Composting! It's not as hard as you think!

If you have followed anything related to gardening or green environmental news, composting is one of those things that you can do along the lines of “think globally and act locally”.  I can understand that some folk might be a bit intimidated by trying to compost.

I’ve been reading on organic gardening boards how you really shouldn’t till your garden dirt and composting should be done right there among the plants in a “sheet composting” manner.  Sometimes the idea of dumping my scraps directly in the garden just doesn’t get me excited!  If the dirt really cooks, It makes great soil that is disease free.  I’ve used my own compost in the garden and actually gotten volunteer plants from it. I have a nice patch of strawberries that were not planted by me.

If you are looking for a good way to learn how to compost and what the basic idea is, I’ve found this wonderful informative video that actually features folks that I know and love from Tree Leaf Music. Composting is easy. Basically, you need kitchen scraps (careful, no animal parts, dairy, or oils in those scraps) that would have ended up in your trash can, leaves and refuse that you would pay to haul away in my county.  Why not save the environment AND a few bucks? win win!

Here’s a few pics – We compost our halloween pumpkins each year too. Usually, these bad boys would do best cut up into pieces to facilitate breakdown but this was for a school picture on recycling. It seemed like it would have more impact to have it whole for that picture.  It will still breakdown, It’ll just take a bit longer. 🙂 Our Compost bin is actually larger than the one in the video.  You really don’t need a lot of space to compost effectively! Remember what teacher Laura says in the video, If it’s stinky, you need more carbon i.e. leaves, newspaper, etc. 😀

Happy Washing! (and hopefully composting!)

~Regina