How is Muck Formed?
Muck is obtained after plants and other living organisms decay. It is a dark and moist substance, excellent as a fertilizer for plants around the house and for your garden soil. It can also be a good way to get rid of kitchen waste.
Muck is the natural outcome of leaves piling and decaying. Therefore, it is a natural and common process.
How You Can Make Muck in Your Own Garden
Muck can be formed in your own garden by piling up dead leaves and branches in a shallow pit and keeping them wet with kitchen garbage. Thus, it is very easy to learn how to obtain muck.
Required Materials
- Kitchen garbage
- Branches and dead leaves
- Long, thin sticks
- Wood ash and soil
- A pit about three feet deep
Tips to Make Muck
You should remember the following points; they will pay off when you want to use muck as a fertilizer for your garden.
- Muck is made of millions of microbes (fungi, bacteria) which digest garden garbage and kitchen garbage (coming from food). If the muck layer is moist, enough worms and insects will help microbes develop. These creatures need air, water, and food to survive.
- Ideally, the muck layer you make in your garden should be as wet as a sponge full of water in order to meet specific needs of the microbes in it. If the muck is not wet enough, it will not be a suitable environment for the microbes’ development and consequently it will not be very good from the qualitative point of view. In dry areas, the muck layer must be watered in order to keep its adequate composition. However, if you live in a humid climate, you must be careful to ensure that the muck layer is not very wet.
- There are two types of food required by the microbes in the muck; these are brown food and green food.
- Brown food consists of dead and dry plants like straw, dead seeds, autumn leaves, wood chips, and sawdust.
- Green food consists of fresh plants, green seeds in the garden, fruit from the kitchen, wastes of vegetables in the garden, etc. Compared with the brown food, green food contains more nitrogen. A mixture of green and brown food represents a nutritional balance for microbes.
- Place layers of brown and green food in the pit, with a mixture of ash and soil on top of the two layers. Continue making such layers until the pits fills. The brown and green layers should each be 8 inches thick, while the layer of ash and soil should be 6 inches thick. Place sticks in the soil so that the layers are better ventilated.
- Typically, the muck should be ready in 4 months or less. Make sure that you turn the pile at least twice a month for adequate supply of air.
- You can leave any extra muck in the open for later use.
Overall, if you consider these suggestions and make use of muck as a fertilizer, you can get a healthy crop, no matter what you grow in your garden.
