Compost beds. How to make a "warm" bed - the easiest and fastest way. Benefits of using technology

This year, spring is early and since the beginning of April we have been spending a lot of time in the garden - making warm compost beds. In general, such beds are made throughout the year, even in winter, and immediately after the snow melts, they are finalized, covered with a film and “ripen”. Making warm compost beds with your own hands is not so difficult! Try it too!

Compost pile or compost beds: which is better?

I will not be mistaken if I say that on almost every garden plot there is a treasured corner where gardeners throw organic matter - a compost heap. On our site for several years in a row there was also such a place.

Our old compost heap

Our compost heap was located a few meters from the house so that it was not so far to run with a garbage pail. It was the husband’s “sacred duty” to fill the heap, he did a great job with it, only the land, which it is desirable to pour organic garbage, was far in the garden, and the husband was reluctant to drive behind it every time with a wheelbarrow. It is not difficult to imagine what a "flavor" was around our composter - all the surrounding flies flocked to us! In addition, the compost in our heap usually matured in two years, which is a long time by my standards, and for some reason it turned out not enough. All this did not particularly please me ... We did not doubt that compost was needed in the garden, but here's how to optimize the process of obtaining it?

Watching how my husband runs every day to the compost heap with a slop bucket, periodically mixes the compost with a pitchfork so that it “breathes”, and then every spring he delivers the compost with a wheelbarrow to numerous beds located throughout the hectare, I wondered: how do they cope with all this, women who do not have “male power” at their side.

I went to visit my closest neighbor, pensioner Nadezhda Petrovna, who is known in the Ark as a real gardener, always gets beautiful harvest, manages to common territory beds to make and plant, and she copes wonderfully with this alone. Nadezhda Petrovna said that the whole secret is in high compost beds! Why demolish all the organics in one pile, and then from this pile - along the beds, when you can immediately take the bucket to the garden and sprinkle it with earth from the same garden! And really, why?

After weighing all the pros and cons, I decided on my own, without the help of my husband, to make a compost bed. It turned out to be quite affordable and did not require much physical effort. Now there is no more compost heap on our hectare, but a lot of warm compost beds! Filling them up is still the same “holy duty” of the husband, but now, when he is too lazy to fill up the waste with earth, I am able to do it myself, since the earth is here, on the same bed!

Turning ordinary garden beds into compost

So you have ordinary beds on which you have already grown vegetables. To improve their fertility, we will begin to fertilize the beds with organic waste.

Organic waste includes nitrogenous and carbonaceous materials.

nitrogenous- these are wet (juicy) materials, for example, the remains of vegetables, fruits and other food waste, mowed grass and weeds (although it is better to mulch plantings with them), as well as animal manure, bird droppings, human feces(for some reason, it is this most valuable product of human activity that is most difficult for many people to “accept” as a fertilizer).

To carbonaceous materials include everything dry: hay, straw, paper, cardboard, sawdust, branches, various husks, rags from natural materials(although it is better to collect them separately and use for mulching), eggshell, tea and coffee brewing, etc.

It is believed that in proper compost the optimal ratio of nitrogenous materials to carbon materials is 1:4. We will strive for this ratio in our compost beds.

It is not recommended to put in compost beds heat-treated kitchen waste, bones and meat of animals, animal fat and vegetable oil(To be honest, I don’t really bother, I put any food waste in the compost - both boiled and with oil, but we don’t have meat and bones anyway, we are vegetarians). It is not yet necessary to put diseased plants (especially those affected by cabbage club and late blight), seed heads of weeds, cat and dog feces, uncut wood, perennial weeds, and wool into the compost.

Do you practice separate waste collection?

If you still collect all the garbage in the house, both organic and inorganic, in one bin, then it's time to get rid of this bad habit and more conscious approach to the garbage collection process. Your kitchen should have at least two buckets! In one you will throw away the remnants of food, scraps of paper and cardboard (although we, for example, never throw away paper, but collect it separately for kindling), all dust from the vacuum cleaner - in general, everything that can rot and turn into valuable fertilizer. We collect all the inorganic matter into another bucket - candy wrappers, film, plastic, rubber, etc. The next step in increasing your awareness is the separate collection of inorganic garbage, depending on the material from which it is made (in the Ark, we now practice separate collection of inorganic matter), but now start at least small - collect organic matter in a separate bucket!

With a smile, I remember the time when my husband and I lived in a city apartment. Five kilometers from our house there was an abandoned holiday village, gradually turning into a swamp. No one lived there for a long time, the land was overgrown with willows. My husband cleared clearings there and grew chestnut seedlings, which he later planted in the local park. We also organized a small garden there, built a hut and got out "on the ground" almost every week. We had such a kind of cottage there. So, in order to increase the fertility of the soil, we ourselves made compost right in the apartment! My husband installed a small barrel on the balcony, into which we carried everything. organic waste. To not be on the balcony bad smell, the husband took the tube out of the barrel into the street and put a small fan in the barrel. When the compost was ready, it was taken out in bags to our garden. This I mean that even in urban conditions it would be realistic to engage in composting, there would be a desire.

How many compost beds can be made per season?

But back to our beds. Let's calculate how many beds per season we can make compost. It depends on how much organic waste you get in the course of your life. For example, it takes two weeks to make one small compost bed on my site (that is, during this time our family of four collects enough organic waste to cover the bed with a layer of 15-20 cm). Considering that the beds then have to “ripen” for another 3 weeks, it means that if we start filling the bed with waste right now, then by mid-May we will already have the first ready-made compost bed for planting, for example, corn seeds. In another 2 weeks, by the end of May, another bed will be ready, where pumpkin seedlings can be planted.

Thus, this spring I can only make 2 compost beds, so the rest can be safely planted. The third compost bed can be filled during June after we remove the harvest of early crops from it - radish, lettuce. Then a bed of peas is released. Thus, throughout the spring and throughout the summer, you can gradually increase the fertility of 5-7 beds.

A few more beds will be filled in the fall. Since autumn, we have been preparing the beds closest to the house (I’ll tell you exactly how below) in order to carry out organic waste on them in winter. It turns out that my family can provide about 10 beds with compost during the garden season. And yours?

We make compost beds with our own hands

So, we have chosen the first bed and are ready to gradually fill it with waste. To do this, it is necessary to remove part of the earth from the end of the bed by about half a bayonet of a shovel in depth and about half a meter long. This earth can be poured into unnecessary (cracked) buckets and put away for storage somewhere in the shade. We take out the garbage into the recess that has turned out on the bed and immediately sprinkle it with a small layer of earth, which we take from the same bed from the place where our hole began (it’s convenient to immediately “settle” a separate shovel on the bed so that each time you don’t run after it with a garbage can in hand). Thus, when we fill and sprinkle the first recess with earth, we automatically form the next recess. So we gradually fill the entire garden with organic matter. It is not difficult to guess that to fill the last recess with waste, we use earth from buckets that were waiting in the shade in the shade.

After the compost bed is completely filled, it must be shed very well with a solution of Baikal - EM1 (1 cap of Baikal per 10-liter watering can). A watering can of such a solution leaves for 1 sq.m of the garden.

Then the bed should be well mulched. You can use straw or hay, cardboard, newspapers, black nonwoven fabric- spunbond, which must be well fixed in the garden. In the spring, for better heating of the bed, I additionally cover it with a film, in the summer it is no longer necessary to use a film. While the first bed "ripens" for 3-4 weeks, we proceed to the manufacture of the next compost bed.

When the bed is “ripe”, I sprinkle it with ash (0.5 liters per 1 sq. M), I go through a slightly flat cutter and. Be sure to mulch everything, usually with freshly cut grass.

If the beds were filled during the summer, and you no longer plan to grow anything on them this season, then be sure to mulch them so that weed seeds do not fall on the soil.

If there is still time until autumn, you can sow the bed with green manure, but then do not close them up, but leave them like that before winter.

Preparing beds for winter filling

Therefore, in the winter we continue to fill the beds with organic matter. But for this it is necessary to prepare the beds in the fall. It is important to choose the beds closest to the house, in winter it snows so much, you won’t get far into the garden.

In principle, if there is a ready-made bed with high sides that needs to be filled, you can do nothing, just take all the organic waste into it in winter and sprinkle it with snow. But in the spring there must be a place where you can take the land to cover the resulting compost bed with a layer of at least 10 cm. We have a special mountain of fertility (formed when we dug a pond), my husband brings the earth from there to such a bed in the spring. 2-3 days before backfilling with earth, it is advisable to walk along the bed with a flat cutter, break frozen clods of organic matter, if any. And then fill it with earth, spill it with a warm solution of Baikal-EM1 and be sure to cover it with a film.

If there is no such storehouse of land, then you can carefully remove the top layer of soil from the garden bed and lay it next to it. For example, on a banner. And in the spring, when the soil thaws, return it to the already filled bed, spill it with the Baikal-EM1 solution and be sure to cover it with a film.

This year, instead of Baikal-EM1, we used for the first time the microbiological fertilizer Siyanie-3 - sprinkled it on the compost and spilled it well with water. I think the effect will be the same as Baikal.

This year we tried to sprinkle the compost bed with Siyanie-3 microbiological fertilizer.
Then they spilled the bed well with water.

Pros and cons of compost beds

I'll start with pluses:

1. Even a retired woman can make a compost bed. There is no need to periodically mix the compost and run around the site with a wheelbarrow (especially if the site is a hectare).

2. The compost bed “ripens” relatively quickly, especially if it is treated with EM preparations. 3-4 weeks after laying the bed, it is ready for use.

3. The compost bed is long-lasting, it can be used for several seasons in a row, planting in the first year plants that like to “eat” (pumpkin, corn, cucumbers, etc.), in the second year root crops (carrots, beets, potatoes), and on third year legumes (beans, peas).

4. In the first year, the compost bed is also warm, so you can plant vegetables in it even with seeds. For example, on such a bed, corn, planted in mid-May with germinated seeds, grows remarkably and ripens.

5. Worms love to settle in the compost bed, which help maintain the structure and fertility of the soil.

Now about minuses:

1. In spring, when the snow melts, covering the compost beds that were filled in winter, they do not look very aesthetically pleasing. Here you have to suffer a little “mess”, and as soon as the earth thaws, just finish the garden bed, sprinkling it with earth.

2. The second minus concerns settlements where there are no fences. They love to delve into the unfinished compost bed of the dog, taking away the "sweets". Magpies also feed there, again, until the bed is covered with earth.

Using compost beds is one method. I have been using it for several years now and am very happy with the result. I advise you too!

The most important factor proper development plants is their balanced diet. Everyone will agree with this: both the summer resident-amateur, and the experienced gardener-practitioner, and the scientific agronomist. The most important factor in the proper development of plants is their balanced nutrition. Everyone will agree with this: both the summer resident-amateur, and the experienced gardener-practitioner, and the scientific agronomist.

Even supporters of traditional arable farming will not argue on this issue with adherents of natural agricultural technology, because. both those and others are trying to provide plants with everything necessary for their proper nutrition, and, therefore, for good growth.

Experience shows that urban gardeners, as well as many rural residents, have a very superficial idea of ​​what, and most importantly, how plants eat. Most summer residents with whom I often communicate have ideas about plant nutrition often close to those of Aristotle, which reigned in European civilization for two thousand years. He taught that plants are, as it were, animals set with their heads in the ground and finding ready-made food in it with their roots.

When meeting with gardeners and gardeners, I often ask the same question: "Where do you grow vegetables best?". The answer is almost the same: "On the compost heap." To the question: "Why is this happening?", Most do not know the correct answer, at best, gardeners say that there is a lot of heat and nutrients. The third question is: "Why even on the most the best garden, consisting of almost one compost, grows worse than on an unripe compost heap? ”and, as a rule, confuses everyone. It would seem a paradox, but it can be easily resolved if you know how and what plants eat. Most gardeners believe that plants, in addition to water, need nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals.But today it is known for certain that nitrogen in the diet of plants is only 15%, the rest of the macro- and microelements account for 7%.Plants also need oxygen ( 20%) and hydrogen (8%), and the main element in the diet is carbon (50%).

Plants get carbon from carbon dioxide. Back in school, we studied that in the green leaf of plants, when exposed to sun rays a unique phenomenon of photosynthesis takes place: the formation organic matter from water molecules and carbon dioxide with the release of oxygen. And what about the compost heap? The fact is that only 0.03% of carbon dioxide in the air is about 30% of the necessary, the remaining 70% of the plant is obtained as a result of the vital activity of living microorganisms (bacteria, microfungi, etc.), decomposing organic matter with the release of not only mineral elements but also large amounts of carbon dioxide. Now it becomes clear that on the compost heap, where intensive decomposition of organic matter occurs under the action of a large number developing microorganisms are created Better conditions for carbon (basic) nutrition of plants.

Thus, our practical observations with you have led us to the truth already proven by scientists that living microorganisms, decomposing organic matter (grass, foliage, etc.) in the course of their life, play an important role in creating fertility and favorable conditions for plant growth.

The first microbiological preparation Nitragin was created back in 1896 and contained only one nitrogen-fixing bacterium (nodule). This bacterium converts nitrogen gas "inedible" for plants into a nitrate form, easily absorbed by plants. In the late 80s of the twentieth century, the Japanese scientist Higa Terou created for the first time a sustainable community of agronomically beneficial microorganisms (the Kyussei microbiological preparation). Agronomically useful microorganisms not only accelerate the decomposition of organic matter many times over, but also suppress pathogenic microflora (phytopathogens, putrefactive, etc.). The results of using the drug exceeded all expectations: yields increased by 3-4 times with significantly lower labor costs. Further development led to the creation of technology of effective microorganisms (EM-technologies). EM technologies are one of the main methods of today's Organic Farming.

So, dear gardeners, if everything grows “by leaps and bounds” on a compost heap, then draw the right conclusion and turn all your beds into compost beds! Bring organic matter into large quantities not in the compost bin, but directly on the beds. Revitalize the activity of microorganisms and worms, for which in no case do not use chemicals and do not dig, but only loosen the earth, use EM technologies, and then your environmentally friendly crops will grow without nitrates and toxins, while reducing costs and constantly increasing soil fertility!

Sergei Rumyantsev

In order to create favorable conditions for the normal development of plants in the garden and in the garden, you need to constantly ennoble the land and try not to deplete it for organic and mineral fertilizers. Often, inexperienced gardeners cleanly clean all weeds, all "supposedly" unnecessary organic matter from beds and paths. But this cannot be done. As a last resort, if the vegetation is infected with diseases or pests, then, of course, you need to get rid of it.

Making compost right on the beds is the fastest and most convenient way saturate the soil beneficial substances. It can be seen that in nature no one ever removes vegetation, and a kind of bedding of fallen leaves, dried grass, twigs creates the most necessary microclimate on the soil surface for the growth of new plants.
If you do not remove the vegetation on garden beds, in the garden, then in such a litter a symbiosis is formed - a community of beneficial microbes, fungi, worms, which help the green mass decompose faster, and that, in turn, creates an optimal moisture regime and saturates cultivated plants with nutrients.
For the preparation of compost, all plant residues from the garden (weeds before the ripening of inflorescences) are suitable, and you can also use mowed grass, sawdust, straw, leaves, bedding from the forest. All these plant residues are scattered along the paths and between the rows where cultivated plants are planted. Thus, the covered ground always remains moist, since there is no direct sunlight. Such mulch retains moisture for a long time, especially after rains or watering.

In the spring, when it's time to sow all kinds of plant seeds, then green manure can also be sown in the aisles. Thus, the preparation of compost will take place directly on the beds. Young plants - green manure will serve as a backstage for protecting cultivated plants from the hot sun, weathering moisture from the soil. When the green manure grows up, they need to be cut or uprooted and laid in the aisles and on the paths. Or, if you have coarse organic matter, for example, chopped corn trunks, Jerusalem artichoke, twigs, then lay them out directly on green manure. After a period of row spacing and paths with such a layer, you trample down a little, and rotting processes will begin to occur there.

When preparing compost directly on the beds, the following green manures are used:
Legumes - clover, chickpeas, wicca, sainfoin, peas, annual lupins, beans, beans, soybeans, alfalfa, sweet clover, lentils, goat's rue, chinna, saradella, field peas, cowpeas (cowpeas).
Cereals - fescue, timothy grass, ryegrass, bent grass, non-spreading gray couch grass, chumiza, cocksfoot, wheat, triticale, rye, Sudanese grass, peiza, sugar and bread sorghum, spring oats and barley.
Cruciferous - winter colza, winter and spring rape, white mustard, gray mustard and oil radish.
Other families are buckwheat, amaranth, phacelia, mallow.

If you have sown row-spacings and paths with green manure, then you can safely walk along them without fear of breaking, except for phacelia, since it has brittle stems. During the spring and summer, green manure can be sown several times. This does not require a lot of effort, just sow on top of the beds with already growing green manure.
But you should not limit yourself to siderates alone, since they lose mass when dried. Then, if possible, be sure to throw straw, forest litter, sawdust on the beds, and rye stalks cut at the beginning of earing are especially good.

Making compost right on the beds is also good because you don’t need to carry it and scatter it - everything is already here and ready for “use”. And carbon dioxide, which is released in the compost, is immediately absorbed by the leaves of cultivated plants, which increases their productivity.

In large piles of compost, the temperature constantly rises, which is not liked. earthworms. In our case, where there can be a 5-10 cm layer of compost on the beds, worms live normally and process the soil so that the humus is even better than with Californian worms, which you need to buy.

If you do not want to grow green manure for compost, as they require repeated overseeding, then when they grow up, you need to cut them so as not to interfere with other plants, then it is easier to use common weeds, which grow in every garden, if it is not weeded out every day. Then leave the weeds on the paths and aisles. And when they grow up to the moment when they will soon release seeds, then they can be uprooted and laid there.

If you think that making compost right on the beds requires a lot of work and time, then you are mistaken.) It is much easier to maintain the fertility of the earth "on the job" - right on the beds. And to get good harvest, we must bring more into the earth than we took from it - such is the law of nature. If you stick to it, then you will always have an excellent, rich harvest, some of which you can even sell.

Composting video:

Lesson from Galina Kizima.

year one

Next summer, lay a compost heap in place of any vegetable patch or right on virgin soil, especially if you have clay soil.

She must be in the sun.

The width of the heap is 80-100 cm, the height should also be 80-100 cm by the end of summer, but the length is what the future bed should be or how much material is enough for laying.

It can be covered decorative plantings so as not to irritate the eyes.

You will start filling it from one edge, gradually increasing in length and height.

On the next year nearby, start laying a new compost heap, and plant pumpkins or zucchini on the first one.

You can also use it for cucumbers.

So that heat and moisture do not leave the pile, it should be covered with an old film - black or white, but spunbond or lutrasil are not suitable for this purpose.

This must be done even before the snow has melted, otherwise the heap may dry out by the time of sowing.

Before sowing, remove the film, make holes in a pile with a volume of about a three-liter jar.

Then fill them in half fertile soil, add a teaspoon of AVA powder fraction to each, water well and sow the seeds.

Then cover again with cling film.

As soon as the seedlings reach the film, cut holes in it and let them out.

If there is a danger of frost, then the plants need to be covered from above with lutrasil.

This is where your work ends. No more watering or fertilizing the plants is required.

Under the film and powerful foliage of pumpkin crops, the compost will ripen in one season.

At the end of the summer, cut off the above-ground fruiting part and transfer it to the new compost heap that you laid down over the summer.

Leave the rest of the root system in place. The worms will eat them.

year two

On the next year Having made additional holes in the film and adding a dessert spoon of calcium nitrate and half a teaspoon of AVA fertilizer to each of them, plant seedlings of any cabbage, except Beijing and kohlrabi.

It will be necessary to feed the cabbage in the second half of the summer only with microelements (if you do not add AVA during planting).

It is best to make one or two top dressings on the leaves, using any of the preparations: "Florist" or "Uniflor-buton" (4 teaspoons per 10 liters of water).

Watering will only be necessary if the weather is hot and dry. Water must be poured into the holes in the film under the root, and in very hot weather early in the morning you will have to pour the cabbage right over the leaves cold water from the well.

In autumn, the covering leaves of cabbage and its roots (if there is no keel) should be left in the garden.

The film will have to be removed, leaving it only on the sides of the beds.

year three

The following year, pumpkin crops will move to a new compost heap, cabbage will move to their place, and instead of it, grown early potato tubers or onions on a turnip can be planted in the garden.

Then you can plant beets, which will have to be watered once with a solution of sodium chloride (1 cup per 1 liter of water) to feed with sodium when it has 5-6 leaves.

Beets can also be planted along with cabbage along the edge of the garden. She likes to grow on the edge and is friendly with cabbage crops.

It is good to plant celery along the ends of the cabbage beds.

And rows of onions can be alternated with rows of carrots. But you can also sow a bed of carrots after onions.

Once again, I draw your attention to the fact that as soon as you have removed the film, only the crop is harvested from the garden, and all other parts of the plant are left in the garden and in the soil.

Moreover, in the fall, leaves or weeded weeds are also thrown on top.

Year four

Another year, the bed can be used for lettuce, dill, parsley. These crops do not need any fertilizing or watering.

Lazy Bed or Crop Rotation on a Compost Heap

Next year in early spring there you can sow radishes, and after harvesting it at the beginning of summer, plant strawberry mustaches.

Strawberries should be planted thicker than usual, that is, mustaches should be planted in one row in the middle of the bed at a distance of 15-20 m from each other.

Apply one third of a teaspoon of AVA Granular Fertilizer to each hole when planting, then you will not need any more top dressing for three years.

To avoid weeding, roll out a roll of paper glued from several layers of newspapers on both sides of the strawberries.

When the strawberries develop a mustache, make holes in the newspaper so that they take root, and leave them to hibernate.

In the spring, there will be practically no newspapers left, but there will be no room for weeds to grow, since the strawberries will take up all the free space.

Don't do anything to the plantation.

It does not need to be fed or watered except in very hot and dry weather in spring and early summer.

Fertilizer will last her for three years, and under a continuous canopy of her own leaves, she will retain moisture in the soil.

I emphasize once again, you don’t have to do anything, let the strawberries grow on their own.

After three to four years, the berry crop will begin to fall.

When you collect it, then simply mow the plants themselves with a scythe, or even better with a Fokin flat cutter, deepening 2-3 cm into the soil.

Leave the leaves in the garden and begin to put compost on this place.

This whole scheme should be applied on the sands.

Only under the compost on the sand it is necessary to lay roofing material or old film in several layers to nutrients did not go through the sand.

If you have a perfectly acceptable soil, then its fertility will gradually recover or improve over time if you sow a vacant bed with white mustard every year at the end of summer and leave all plant residues after harvesting on it, rather than dragging them into compost.

Then in the spring, only slightly dig the soil to a depth of 5 cm and immediately sow the bed with seeds of cultivated plants.

Crop rotation can be left the same as on a compost heap, but before planting each crop, a little Bogorodskaya Zemlyanitsa and a third of a teaspoon of AVA fertilizer powder fraction should be added to the hole.

What kind of "Bogorodskaya zemlyitsa" is this? It is a soil rich in beneficial microorganisms.

After all, soil fertility is determined by the number of microorganisms living in it.

Most of them die in winter top layer soil.

Some part, of course, will survive and begin to breed, but they will reach the required number only by the end of the season.

If you take a bag of such soil in the fall before frost and put it in the cellar, then the microorganisms will be perfectly preserved and multiply over the winter.

It is especially good to take such soil from rotted compost.

The soil must be populated with beneficial microorganisms, and to feed them systematically surface layer unrotted organic matter, in particular, the green mass of cut grass or weeds.

The well-known gardener Ryabov L.A., agrees with Kizima G., except for one point:

"Instead of the mentioned G. Kizima mineral fertilizers it is much better to breed soil animals, for example, by watering the bed with solutions of EM preparations "Shine" or other useful soil microorganisms

They will give the plants everything they need for growth and abundant fruiting, and return fertility to the soil.

Tricks and ideas organic farming persistently seize the minds of advanced farmers.