Heap it up!

By Enviro Girl

If it’s biodegradable, it’s compostable — paper, leaves, twigs, dead plants, any plant part (including grass clippings and the vegetable and fruit waste from your kitchen), egg shells, dryer lint, and coffee grounds.  Compost is nature’s fertilizer — keeping the soil healthy and promoting the growth of new plants.  Making a compost pile at home is easy and beneficial to the planet since it keeps biodegradable stuff out of landfills and puts it back into the ecosystem where it belongs.

Compost is the result of decomposition, the hard work of microbes doing their job.  Depending on where you live and how much compost you might generate or use, there is a Compost Solution to meet your needs.

* One bin Solution — easiest for urban dwellers, you can buy a compost bin almost anywhere these days and they are constructed to hold heat and keep out pests.

*  Multi-bin Solution — if you generate significant waste, you can have several batches of compost going at any time.

*  Tumbler Solution — a rotating compost bin that can produce a batch of garden compost in 3 weeks.

* Lazy solution — either pile your compost in a stand alone heap or toss it into a cage made of chicken wire and boards.  Open to the elements, this method takes a long time to break down, but it requires no work other than dumping your compostable waste onto the pile.

Once you’ve picked your Compost Solution, you’re ready to start composting.  The magic recipe for compost is this:  2 parts moist green matter and 1 part dry brown matter kept moist as a damp sponge, turned or “aerated” every week to assist the microbes in their labor.  If you vigilantly add green & brown matter, keep your pile moist and turn it, you’ll have usable compost in a matter of weeks!

Contrary to what you might think, compost does NOT smell bad.  It smells earthy.  It doesn’t attract pests if you use appropriate containers.  It will not reduce your property value to have a small compost bin or pile in the corner of your yard.  And it is as easy to compost as it is to recycle.  At Enviro-Girl’s house, all kitchen scraps get tossed into a bowl or bucket and carried to the compost heap every few days.  Every spring the compost pile gets dumped into the vegetable garden and rototilled into the soil  Some people “dress” their garden plants with compost, adding it to the top of the soil every spring and summer.  Some people make composting a big deal by adding Activators and monitoring their compost’s temperature.  Other people pitch their seasonal yard waste into a pile and ignore it for a year.  No matter your compost needs or style, there’s a Compost Solution for you!

Check out this website for excellent in-depth compost information.  The Eco-Women encourage you to adopt a Compost Solution — it’s one of the best ways to Protect the Planet!