How to make high quality compost

A few minutes each week are enough to clear this chaos and this is how it works:

• The contents in the composter are not decomposed: activate rotting by regular watering; work with shades when there is too much sunlight; remove any cover from the composter; if necessary, move the entire heap and re-establish it in layers;
• Unpleasant smell and mushy content: The cause is usually too high a humidity or poor ventilation in lower layers; It would be helpful to cover the pile for a certain period of time while still providing good ventilation; remove the upper layers and loosen the rest near the ground with a pitchfork; an intermediate layer with Wood chippings(€ 21.95 at Amazon *) ensures better moisture exchange inside;
• Compost begins to rot: Most of the time, the only thing that helps here is to generously remove the mold-infested layers and dispose of them in the local garden waste dump; The main cause is often kitchen waste that actually has no place on the compost heap;
• Rats, mice, snails and maggots: here, too, it is often the leftover food, especially that of fruit and vegetables, but also eggshells, which cause rot and lack of oxygen in the composter and thus all kinds of undesirable animals attract; if possible, sort out all fouls and completely convert the compost in a timely manner;
• strong weed growth on the sides and surface: garden waste is best chopped up thoroughly immediately after weeding; diseased parts of the plant, brown tomatoes or badly rotting fruit mildew on the other hand does not belong on the compost at all; Here too, in the case of heavy weed infestation, only a complete implementation of the entire content helps;

The question arises: What do we actually do best with our kitchen waste and how can compost soil generally be improved?

Worm boxes could be THE problem solver!

With this relatively simple solution, we kill the proverbial "two birds with one stone". The naturally grown worms contribute to a much better rotting of the ones to be composted Garden waste with and quite incidentally, a considerable part of the is disposed of Kitchen waste. And there are some other benefits when we worms work to make them more fertile Humus soil entrust for our gardens:

• the organic compost material is decomposed by worms faster, but also much more thoroughly; Released nutrients are better bound and are later available to the plant roots on the beds;
• Compost becomes looser during the entire rotting period, as the worms ensure a balanced supply of water and oxygen within the composter;
• many small tunnels dug by the worms contribute to the perfect ventilation of the compost material;
• favorable design of the pH value within the completely decomposed compost earth; Plants can later absorb more nitrogen in the soil, which results in excellent disease resistance;
• Compost worms are hardy animals and do their work even in severe frosts, as they retreat to the warmer regions of the composter;

The question that remains is how you as a garden owner can get hold of the useful, waste-eating compost worms. Quite simply with an environmentally friendly worm box that you can build yourself or buy ready-made.

Which brings us to our first book tip for January. „Compost from the box“Is the title of the guidebook published by Ulmer Verlag, which teaches you in an entertaining way how to create your own Worm farm come. You will learn interesting facts about the biology of the useful compost worms, get detailed instructions, and know after studying the 96-page reading how a worm box works and how to operate it most appropriately will. Perhaps one or the other of you already has experience with beneficial insects on the compost? We look forward to your opinions in our forum! And that brings us to the last article, our book recommendation, which is also about experiences, but which are aimed at a particularly elite group of people.