so good to use for plant growth.

You can use one of many ways to create a compost at the comfort of your own home. There are many composting benefits, like introducing beneficial organisms to soil, it’s good for the environment, and it reduces landfill waste. You can compost materials like animal manure, table scraps, paper, and even wood chips. There are multitudes of organisms, fungus and bacteria involved in the process of composting.

In composting, you will want green materials like lawn and landscape trimmings to reduces the amount of nitrogen. More green materials like fruit and vegetable peels would work great. Tea bags and coffee grounds are brown but are just as potent as green materials when it comes to nitrogen. For carbon, you’d want brown materials such as twigs, hay, and dry leaves.

You’ll definitely want to keep water around the compost pile to keep it moist. A compost pile needs oxygen to keep the bacteria and fungus in the compost pile alive. You can add worms in the pile, and bugs will find their way there.

When starting a compost pile, you want a certain amount of soil and scraps in your pile, this gives enough insulation and food for the organisms to live. For kitchen biology, we created two compost piles consisting of the same amount of vegetable and soil, and watered with the same amount of water but one was vermicomposting. The process was slow at first but towards the end, sped up and eventually showed progress. It was a great experience.