Photo found on Flickr.com courtesy of Jan Van Ray.
Compost is a natural, organic way to improve the quality and fertility of your soil. It is rich in nutrients, and really has many outstanding effects. It is essentially a way to enrich your soil in a natural way. By combining Carbon and Nitrogen rich materials to make compost, you can easily return the following back to the soil:
By using compost, soil aeration also sees improvement. The compost is essentially an organic fertilizer and mulch that will also help protect your plant roots from damage caused by water and the sun, and also can reduce soil diseases. The main and undeniable reason for all of these benefits of compost is because it is a simple mulch made from organic material without the use of pesticides or any other man made material. It is a totally organic way to improve the quality of the soil in your yard.
Here are some other great benefits of compost, as described by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Did You Know That Compost Can…
* Suppress plant diseases and pests.
* Reduce or eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers.
* Promote higher yields of agricultural crops.
* Facilitate reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts by amending contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils.
* Cost-effectively remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste.
* Remove solids, oil, grease, and heavy metals from stormwater runoff.
* Capture and destroy 99.6 percent of industrial volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in contaminated air.
* Provide cost savings of at least 50 percent over conventional soil, water, and air pollution remediation technologies, where applicable.