Composters-etc.com is now on Twitter!!!!  Follow us on Twitter @composters_etc

http://twitter.com/composters_etc

Share what you know about composting.  Do you have a favorite compost bin?  Do you have a secret ingredient for making awesome compost?  Have you heard or read a great composting story- share it with us and our followers!
You can also ask us questions about our website, our products, composting, saving the environment, etc.

We can't wait to hear from you!

"The Advantages of Home Composting"

   There are many advantages of home composting- saving money, helping the environment, improving your garden...the list goes on.  As far as saving money goes, composting reduces the amount of water, fertilizer, and pesticides you need to give your garden. Composting gives you a free way to add nutrients to your plants.
Composting helps the environment by reducing yard waste in landfills, reduces pollution, and can clean up your soil from many pollutants and acids.
Recycling your food and yard waste creates a wonderful compost that can help your plants grow bigger and more fruitful. 
For more information on the advantages of home composting visit:
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Advantages-of-Home-Composting&id=7352937

Why the UrBin Grower?™

The UrBin Grower™ is a compact self‐watering organic growing system perfect for the urban family. It can be used anywhere, anytime – a patio, balcony, fire escape, backyard, greenhouse, or even inside during the cold months. Its innovative design allows for portability, yet also encourages a bountiful harvest. By utilizing the Square Foot Gardening Method, the UrBin Grower™ allows you to grow endless vegetables in a manageable container.
The UrBin Grower's™ unique sub‐irrigation watering design waters plants the way nature intended ‐ from the bottom up.

Watering into the UrBin Grower’s™ visible reservoir allows you to monitor the water much more effectively than in other self-watering containers, in which you must water through a tube into a hidden reservoir. The soil system wicks moisture up to the roots, drawing nutrients with it. The soil system also air prunes plants to keep the root growth constant and prevent root circling. With the constant exposure to oxygen you no longer need to worry about over watering either. The fresh air prunes the tip of the roots which causes them to branch off, creating an even healthier root system.

At A Glance

With the UrBin Grower™, you can grow almost anything, anywhere: tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn, lettuce, herbs, squash, cabbage, onions, strawberries, ornamental plants and much more. The UrBin Grower™ is a complete kit, including the container, soil separator, and watering tray, an instruction booklet, and a set of seed starter trays.

How the UrBin Grower™ Works

The UrBin Grower™ is uniquely designed to use capillary action to draw water up through soil and to take the guesswork out of watering. Plants take the water they need out of the visible reservoir. This way, you can see exactly how much or how little water your particular crops desire. This is a healthy, sustainable way to water your plants. As the water is drawn upwards through the soil into the root systems, it delivers essential nutrients to your plants rather than those nutrients being washed away when you water from above.
In traditional plastic plant pots, roots grow until they hit the inner edge, and then the roots start circling around the pot. Roots that are circling around a pot are more susceptible to the negative effects of excess heat, drought and disease. To encourage strong, healthy roots the UrBin Grower™ utilizes air pruning, a physical technique that keeps root growth from extending beyond its nutrient-rich growing media, or circling around its container. This is achieved by exposing the root tips to relatively dry air and stopping their growth. The layer of air between the water in the reservoir and the soil separator, air prunes the plant roots. This stimulates further growth of secondary roots that branch out within the growing medium. More roots means more water and nutrients.

Simply place your UrBin Grower™ container on the watering tray and then place the soil separator in the container. The soil separator ensures that your soil is not saturated and you will never experience root rot. In two corners of your container, the soil will dip down into the water reservoir and wick moisture up to your root systems. Add your preferred soil mix and plant according to seed packet directions.

Soil Amendments Add-On

Most garden soil and potting mixes are not perfect. If your soil has too much clay in it, is too sandy, too stony or too acidic, don't despair. These soil amendments promote plant and soil health, beneficial bacteria, and microbial activity, and will improve your soil.
The add‐on soil amendments for the UrBin Grower™ include pumice, chunks of coconut husk (coir), ground coir mixed with trace minerals, and coir mulch.

• Pumice is a lightweight volcanic rock that is chemically inert and has a high silica content. Pumice provides excellent soil aeration and larger pieces are provided for this purpose in addition to the finely ground particles in the coir mix. Full of microscopic holes, each piece of pumice can hold and release water and nutrients to growing plants over time. Pumice is so durable that you’ll never need to replace it in your potting mix.
• The chunks of coir provide aeration, excellent wicking and moisture absorption qualities, while the coir mulch prevents weeds and retains moisture on the surface of the soil.
• Coir provided in the UrBin Grower™ has been combined with glacial rock dust, olivine and finely ground pumice. They provide your plants (and you) a broad range of trace minerals, including 14 of the body’s essential and minor (trace) minerals needed for optimum physical and mental health—boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, nickel, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, silicon, sodium, and zinc.

Simply mix the soil amendments with some good quality garden soil and organic compost, and you have a sustainable soil system that will last for up to 5 years. The UrBin Grower’s™ soil amendments help you to eat healthier year round.

Why are Trace Minerals Important?

Both plants and animals, including humans, benefit from a regular supply of trace minerals, which are best transferred to the human body through vegetables grown in soil rich in trace minerals.
Today nearly all commercial agriculture land is depleted of trace minerals, due in part to the exclusive use of chemical fertilizers and ground water pollution.
By mixing the ground coir with trace minerals into the soil mix for your UrBin Grower™ and growing your own food, you ensure that those essential nutrients are added back into your diet.

Wire Rack Add-On

The perfect companion to the UrBin Grower™, the Wire Rack measures 4 ft. tall, is made out of galvanized steel, and is sturdy enough to handle all of your climbing vegetable growing needs. The Wire Rack folds in fourths for easy storage in your garden, shed or garage.

All the vegetables I’ve tried have grown better in self watering containers than in traditional containers. Many actually grew better than in the earth garden.

‐ Edward C. Smith, Author, The Vegetable Gardener’s Container Bible

Air is as important to root growth as water, accelerates plant growth, increases plant vigor and creates non‐circling roots.

- Elsie K, Master Gardener

Circling roots are ‘burned’ off or pruned when exposed to AIR, causing the plant to constantly produce new and highly branched roots.

- Washington State University

circling roots (in potted) plants have difficulty getting enough water and nutrients shortening plant’s life span.

‐ Oregon State University

How to Get Started!

 Why Vermicomposting?

At composters-etc.com we sell a variety of composters to support your composting needs.  A few of those composters use worms to create amazing compost.  Here are some of the benefits and how it works:

Worm composting, or vermiculture, is one of the easiest ways to recycle food waste because it can be done indoors and is ideal for people who live in apartments and do not have a yard. Vermicomposting is the practice of taking your organic waste and turning it into nutrient-rich fertilizer with the help of worms. If you want to be sure to get composting done at a faster rate and have rich, dark soil, then vermicomposting is right for you.
Vermicompost is more rich in nutrients than the compost from a regular backyard composter. It also performs better as a planting medium than a commercial potting mix with added nutrients. Worm castings, which are produced from vermicomposting, also hold moisture better than plain soil and contain worm mucus which allows for the prevention of nutrients being washed away at first watering.
The best worms to use in vermiculture are red wigglers or Eisenia Foetida. These worms live well in highly populated conditions and they don't burrow. Red wigglers will eat about half of their weight in food a day. That means if you have one pound of worms you can feed them a half pound of food per day. Also, your worm population will double in size about every three months, but they will not overpopulate your worm bin. Red wigglers are self regulating, so they know when there isn't room for more.
Worm castings, worm poop, black gold or whatever you want to call it, all consists of the same thing: highly concentrated, nutrient-packed fertilizer that you can use for your garden and house plants.

Benefits of Vermicomposting:

• Improves the physical structure of the soil
• Enriches soil with micro-organisms
• Improves water holding capacity
• Enhances germination, plant growth, and crop yield
• Improves root growth and tructure
• Reduces amount of waste going to landfills
• Microbial activity in worm castings is 10 to 20 times higher than in the soil and organic matter that the worm ingests

Vermiculture vs Composting:

• Worms create a compost material that is far superior than any compost that is produced without their assistance
• The compost material that is created by worms is smaller than 2 microns
• Vermicompost added to soil creates a material that has better water retention, aeration, drainage and stability
• Vermicompost contains more antibiotic properties against pathogens than regular compost and higher amounts of natural plant growth hormones
• Worms have the ability to reduce all bacteria that is pathogenic to animals and people

To purchase worms visit:
http://www.composters-etc.com/catalog/item/8598630/9491212.htm

To purchase worm composters visit:
http://www.anowicki.applybuilder.com/worm_composters.html 

Composters-etc.com is officially open for business!  I invite you to take a look around and see if there is anything that catches your eye.  We have a wide variety of indoor and outdoor composters- both large and small; as well as worm composters.
        For Composters visit:
http://www.composters-etc.com/composters.html
        For Worm Composters and to purchase additional worms visit:
http://www.composters-etc.com/worm_composters.html

Composters-etc.com also carries an assortment of rain barrels to help save you money on your water bill.  It also is a very helpful tool for those who do not have access to a hose to water their garden.
        For Rain Barrels visit:
http://www.composters-etc.com/rain_barrells.html

To help with your year-round gardening and for those with out a yard to garden in, Composters-etc.com carries a few small green houses and planters that are proven to help you grow fabulous flowers and vegetables.
       For these products visit our gardening section at:
http://www.composters-etc.com/gardening.html

We are very excited about the products we sell here at Composters-etc.com and we hope you are too.  We pride outselves on providing quality products and quality service.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please visit out Contact Us page.  We would love to hear from you.
Thank you.