We live in a world where everyone is trying to do something that is just a little bit better for the people around us – and we hope that extends to the world around you as well. Composting was a popular activity that many homes did years ago, but it fell out of favor in the last thirty years or so. However, thanks to a reawakened concern for the environment, more and more people are interested in composting in their backyards again.
This is great news. For anyone who knows anything about landfills, it is pretty obvious that they aren’t doing us any good and we ought to do all that we can to avoid filling them with any more stuff, even if that stuff will eventually rot away. Composting is a fantastic way to not only help save the world, but it can actually help to make your yard look better.
Need a few reasons to compost? Let’s take a look at the benefits:
5. Reduces landfill waste
- Less trash to throw away
- Cleaner air around landfills
- Helps keep trash bills low
Less landfill waste is one of the biggest reasons to compost your tree and shrub debris. In fact, it is a fantastic way to eliminate some of your kitchen garbage as well. Landfills are more than unsightly – they can reduce the value of homes in a neighborhood, hurt the air that you breathe, and can even be dangerous over an extended period of time.
Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency released a survey saying that that up to one-fourth of all landfill waste could have been thrown into the compost piles in a backyard – isn’t that an amazing number? You could be turning over a quarter of that heavy trash you haul onto the street into soil that keeps your gardens look lovely.
4. Reduces overall greenhouse emissions
- Makes the air better to breathe
- Keeps your other plants healthier
- Lowers methane levels
When many people think about methane, they tend to think about the old standby: cow flatulence. However, cows aren’t the only reason we have warming gases in our air. They also come from organic material that goes into our landfills. Will the composting pile in your yard also emit methane? Yes, but they don’t do it nearly as much if they are properly composted in small quantities.
According to Scientific American, in just two decades, “In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Composting will lower that overall amount quite a bit – and if everyone composted, we would see a great reduction, enough to create lasting change.
3. Deters garden pests
- Reduces toxic runoff
- Micronutrients act as natural pesticide
- Better for health of delicate plants
If you have a lot of plants and trees in your yard, you know that you have to be careful about any pesticides that you use. If you have pets or young children, you know that you almost don’t want to use pesticides at all. That is why so many people are now composting – because the micronutrients you find in the soil from composting actually wards off pests.
To get these benefits, Gardening Know How suggests using a contained composting system.
Even better, you won’t have to use those chemicals that can hurt the other living things in your yard – your family, your pets, your plants, and even the bodies of water in and around your yard.
2. Creation of aggregates
- Better for gardens
- Makes it easier to garden
- Helps support root systems
Love to garden? There is a lot to be said for using composted soil when you garden. While the nutrients and the cost-efficiency are no brainers, there is something else that helps with gardening – aggregates.
According to Soil Quality, “Changes in aggregate stability may serve as early indicators of recovery or degradation of soils. Aggregate stability is an indicator of organic matter content, biological activity, and nutrient cycling in soil. ”
Compost stimulates soil particle clusters, making the soil healthier and easier to work with for the most part. This is due to the amount of air pocks between individual soil structures – you get tunnels. This allows the soil to better hold air, nutrients, and water, meaning you have to do less work to keep your plants alive. Even better, it makes the soil easier to dig and move.
1. Promotes biodiversity
- Healthier yards for everyone
- Better for growing fruit trees
- Brings new species into your yard
If you are interested in having a yard that is healthy and beautiful, you want to create more biodiversity in it. Everything needs to work in perfect synchronicity in order for your yard to be its best, from the birds and the work to the bacteria, trees, and soil. When you use composted soil, you have more nutrients to better support everything in your yard.
When you start with great soil, the plants are healthier which means the animals eat better, which means your gardens will flourish, and you will be much happier. According to the National Geographic Society, “With less biodiversity, these connections weaken and sometimes break, harming all the species in the ecosystem,” which might be why your garden sometimes looks rundown.
At Econo Tree Service, our principal concern is keeping your trees as healthy as possible for as long as possible. Composting and keeping your yard as natural as possible is a great way to keep your trees healthy. If something seems off or like it isn’t working properly, you need to get into contact with our Redwood City tree care specialists. We can also help you to better understand your trees so that you can compost more frequently into the future.
Give us a call today at (650) 200-2495 and our professionals will pay you (and your trees) a visit and help to determine how composting can help you.
Header photo courtesy of normanack on Flickr!