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Improving your soil will result in increased performance of your garden.
A simple and inexpensive way is to feed it with compost, a natural
material that adds important nutrients and helps your soil retain needed
moisture.
Everything that dies breaks down into a brown, fluffy material
called compost or humus, which is essential to soil vitality and
vigorous plant growth. In nature, humus forms at a rate of an inch or so
a century.
Gardeners have developed several techniques to help nature
make humus faster. These techniques can be simple or involved, depending
upon how quickly you want to develop humus. The faster you want it, the
more you must help things along. If you're in no hurry, make compost the
simple way. Stack all dead material in a pile at one corner of your
garden. Or put it in the center of a ring shaped wire enclosure. add
weeds, grass clippings, leaves and kitchen scraps. Over a period of
time, these will break down into compost. Although this method takes one
to two years to form humus, it requires little effort on your part.
If you want to speed up the process, follow these simple steps. Scratch up
the soil in a 4x4' area to expose soil microorganisms.
If you prefer to contain compost and make it more attractive to the eye,
enclose the area. Use wire, concrete blocks, pieces of wood or any
commercially manufactured composting bin, you might consider two, side
by side one bin to house finished compost and one to contain new material.
Make sure there is ample air on all sides because the compost producing
microorganisms require oxygen to survive and multiply. To speed up the
process, occasionally sprinkle some soil into the pile to bring in
millions of fresh microorganisms. Keep the organic matter moist, but not
soggy, If the pile dries out, it wont break down properly. Water the
pile in dry weather. Sprinkle a handful of fertilizer or commercially
available compost starter into the pile from time to time. The nitrogen
encourages the composting process.
Turn the pile whenever you want, as long as you don't turn it more often
than once a week. Turning the pile mixes up the debris, moistens
everything and supplies new oxygen to the microorganisms. The
compost heats up tremendously when it starts to break down. The hotter
it is the better, because the heat's intensity kills bacteria and weed seeds
in the compost. Your compost pile will shrink to a fraction of its initial size,
which is normal. as materials break down, they take up less and less space.
Although this accelerated composting process requires more participation
from you, you'll have compost in as little as three to eight weeks, depending
upon the organic material composted.
Source Unknown
Compost
In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.
~Abram L. Urban
Are the neighborhood animals wreaking havoc in your garden? Check your local pet shop for products specifically formulated to keep animals out of your yard. Place lemon peels or slivers of deodorant soap around your garden. Most animals hate being startled, so surprising them by turning on the sprinkler can be very effective.
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