It's All About the Compost

It's All About the Compost!

I grew up as a suburbanite: living in a subdivision where house upon house was connected by the chain link fences lining the backyards. As an adult, I am still living life as a suburbanite, but now I live in a subdivision where the houses are spaced a bit wider apart, and trees separate the backyards; so every time you walk outside you are not coming face to face with your neighbor. And tucked right behind our fence, is my beloved composter. Actually I have two; one is a bin that my husband, Todd, lovingly built me for Mother's day one year, and the other is a turnable one that he bought me for this Mother's Day. Most women would not think a composter as a Mother's Day gift is considered a gesture of love; but I did, and I was ecstatic!!!

I didn't have my first contact with compost until I was a teenager, and began dating my husband. One day during the summer, we went to visit his grandparents. They had property up on a hill that had a huge garden. Although they are both gone now, I can still remember the blue overalls Grandpa would wear. When we arrived that day, we made our way up to the garden to where Grandpa was standing. He began talking about how the sheep manure was done (whatever that meant) and ready for the garden! And then he did the unthinkable......he grabbed a handful of this brown soil-like stuff from the pile, shoved it under my nose, and said, "smell it, it doesn't smell like anything!" Well, being a girl that thought gardens were only on farms, having a handful of sheep manure shoved under my nose is not what I called fun. Why would anyone want to smell decomposed animal droppings was beyond me!!! But respecting my elders and saying a little prayer, I took a little sniff. And you know, he was right. It didn't smell. My husband still talks about the look on my face the moment composted manure was put under my nose!

Not only did Grandpa use sheep manure to feed his gardens, he also had a worm bin that he dumped his morning coffee grounds in each morning. I am sure somewhere near the garden was a pile of scraps that was decomposing nicely under the summer sun. Fast forwarding to today, I began to really think about how many pounds of fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, egg shells, and anything else I was throwing away in a day could be composted. I decided to make my own science experiment. For an entire month, I weighed the scraps to see how much I would accumulate over a month. When the month was over, I added my daily totals, and to my surprise and excitement, the total came to 50 pounds! Yes, 50 pounds of scraps a month was the total just our family threw away that could be composted. Then I did the math; if just our subdivision composted their scraps, it averaged over 5,000 pounds in a month! If even a quarter of the American households composted, just think how many pounds of wastes we could prevent from going into a landfill while at the same time using this wonderful material to enrich our soils.

Composting is basically nature's process of recycling organic material, and the resulting rich brown soil can be used to add nutrients back into the earth. There are many ways you can compost. Some people just have a pile in the corner of their garden or backyard. If your interested in a slightly neater appearance, you can purchase a compost bin or make one yourself. Many people use worm bins to compost. Now once you decide what type of compost method you will use, you will need to make sure there is an equal amount of nitrogen and carbon. Nitrogen comes from the "green" material: grass clippings, coffee grounds, fruit and veggie peelings, tea bags, crushed egg shells, and such. Carbon comes from "brown" sources: dried leaves, straw, dried grasses, or wood ash from untreated wood (but not too much). Things you need to avoid at all cost in putting in your compost are weeds that have gone to seed, dog or cat feces (which can carry parasite diseases), pesticides, fats, oils, grease, and any bones or meat scraps coming from an animal.

So start saving those scraps from the kitchen, and begin enriching our Earth. You can check with your local Department of Natural Resources for more information to get you started on having your own nature's recycling plant right in your own backyard.