Why Should You Compost?

Composting is one the best ways that I know of to improve your garden, your pocketbook and the environment all at the same time. Contrary to what many people believe it is also very easy to do and, for me at least, a great way to introduce youngsters to the beauty of how Mother Nature works to keep everything in balance and eliminate all waste.

My original outline for this article had me breaking down the reasons you should compost into the three categories mentioned above, but then I realized that most of the benefits derived from composting could not be limited to a single area of benefit. That, just like in nature all things are interrelated and that what benefits one area literally benefits them all.

Composted Soil is Great Natural Fertilizer

As a prime example of this, look at the final product, we derive from the composting process, compost itself.

Compost is one of the greatest organic fertilizing agents that you can put on your plants. Properly used, it will give you stronger, healthier, more disease resistant plants. This, of course, means less need for you to use fertilizers and other chemicals. The less you use, the less you buy so you save money and the less you use, the less there is to leach into the environment.

Even processed organic based fertilizers and other plant treatments can have adverse effects when over or incorrectly used. With compost, this isn’t an issue, the more the better on every front. See what I mean by everything is codependent and intertwined.

Compost Retains Moisture and Promotes a Healthy garden

By virtue of its high bio-content, compost acts like a natural sponge and helps the soil retain water better that even the much-vaunted peat moss. This has several effects along with the obvious benefit of lowering the need for you to water your garden.

By retaining more moisture, in the soil, compost promotes microbial growth, which intern helps to release more nutrients further enriching the soil, making your plants healthier and the crops they produce more nutritious.

It also makes the soil a more suitable home for beneficial insects, earthworms, which have their own benefits along with supplying attracting higher predators which will further reduce your need for pest control.

As you can see, when you really start to delve into the benefits of composting and how it is one of the cornerstones of how our entire biosphere tries to maintain itself, things can get very complicated very quickly.

The truth is, when you start looking at how any natural process works and all of the benefits and savings that come from doing things in a natural way, it really makes you wonder what makes us believe we can find a better way.

In this article, I didn’t even touch on how composting saves on garbage bills and could help keep at least some of the 36,000,000 tons of food waste, which the U.S. alone generates each year, out of landfills, where it produces an estimated 12 million tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane.

Nature is elegant in its designs and processes. The closer we can stay to it, the better off we will be financially, physically, environmentally. Composting is a wonderful place to start exploring how it all works and to gain an understanding of just how wonderful it is.

As always your questions and comments are welcome. You can leave them below or contact me directly via the contact form in the upper right corner or the contact page. I answer all my messages personally and love hearing from you.

Give composting a try and let us know what you think or if you are an experienced composter share your tips and tricks.