Do you save your food scraps? Have you ever at least given it a thought? Don’t sit there and tell me it’s gross- you totally ate half that salad and don’t want to put the rest to good use? Hmmm?
“The EPA estimates that more food reaches landfills and incinerators than any other single material in our everyday trash, constituting 22 percent of discarded municipal solid waste. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimated in 2011 that approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide is lost or wasted”- epa.gov
Why you should compost
You’re turning food and biodegradable material into nutrients for the earth. It doesn’t matter if you have a garden, a couple house plants, or a worm bin in a little apartment- you can make it work!
What is compost?
Decayed organic material that can be used as fertilizer to build healthy soil.
What can you compost?
~ Grass clippings (if you don’t
use chemicals on your lawn)
~ Leaves
~ Newspaper
~ Wood (small sticks, nothing too big)
~ Sawdust (non-treated wood)
~ Veggie scraps
~ Coffee grounds (worms love it!)
~ Eggshells
~ Bones (some people say no,
I say a few is good)
~ Hay, straw
What does not go in compost
~ Meat
~ Dairy
~ Oils, fats
~ Chemicals
~ Citrus peels and onions (deters important microbes)
~ Breads and grains
If you’ve got a good spot to set up a little compost area, great! If you don’t, you can buy a compost bin or make one yourself. There are so many ideas for DIY compost bins.
I have had a compost barrel and also just a dumping area where most scraps have gone. It’s all a matter of what works for you.
Let’s say you want to start small scale ok? Here's a little compost container you can find on Amazon and keep in the kitchen. I like this one because it has a filter in the lid to keep it from getting stinky... if I don't empty it outside in my compost pile for a couple days
(I'm only human).
For outside use, you can get a rubbermaid container or trash barrel, drill a bunch of holes going up and down the sides (this lets in oxygen, very important for the process of braking down matter). Drill some holes in the bottom as well so worms can come visit as they please. Start by putting in your veggie scraps, sprinkle in a little dirt, maybe some leaves and grass… and coffee grounds- never forget the coffee!
Enter science….
Ideal ratio here is 2/3 brown material (leaves, paper, hay) to 1/3 green material (food, coffee, left over tea, grass). If you have too much green material is will be stinky- so add more brown material. If you have too much brown material things won’t brake down. Keep things moist but not damp. And rotate the pile often, or roll your barrel around (that’s the fun part)
So many rules!! Not to worry. You’ll soon understand the balance nature requires to operate. Your goal here is to waste less, keep the scraps out of the trash, and create amazing, healthy soil for free! Give back to the earth <3
Another helpful tip-
In the fall when all my vegetable plants die off, I rotate them back into my garden beds. This form of direct composting will help to feed the microbes and worms in your soil all winter long! How efficient right? Yup! Next spring when you dig through that bed there won’t be much material left, leaving your soil healthy and ready for a new season of growing.
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