A Guide to Inexpensive Composting 3by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 04 Apr 2008 10:08 AM Have you ever thought about composting? It is a frugal way to nourish your garden and produce less trash. I have been talking about creating an inexpensive compost bin. If you missed the first two parts of this series, you can read them now here A Guide to Inexpensive Composting and here A Guide to Inexpensive Composting 2.
Add the compost to your garden soil and your plants will thrive! Some people compost with worms. Worms can make the composting process speed up, but they aren't absolutely necessary for composting. If you do want to compost with worms, buy about 100 "red wiggler" worms. This little guys multiply fast and make short work of the compost. You might be tempted to just dig up some earth worms, but they don't work to well on compost. We did find a red wiggler worm on our driveway just yesterday, but we probably wouldn't be able to find a hundred of them. The red wiggler worms don't like citrus peels or onions, so avoid adding these items to your compost pile if you have worms. Also, you'll want to be able to reuse most of your worms for more composting. You can help yourself out by taking the lid off of your compost bin for a few days before adding the compost to your garden. The worms shy away from the light and will wiggle themselves further down in to the bin. You can also gently "sift" the worms to some degree and then place them back in the compost bin. Happy gardening! Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here. Related Articles: A Guide to Inexpensive Composting A Guide to Inexpensive Composting 2 Using Egg Cartons in The Garden Frugal lessons from The Amish: Growing Food Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments MegfromAllAboutAppearances (330) 04 Apr 2008 12:24 PMMaybe I should start selling earthworms! I'm in north Florida and I can't turn up a shovel full of dirt here without it being full of long, fat earthworms. My husband put a huge pile of grass he dug up on a concrete patio and it composted itself. When I went to shovel it over the yard, the thing was practically moving. We started composting not so much because we need it to make our dirt richer (it's really good as is), but because we didn't want to throw out food that could be turned into something useful. We really enjoy composting. Our city gives away free composting bins (actually, just a piece of fencing, lol) and we use one of the boxes our kitty litter comes in to keep compostables throughout the week next to the garbage can.  Mary Ann Romans (26876) 05 Apr 2008 03:43 AMCan you imagine mailing those worms in the mail? Thanks for the comment and the great tips. wells25 (147) 23 Nov 2008 06:52 PMThe easiest way for us to make compost bins was to put up pallets in a box shape pattern. I made it all connecting, so I have 3. Pallets are free and the worms come right to it. By adding rabbit droppings to the compost, the red worms show up. And they do have mail order worms sent priority mail. Community Tags baby, child, compost, frugal, garden, teeth, thrifty Discuss this article
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Once a week or so, mix your compost. You can do this by rolling the can around a bit or using a shovel or pitchfork to mix it all up. I know, we are supposed to add things in layers, right? But I guess mixing helps when things are already starting to break down. You compost should be ready in about four to six weeks, depending on the conditions.
