Composting for Beginners
Compost is nature’s way of recycling. Made from waste garden material, compost is an essential ingredient for creating rich, friable soil and therefore healthy plants. Find out how to make compost with the guide below and use compost throughout your garden for healthy plant growth!
HOW TO SET UP YOUR COMPOST SYSTEM
To get started you will need a good structure or container to hold your compost. Reln Garden Compost Bins are a great option, or you could build your own, for example out of plastic bins or pallets, or create a compost heap. Look online for more ideas.
Choose a sunny position for your compost system and ensure it is easily accessible for adding ingredients and regular mixing.
Prepare your compost in layers that are a blend of carbon and nitrogen. This means adding a mix of organic garden and kitchen waste materials.
Carbon: Leaves, sticks, twigs and newspaper.
Nitrogen: Fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea leaves and sheep pellets.
Avoid adding: meat, dairy products or bread as these can attract unwanted pests. Don’t add any diseased plant material, to avoid spreading the disease.
A good rule of thumb is to add nothing larger than your little finger. Break up larger items like sticks, twigs and cardboard before adding them, to help them break down more quickly.
Layer materials evenly, making sure each layer is no thicker than 10cm. For every layer of backyard and garden waste, add a layer of kitchen waste material.
To help get the composting process underway you can add some existing compost to each layer. Add a little water with each layer and mix the material every few additions.
Put a lid on your compost bin to enable it to decompose quickly. Mix your compost regularly. It is compost when it is dark brown and smells earthy - it takes six to eight weeks to fully mature.
USING COMPOST IN YOUR GARDEN
Compost has a variety of benefits when used in your garden. It replaces nutrients that have been removed during a growing season, improves soil structure and increases the amount of oxygen available to plants.
Compost also conditions soil, improves moisture retention, increases earthworm activity and improves fertiliser use by plants.
For best results compost should be dug into the soil. Don’t plant directly into compost as this can burn plant roots.
The content of your compost bin should have the consistency of a damp sponge. If your compost gets a bit too wet, adding paper will help soak up excess water.
Apply 100g (approximately 10 tablespoons) of Tui Compost Enhancer per square metre to help speed up compost decomposition and keep away flies.
EMPIRE BUILDING TRUMP
So Donald Trump does not want to start any wars and is a peace maker.
And yet he is seriously seeking to annex the world's largest island, Greenland from Denmark, take over the Panama Canal from the sovereign country of Panama who have owned it since 1977 and even forthrightly suggesting that Canada ceases being a nation and become a state or series of states of the USA.
Greenland above everything else, harbours minerals vital for todays and tomorrows world and that is what probably attracts Trump most. His son is looking things over in Greenland as this thread is being produced. Climate change is also changing Greenland which despite its name is currently mainly covered in ice and snow all year round. Greenland has a population of 55,000.
Panama's major asset after tourism and services is the canal with a current revenue of $5 billion. It operates its shipping charges through an international organisation so that the USA gets an unbias deal for its ships etc that use the canal. Panama is a poor country on the improve and has a population of 4.5 million.
Denmark is a member of NATO. But Trump has threatened many times for the USA to pull out of this Europe-USA defence alliance and Greenland may be the straw that finally breaks the pact.
Canada is surrounded by the USA but it is so much unlike the USA and much more akin to Australia and NZ. In contrast to the USA, Canada is one of the happiest countries in the world and in total land area is the world's second largest.
NZ is going to come under the scrutiny of Trump and his henchmen/women. He will probably look to cut NZ away from its free trade arrangements with China with some kind of ultimatum.
Poll: Would you rather: Christmas in summer forever or winter forever?
Just a bit of a fun poll to get you thinking.
If you had to live out your Christmas days, would you prefer it was a summer Christmas or a winter Christmas?
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63.3% Summer
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35.4% Winter
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1.3% Other - I'll share below
New Year, New Questions You Won’t Solve!
I get smaller every time I take a bath.
What am I?
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