Composting Basics — Florida Gardenista

Florida’s soil can be challenging for even the most experienced gardenistas and gardeners.  Our soil is typically very sandy, limiting the retention of nutrients and water for plants to thrive. Although it’s easy and expensive to go to a local garden center and load up with bags of soil, amendments, and fertilizers.  Good News : you don’t need to spend a fortune to improve your soil.    There’s a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative that you can create yourself – compost.  Whether you live in a house with a yard, or an apartment with no balcony, you can create a compost bin.

A major component vital to healthy balanced soil is organic matter.  Homeowners can build the quality and quantity of organic matter within their gardens by using scraps from the yard and inside the home.  This process is known as composting.  

If you do a bit of digging, you will find that composting has been a part of most successful cultures for centuries.  Composting is not a new concept, but with improvements in technology and major changes in lifestyles it has become a bit complicated.  Let’s talk about the basics and a few simple ways to get started composting.  

Rewards to Composting

• Improve the health of your garden’s soil

• Increase nutrient holding capacity 

• Retain more water (holds up to 5x it’s own weight)

• Minimize or eliminate fertilizer need

• Control erosion 

• Minimize landfill contributions (household & yard)

• Save money

• Fun family project 

How to Begin

One of the most important steps in composting is beginning with a plan.  Do a little research on what types of composting setups would be best for your gardening space and needs.  

Composting Options

The three composting options I encourage you to explore are the traditional compost heap, cylinder rotating compost, and vermicomposting – also known as worm composting.  As with any garden project, there are positives and negatives when it comes to each of these options, which I’ll briefly outline below.  

#1) Traditional Compost Pile

Pros:

Cons:

• Large outdoor space needed: Requires at least 3x3x3 for best results

• Labor intensive (needs to be flipped every two days)

• Attracts wildlife & insects

• Messy & smelly

• Usually not aesthetically pleasing