As I have written before, I like a rich organic soil mix with about 20% compost. This rich soil ammendment provides nutrients to hungry plants and provides a natural fertilizer that can be made at home!
I haven’t built or maintained a compost site since I was a child. My grandparents had a beautiful home with a garden and a very large compost area on our property. All grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps and garden waste went into the compost “valley” as I called it. We had to use shovels and forks to turn over the sometimes smelly mountain to maintain it. We also watered the pile to ensure a proper temperature. Once a year, my grandfather or later I and my grandmother, would dig down into the valley to extract the rich loamy compost. That was then spread over our flower and vegetable beds. Living on lake Huron in Michigan meant sand, sand and more sand in our soil, so compost was essential to balance the soil and make it suitable for growing plants other than cactus or wild lake grass.
Now that we are planning a garden, the question of sustainability comes up again. I could purchase compost for my garden at a premium or begin to manage the “waste” of our home and put it to good use.
The amount of usable compost materials that even a small household of two people and four pets creates is amazing. A day of weeding the lawn of dandelions or weeding the garden beds yields at least 2-3 gallons of green material (plant or vegetable waste). Cooking breakfast will provide egg shells, making a salad will provide lettuce cores, carrot tops and celery leaves (the ones I may not get a chance to use in the stock pot). Balancing that is brown material; fallen leaves, coffee grounds and the like provide ample material. We have left over leaves from last autumns raking as well as coffee grounds that will give our compost a good start.
You can imagine that a pile of waste would be rather unsightly. To combat that we purchased a simple 115 gallon black composite bin that provides aeration as well as holes for rain water and doors for accessing the compost once it is ready. This bin fits in the back of my garden and will provide me with great soil ammendments for years to come.
You have a vast choice when it comes to selecting a composting system. Some people prefer to simply pile the items in a remote corner of their property. However, if you are a city dweller as we are, you will probably want to contain the compost in some way. Here is a selection of links to compost system providers. Their products vary from the simple (our bin), to in home oderless electric composters that take kitchen waste and turn it into rich compost in a matter of weeks!
Composting returns nutrients to the soil, provides protection against weeds and conserves water…all around, it is an excellent idea and so simple to do!
Happy Gardening!
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