If you use composting for your garden, you can eliminate the need for commercial fertilizers to grow most vegetables, herbs and spices.

Compost can be lined with rail road ties, fencing or left open. Composting provides an environmentally safe way to turn biodegradable stuff into rich and fertile soil.

If you have a lot of clay in your soil, composting is the best thing for your garden. Composting will help your garden with a continual feed of rich humus that will loosen up clay allowing you to grow vegetables. If you have sandy soil, compost will bring soil together and help retain water and keep the soil breathing.

Here are my top 6 composting materials that work very good:

Leaves

shredded newspaper

grass clippings

farm manure

garden waste vegetable peelings

sawdust

Household scraps and food would work good too, but would attract insects and bugs of all kinds to your garden. Items you don’t want to use are bones, meat scrapes, cat or dog manure, grease, diseased plants or walnut leaves. These would make your garden sick and kill your plants.

Several companies make composting bins, and some lumber would work as well like wood pallets or railroad ties. Just be sure to be sure that your compost is well ventilated and can allow air and moisture for breakdown.

Compost is dark and a loose mixture of rotted organic matter. It can be used to improve the garden soil. If the soil is crusty and hard when dry or sticky when wet, vegetables do not grow good. Make sure your soil is loose, has high- water holding capacity and has proper drainage.

A good pile of compost would be a rectangular pile 2 to 5 feet wide, 5 to 10 feet long and 2 to 4 feed high. Be sure to make your compost pile in layers. First add 8 to 7 inches of garden refuse. Each layer of this organic material should be moistened. Add 1 to 2 inches of soil. Repeat this process as composting material is with you.

A well kept, active pile will not attract rodents, when adding food put them in the center of the pile.

Compost can help your garden grow huge if you use it right. It beats fertilizer any day and is wonderful.