We produce organic fertilizers that we can easily return to nature every day in our kitchens. So how can we re-cycle them?
Benefits of Using Compost
Fertilizers help improve the quality of the soil and enrich it. Especially with organic fertilizers, you create a living space for living things that will benefit your soil. In this way, you provide more nutrients to your soil, maintain the moisture level and improve the texture of the soil. You enable the soil in hard texture to become sandy ("vermicomposting") thanks to the increased moisture, nutrients and the movements of our little friends like earthworms living in it.
There must have been those around us who collected egg and banana peels and used them in the soil. When we realized how much food waste is emerging in the kitchen every day, we decided to evaluate them systematically. Since professional composting devices are very new and expensive technologies, we need to preserve these food wastes and various other natural wastes we mentioned in the rest of our article with traditional methods and wait for them to compost.
We don't want to witness the decay process inside our house, so what is the most effective way to prepare organic fertilizer?
What Can You Fertilize?
First of all, we need to know which substances we can use for fertilizer. We can divide it into green and brown.
Green Waste
Cut grass grains, filter coffee grounds, tea bags (it is important that there is no plastic or chemical paper packaging inside), vegetable and fruit residues, cut waste parts of plants and flowers, excrement of herbivorous and omnivorous animals (leave cats, dogs and humans out of this! 😎), eggshells, moss.
Greens are high in nitrogen and also provide moisture. Microbes that provide warmth to the fertilizer feed on these greens. If your fertilizer content is too dry, you can increase the green waste.
Brown Waste
Dry leaves, pine thorns, tree branches and knots, straw (no seeds), sawdust (must be from non-chemically processed wood), corn cobs, unprocessed paper and cardboard waste, natural cotton fabric waste.
Browns increase the phosphorus ratio with decay and this is important for fruit yield. Since they are dry, they balance the moisture rate on the basis of fertilizer. Ideally, the bulk of your mix should consist of brown waste (eg, two units of brown waste for each unit of green waste). Brown waste loosens the fertilizer mix and speeds up the circulation of oxygen. If your mix is too wet, you should constantly feed it with brown waste.
What Not to Use in Compost
Do NOT use the following in your compost mix: Weeds with seeds, sick and contaminated flowers and plants, chemically treated or coated glossy paper products, waste oils, meat and other animal products and waste.
Making the Compost Mix
Although proportions are important, you do not have to constantly measure and weigh the content and temperature of your fertilizer. When you think about it, this process naturally takes place every day in our forests and gardens. But still, we list a few important points below:
Protect your kitchen waste from fruit flies and other creatures - store in an airtight vacuum-lid box. You do not have to buy expensive products sold for this purpose in the market. But fruit and flower flies somehow manage to sneak in and lay eggs. To prevent this, we recommend that you do not wait more than 1-2 days and transfer it to the main fertilization container outdoors.
Note the Green-Brown ratio. If you have been feeding it with kitchen waste for a long time, be sure to add double the amount of brown waste.
Host microbes and organisms - for this you can take soil from the garden and add it.
Don't forget to turn the mixture upside down - this will allow oxygen, heat and living organisms to diff use and speed up the composting process. Too much green waste and moisture, no food source for the organisms (not feeding the manure), or too hot will cause asphyxiation. In this case, you lose living organisms and the mixture starts to harden and smell. Ideally, you should do the mixing process at least once a week.
The temperature of the mixture should ideally be in the range of 45-70 degrees for vigorous life to continue. Around 60-70 degrees, you can get rid of weeds and pests, but there is still a risk of extinction of beneficial organisms. Therefore, high heat should not occur for more than a few days. This will be prevented by regularly aerating the soil as we mentioned above.
Rotation - In order for your mixture to dissolve completely, you will not have to pile up too much waste inside, you will only need to aerate for about 4-6 weeks without adding. During this time, you can manage more than one mix, and you can also add each new mix from the previous mix and start life there too.
A finished fertilizer mix should now look completely soil-like, with no undissolved solid waste left in it. The scent should be earthy. Every unwanted seed you leave in the mix will turn out to be a weed in the future!
Organic fertilizer is a natural and free resource. Moreover, if you regularly grow your own plants and food, you should definitely try it.
Did you know that you can convert organic fertilizer into liquid fertilizer and use it in liquid form in your soil or hydroponic systems? Details are coming soon in another blog post.
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