Composting - Fine Gardening

  • garden hose carts
    How-To

    Tips for Upcycling Garden Trash into Useful Tools

    Winning tip: Another life for old hose carts I had two rusted-out hose carts. I disassembled them and realized they could be repurposed. After I painted them with Rustoleum, I zip-tied…

  • A blanket of fallen leaves.
    How-To

    3 Ways Fallen Leaves Can Improve Your Garden

    Green leaves are the energy engines that fuel our gardens. Without them there would be no flowers, no sugars for summer tomatoes, and no cooling or oxygenating the air while…

  • How-To

    Setting Up a Three-Bin Compost System

    The value of having compost available for use in the home garden is immeasurable, and the convenience of creating that compost on-site for instant availability adds to the reward. Of…

  • healthy garden soil
    Collection

    Maintaining Healthy Garden Soil

    Many people think of soil as dead, decomposed organic matter and minerals. But it’s much more than that. Soil is full of life. Trillions of organisms live in soil, using…

  • How-To

    Tips for Making the Best Compost

    The real superpower of compost is that it gives life to soil. Compost is made from material that is digested by organisms and microbes that occur naturally in native soil.…

  • add paper to bin
    How-To

    Build Your Own Indoor Worm Farm

    In keeping with Murphy’s Law, it seemed that whenever it was time to take the kitchen scraps out to my backyard compost pile, it was raining or snowing or was…

  • three-bin composting system
    Article

    Tips and Tricks from a Mid-Atlantic Master Composter

    Compost is a fundamental garden amendment that enriches soil and provides nutrients to plants. But where do you start on making your own? I talked to Gail Hermenau, Master Gardener…

  • half rotted compost
    How-To

    How to Make Great Compost in the Southern Plains

    One of the secrets to a successful, productive garden is compost. Although you can buy commercial compost in bags or in bulk from gardening stores, it’s easy and enjoyable to…

  • Collection

    Sustainable Gardening Collection

    The dirty little secret of gardening is that many of the common practices and products we use to improve our backyard oases are actually bad for the environment. We use…

  • Pitchfork with ingredients to make compost
    How-To

    6 Ways To Make More Compost

    My grandmother, who managed a working farm in my birthplace of Malta, gave me my first lesson on soil health when I was about seven. As we harvested lettuce for…