Do not throw out your tea bags with the trash. Save them in a dish and then empty them around your garden plants and shrubs. Makes a good substitute for peat and will add plant goodness and save you cash.
By alan julier from Cradley UK
Raked-up leaves make great compost and are good to dig into your garden now to enrich the soil for next year's crops.
For a quick compost container, an old garbage can with the bottom cut out will do the trick. Just toss in fruit peels, vegetable scraps and the like, and pop on the lid.
Composting is a great way to get amazing soil for your garden and keep some trash out of the landfill.
A good way to enrich your garden soil and help out the earth is to bury your "wet" garbage. I bury my apple, orange, potato peels, etc.
Looking for advice on starting a compost? Here are some tips from the ThriftyFun community. Most people avoid meat and meat by-products because of the smell and the tendencies to attract flies which do nothing to help the compost process.
Since dryer lint is mostly organic material, it is great for the compost pile.
Do not throw away your daily coffee grounds or tea from tea bags. Mulch or compost them.
How can you get a very large pile of grass and horse manure to break down quickly?
Hardiness Zone: 4b
By Margaret from Omaha, NE
Keep it wet, for more info go to-how to compost, good luck.
Turn it several time a week and keep it moist but not dripping.
It takes oxygen as well as water to get the compost bacteria multiplying quickly. You'll know it is finished when it no longer is as hot when you turn it.
I see many references at various compost related info sites, where I often see, "no meat or animal products", but rarely an explanation as to why. Finally saw one response in your site, "because it gets smelly".
Is that the only reason? I thought maybe it might have something to do with such products (meat and meat products) cultivating an undesirable bacteria or something like that. Can anyone enlighten me on this?
By Annuity - Victor from San Francisco, CA
Such products also draw unwanted critters to paw through your compost pile, such as skunks, opossums, and rats.
The meat also contaminates the soil with e-coli germs and other really bad bacterias. This gets into your vegetables or fruit and makes you very sick.
Rats! Trust me, you do not want an infestation of rats! So no meat or meat byproducts.
I don't put any meat products in my compost AT ALL and still have a very fat mouse living there! I guess he/she likes lettuce and carrots!
To enrich my compost, I save my peels as I'm cooking. I blend them till smooth and I stir them into the dirt of my compost pile. It reduces garbage and enriches my compost pile.
Every fall, we see people working very hard with leaves, putting them in paper bags for city collection. Anyone who has even a modest back yard can use an easier method.
I compost my kitchen scraps, grass cutting, and leaves in pots. I don't have room for composting bins or a space in the ground. It works fine, I have tons of worms and the kitchen scraps are devoured very quickly. I was attending a gardening class at one of our local nurseries and we got on the subject of using compost. The person leading the class said not to use compost in pots, as it is too high in nitrogen and will burn the plants.
I generally mix the compost with soil and have had good luck with growing my vegetables in pots, but wondered if I should be concerned? I am trying to not have to buy potting soil and was hoping that by mixing the compost with my regular dirt I could create a healthy soil for my container plants. Am I causing more damage to the plants and good? Please help.
Hardiness Zone: 10b
By Janice from CA
Many garden tools are designed to make the job faster and easier, but an alternative usually exists that can accomplish the same task for a lot less money. Here's a rundown of six handy composting tools - what they do, why they are helpful, and the cost-saving alternatives.
