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People waste tons and tons of food every year tossing away left overs and table scraps into trash bins. While that’s the easiest way to get rid of food waste it’s not the best way. Without much effort you can keep your food waste out of landfills where it’s useless and at the same time create nutrient rich soil for your yard, garden or even for your potted plants.
Composting is really very simple. All organic material eventually decomposes and makes its way back into the earth. The goal of starting to compost is to speed up that process by providing the best environment for bacteria to assist in the decomposition. You have many choices in creating compost you can just create a compost pile, use a compost bin or compost tumbler . It’s totally up to you and your situation. For people who are worried about attracting critters who would feast on the table scraps in their compost may lean more towards some kind of compost bin.
Having the right mixture of green and brown material in your compost bin will go a long way to break down your table scraps and doesn’t create unpleasant smells. The ideal ratio is about 25 parts carbon or brown to 1 part nitrogen or green. Browns are carbon rich materials like dry leaves, twigs and bark. Greens are the nitrogen rich fresh materials like grass clippings and food scraps. If you just judge it by weight when adding to your compost bin . If you keep this ratio up and aerate your compost by using a pitch fork or shovel you should have great fertilizer in no time.
Do you compost at your home? I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment or email me and tell me about it.
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April 15th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Having a compost pile is good for people who like to a thing called “square foot gardening”. The right mixture of compost, vermiculite, and peat moss can give you some really rich soil to grow your own garden.
Good post!
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April 15th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
@ Mike:
Hey Mike, glad to see you back on the site. I hope the photos are going well congrats on getting picked by the editor at National Geographics! That’s awesome. I really want to look more into the square foot gardening thing and into micro-farming it sounds like an interesting thing to get into. Thanks for contributing and I’m glad you liked the post!
April 16th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Really it isn’t bad at all and the soil is only 6-8 inches deep…you save on seed usage….you get better results ….you are saving money…and if you use a compost pile you are helping us GREEN up…… definitely look into it…to get started I would plan on spending about 100 bucks for the wood and soil…..but that will pay for itself year after year with the veggies you will be getting there instead of the store
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April 17th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Are you adding soil to your compost or are you adding the compost and mixing it in with the soil? A compost pile has been on my to do list and it moved it’s way to the top since I had to buy potting soil today.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Green Home Improvements: I did some green material like my fruit peelings and table scraps. some dirt and then dry leaves. Mixed in a little bit of water into the trash can that I’m using closed the lid and tumbled it around the yard a bit to get the air and mixing going on. We’ll see how it turns out, but I waited a few days to add the leaves and boy did those live greens mold up and get nasty quick.
It takes a little while, but the long term pay off over top soil will be big. Another option is to check your city some cities have big public compost piles where you can get free top soil from time to time. I’d go with the compost pile for your future planting projects though. Once the earth worms, ants and other things get in there and start doing there thing it’ll move along well and be better then those bags you can buy.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Green Home Improvements: If I were potting I’d probably use a mixture of soil and compost’s soil. It’s very nutrient rich and I’m not sure a potted plant needs 100% compost.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I should of mentioned that I was planting food and that I did not want to grow it in my existing soil. We just started to use organic fertilizer last year and I have concerns about all of the chemicals that we have added to our yard over the years.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Green Home Improvements: Ahh I see well you’ve started in the right direction. A compost pile if you’re too worried about nasty stuff in the ground could always be done in a barrel or a compost bin, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about there for making compost. I’d of done what you did and bought organic fertilizer and soil from a 3rd party to grow food just to be sure. Congrats on starting your food garden we’ve got a lot of decorative plants, but that’s next for sure.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:35 am
This is a wonderful idea!!!!
In our municipalities we have weekly recycling (blue bin) collection and compost (green bin) collection so that is how our residents get rid of their food waste!
I think it is a great program for people who live in close subdivisions and can’t or don’t want to deal with making a home composter.
And the best part is, the city is making rich soil out of all of our compostable waste
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April 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am
That’s awesome we just got a full fledge recycling system, but I think the city has a place for us to dump compost I’m not really sure we’ve always had a pile or bin or something going on.
I hope my city grows in that direction though to start picking up composting materials. It could probably save them some money somewhere.