If you have a garden in Southern Florida, you know just how important it is to be able to prepare the soil for new plants and to keep your garden soil healthy year-round. You might have trouble finding the kind of topsoil that you need at the local garden center, and it is not uncommon to struggle to get enough topsoil for large projects in this part of the country.
Most people are not aware that recycling centers make quality topsoil that can be used for gardens and other yard care processes. This is one of the best ways to get topsoil that is of the best quality, for a great price, and at large volumes. Best of all, you will be helping to save the environment every time you buy from a recycling center in your area!
How is Topsoil Made at a Recycling Center?
When recycling companies collect wastes from various kinds of clean-up projects or from yard waste removal jobs, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to turn this waste into topsoil that can be used again. There can be trash, sand, dirt, and other debris in the wastes that are removed from these locations that you do not want to have in your topsoil for your garden.
There are some key steps that are taken to turn the waste from a cleanup job into topsoil that is of the highest quality. Without the work of the recycling center, this topsoil would probably just be dumped somewhere and never used again. This is a key part of the recycling process, and many recycling centers take this work just as seriously as they take their metals and paper recycling processes.
Pickup
Yard debris and yard waste are picked up during weekly collections and might also be collected in dumpsters at larger job sites where a property needs to be fully cleared of tree and plant debris. These wastes are taken to the recycling center to be processed.
Grinding
The waste products are ground down into smaller mulch which is easier to work with during the cleanup process. The ground product is also divided by type, which makes it much easier to use the topsoil for specific purposes once it has been fully cleaned.
Screening
The next step is to remove dirt, debris, and small pieces of unwanted materials from the mulch. The mulch is now ready to be sold without being turned into compost or topsoil. Some part of each of the loads of mulch will be left in this form for specific kinds of gardening work.
Composting
The remaining mulch that is not going to be sold in the mulch form is placed into a large pile or a bin to be allowed to compost naturally. This process creates a temperature of about 150 degrees, which means that fungi, insects, and weed seeds are killed or broken down. This process also helps break down human-made chemicals that might have ended up in the soil and which could be harmful to plants that are planted in your garden.
Sales
The composting process can take a year, but once the product has been deemed ready to be used for gardening purposes, it will be screened again to remove any remaining large particulate matter. This screened product is now topsoil, and it is ready to be used in your garden or your yard!
While it can be tempting to believe that you do not need topsoil to be added to your garden, Florida is a state where this is key for your plants. It is hot during much of the year in Florida, and the heat can damage or kill plants that are not protected by a layer of topsoil to lock in moisture at their roots. You will also improve the drainage in your yard significantly by adding topsoil to the places where you want to nurture plants of various kinds.
The other key benefit of adding topsoil to your yard or garden is that it is full of nutrients from the composting process. When the soil has been used over and over again to grow crops or to help flowering plants or lawns stay green and healthy, it can become exhausted of all of its nutrients. Topsoil can replace these nutrients and make sure that your garden or your yard looks its best for years to come. This is a really affordable gardening solution and one that can make all the difference in the beauty of your yard.