Tips for making incredible compost in your garden

Anybody with green fingers will be aware of the incredible benefits of composting. Instead of putting chemicals into the atmosphere by spritzing your plants and garden vegetables with artificial fertilisers, you can ensure that your garden is an all-natural environment, free from toxic chemicals. You will also have the opportunity to make use of materials that would otherwise be considered waste so that you can live in a more sustainable way. But once you have bought your composter from your local garden supplies retailer, how you can make sure that you are making the richest compost for your garden? Here are a few tips to get you started.

Turn your compost regularly. The process of composting is essentially the process of materials breaking down thanks to some lovely bacteria that will make a home for themselves on the compost heap. But for these bacteria to do their job effectively, they need to be exposed to oxygen. The material that sits underneath the top layer of the compost will not have a great deal of exposure to oxygen and thus the bacteria will not thrive in those layers underneath. This is why you should make the effort to turn your compost once a week to encourage even decomposition.

Shred your compost material. The greater the surface area of your compost, the greater area that bacterial microbes have to work with and the faster your compost heap will decompose to create rich compost. In order to create an increased surface area of compost materials, you should put things like card, paper, leaves, and straw through a shredder before placing them in your composter. And if you don't have access to a shredder, you can still tear these materials up into smaller pieces before you compost them.

Add dog food to your compost heap. That's right -- dog food. Not only is dog food something that breaks down well on a compost heap, it is actually considered an "activator" that will help your compost materials to break down with greater speed. In order for this to work, you need to make sure that you choose a protein rich dog food. It is the high quantities of nitrogen and protein in the dog food that assist bacterial organisms to break down the other material in your compost bin.

Follow these pro tips and you will have an organic fertiliser that will create beautiful flowers and plump, delicious fruits and vegetables in your garden. For more information, contact a company like Tenkate Landscape Supplies.