A Composting Primer (or Confession)

We have two spaces for composting at our house.  At the back of our lot along the tree line we stacked concrete blocks to form a square.  We built that when we first moved into our house and for years have been throwing all kitchen scraps in there.  We never did anything noble with it, like turn it, water it, or use it in our garden.  It was just where fruits, vegetables, and coffee grounds went to quietly decompose.  

Our second space for composting is relatively new.  Last year for Christmas, Curtis gave me a compost tumbler (not your most romantic Christmas gift, but I was surprised, that's for sure!).  Out of a little bit of laziness on our part, it sits at the base of our back steps.  At times, especially during the summer, it is a little too close to the house for our liking, but by then it was already partially filled and too heavy to move.  It got to stay in it's current location.  The compost tumbler then was the new final resting place for kitchen scraps and bagged grass until we deemed it full enough.  At that point, we reverted back to using our original compost space to let the tumbler "cook."

A few basics about composting:  

What goes in it:  Food scraps---like vegetables, fruits, egg shells, coffee grounds, bread.  Meat and dairy isn't recommended, the best reason I've heard why is that those will attract unwanted varmints to your compost heap.  Both raw and cooked foods can be added.  These are the green.  Compost also likes brown:  dead leaves, dead grass.  With yard waste, avoid anything that may have gone to seed if you are planning on putting the compost in a garden.  The seeds will end up germinating in your garden and then you'll have who knows what in there.

How to get good compost for using in gardens:  In addition to decaying materials, compost needs heat, water, and preferably worms to adequately decompose the materials.  Some people also turn (or mix) their compost to speed up the process.  As I've said earlier, we are total composting slackers.  We just dump old food in our heap and let the process take it's good old time.  The big downfall to the compost tumbler we have is the lack of worms.  It sits off the ground and so there is no way for the worms to get in there and eat away at the scraps.  The final product is more clumped together and not quite as dirt like.  In the future, we think we are going to start the compost in the tumbler because it gets hot enough in there to kill any seeds (it's black so it absorbs a lot of sunlight) and then move it to the heap to finish it to allow the worms to do some work. 

Even if you have no intention of using compost for gardening, it's not a bad idea.  You use less trash bags and produce less waste every week if all kitchen scraps go to a heap tucked away somewhere quietly in the backyard.  In a trash bag in a landfill the decomposition process is hindered by that plastic bag...and if it does decompose, it's still stuck in the bag.  The heap in the back yard doesn't get big and unruly, it shrinks down as it decomposes.  Plus, it could be some cool science lessons for your kids---decomposition, what feeds the soil, worms, a myriad of bugs to look at, irreversible change (M's favorite science words these days), the whole exchange of energy within the food cycle---sun to plant to us to compost to plant again.

I still need to work our compost into our garden. I am trying to get up the motivation and energy to shovel up our entire 12 x 12 foot garden to mix in the compost and gypsum (which we add because our soil has a lot of clay in it which makes it more difficult for plants to have good root systems).  I need to do it soon because I am anxious to get in our seeds.   Just not so anxious to dig.