Do Activators Help?
Photo courtesy cogdogblog/Flickr
If you’ve been reading your gardening catalogs, you’ve probably seen advertisements for activators that accelerate the composting process.
To get the whole process started, you need to have a population present of the microorganisms that actually do the work.
Under most conditions, the best ingredients to use as activators are garden soil and compost. Soil contains the organisms that will break down the organic material into more soil, so it makes a great bio-activator.
Unless your soil is seriously deficient in organic matter, it should be enough to start the composting process. If you’re in doubt, add some fully decomposed compost as a starter.
January 9, 2013 - 7:39 AM
How about the top soil you get from Wally World? Has the soil been treated and all the good stuff in it killed in the process?
Not sure about that particular top soil, but top soil should be fine.
I’ll throw this out and then hush. A good year round source of green is your local grocery store where you do your shopping. The produce department cleans the wilted, damaged veggies out every morning and then throws away the leaves, over ripe, wilted stuff in the dumpster. Be there when they get done and it can be had free. I will carry my own container tho since I’m bumming. Cabbage, lettuce, celery has one of the highest nitrogen contents of any vegetable. I intend on shredding it small and mix it in as I build my pile. Got the pallets set, will get the leaves today and got a couple bags of topsoil and some high nitrogen fertilizer. This might be a one shot/one year attempt, but I intend on doing it right to give it a good shot. Still need an answer on the store bought topsoil KH.