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Learn About Composting in Your Corktown District Lofts
Paradise in My Backyard is dedicated to helping its readers achieve backyard perfection, not just now but in the future. With wasteful consumption endangering the future of our species on the planet, every little thing we can do to help the environment will be worth it in the long run, especially if you've got kids you're planning on giving your real estate in Riverdale, Toronto to when you die. In terms of backyards, one of the most helpful things you can do for the environment - and your garden - is to compost, which actually isn't as gross as it sounds.
The first step in the composting process is to head out to your local building supply store and set yourself up with a composter. While it is certainly possible to compost without one (some people simply keep a pile of compost behind their Brooklin home) these specially designed housings foster the decomposition process while keeping unwanted odors from pervading your yard. With a composter, material degrades faster and cleaner, so it's well worth the money you spend to get one. Composters fit in any size yard and also help to keep animals out of your refuse. When you first set up the compost bin, you'll need carbon and nitrogen rich materials to provide an ideal development atmosphere for the bacteria that are responsible for the decomposition process. To do this, add equal parts dried grass, leaves, or twigs, and green household waste like fruit peelings or spoiled lettuce along with some water. This will be your bacteria's new home. Ontario's climate gets quite cold in the winter, but give your bacteria enough to eat and their activity will keep them warm all year. Temperatures inside the bin can be around 90 degrees Farenheight. Counter intuitively, if you don't want your compost bin to smell, you need to aerate it. This means getting in there with your shovel or pitchfork and stirring things up. This helps keep too much nitrogen from building up and causing your Lytton Park property to smell. Other ways to maintain a smell-free compost bin are to keep meat products and animal waste out and to maintain your ratio of carbon to nitrogen by not adding a lot of kitchen waste unless you've got some yard waste to balance it out. If you're too busy preparing a Scarborough home for sale or driving your kids to their lessons to properly maintain your compost bin, perhaps you would be better off using bins provided by the city, which are emptied weekly. This takes the material off your hands. However, the downside to this is that you don't get free soil when the compost process is complete, unless the city offers to give it away on a first-come first-served basis. |
Copyright (c) 2008 - Your Dream BackyardTuesday, May 21, 2013 |