By: Sara Mack, Marketing Manager
We love to talk about our finished compost product, a.k.a. “black gold” all year round. Now that we’re returning the latest batches of compost to our customers, we wanted to dive into our favorite ways to maximize its benefits, particularly for those of you who have signed up with Compost Crew over the past year. Here are a few tips about how compost can give your green thumb a dramatic boost.
Once food scraps and organic waste complete their journey from your bucket to our composting facilities and are ready to return to the local soil, how can a gardener maximize the benefits of this miracle-working soil amendment? In reality there is not a single correct answer to this question. If you’re getting ready to use compost on your houseplants or in your garden for the first time, you’ve got options!
- Create your own potting mix by incorporating finished compost.
A mix of 1 part finished compost with 1 part peat, 1 part perlite, and 1 part topsoil, will help ensure your plant will flourish! Compost is always better as part of a mix because using exclusively compost to pot a plant can lead to root rot, so be sure to do your measurements.
- Lay finished compost on top of regular soil in an outdoor vegetable or flower garden.
Sprinkle your compost on raised beds or straight onto the ground in a hearty dose: up to a few inches thick. Watering your beds combined with seasonal rain will help the compost to percolate into the soil and aid in increased water absorption, improved runoff control, and the overall health of your plants.
- Incorporate compost into your lawn-growing or mulching regiment.
Finished compost can replace traditional mulch if it is laid around trees or shrubs in a thick layer. It also has a leg up on mulch as compost will naturally aid in water conservation while also improving soil quality. These same qualities make compost perfect to prep a yard for grass growth if it is laid prior to seeding the lawn!
- Make compost tea!
If you’ve never heard of compost tea it might sound unappealing, but your plants will likely think differently. Not designed for human consumption, compost tea can be generated by placing finished compost in a cloth bag and soaking it in a bucket of water while aerating the water for at least 24 hours. This process will create a liquid fertilizer that you can use in your garden or on your houseplants.
In all of its forms, finished compost is a great way to boost your local soil quality and reduce erosion. Regardless of how you choose to use your Compost Crew “black gold”, we can’t wait to hear about it! Be sure to send us pictures of your prize-winning flowers and veggies this year, especially if our compost helped your plants to flourish.
