In My Mind’s Zen Garden

Lately, I’ve been having some reasonable success with my garden. And my success has been a matter of trial and error. But I can narrow it down to one main ingredient… the fact that I’ve become a serious “composter”.

Here in sunny San Diego the soil is mainly clay, filled with lots of rocks too. So, one has to dig down about 12 to 18 inches minimum, remove all the rocks, then add soil amendments to break up the clay, which tends to hold the water too long, contributing to such gardening problems as root rot.

The secret to my success so far lies in composting, taking various decaying plant matter and adding it to a large heap or pile. After so many weeks or months, this pile of decaying plant life turns into compost, a dark, rich organic matter that is good to amend to your existing soil, or added to the top layer of the soil as a mulch.

Now there are many online guides to composting, so I won’t go into an entire essay on the art of composting. I will just say that in my experience, composting seems to be an important factor in a successful garden. People can always water their plants, and plants will always find a way to get sunlight for photosynthesis. But, as gardeners we can greatly improve our gardens and the plants within it by improving the quality of the soil.

And a great and natural way to improve the soil is to compost.

Elements To Composting

So, what does one add to a compost heap?

Two main ingredients make up a successful compost heap:

Green Plant Matter

Mainly, this includes all vegetable and plant refuse from the kitchen: Banana peels, orange peels, tea bags, melon rinds, dead flowers, any waste that came from plants. Grass clippings from the lawn also falls into this category.

Brown Plant Matter

These include dead twigs and leaves, small wood chips, shredded newspapers, any brown plant wastes from the garden can be added, providing they are small in size so that they can decay more rapidly.

What I Add To The Compost Pile

Usually, I keep a small black pail in the kitchen to throw all the kitchen refuse into. Much of the stuff that ends up in the pail are coffee grounds, tea bags, banana peels, nut shells, spent flowers from cut arrangements, various leftover vegetable cuttings from broccoli, orange, lemon, apple peels, and any old veggies in the fridge that have spoiled.

Every time I mow the lawn I take all the grass clippings and throw those into the compost heap.

Sometimes, I go to my local Starbucks Coffee shop where they always have bags of coffee grounds that are free for the taking. I think coffee grounds are excellent for adding to the compost heap, as they were still very moist and a good brown material that’s already ground small in size.

A Simple Procedure

When The Compost Is Ready

And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing so far. I haven’t had to buy any mulch or compost from stores, because it’s cheaper and better to make your own organic compost at home.