Thursday, June 28, 2012

June Conservation Tip

Do you compost?

There are many ways to compost depending on where and how you live. The city of San Mateo County for example offers a compost program, where the compost gets picked up weekly, together with the normal garbage. Others just put up a compost bin in their garden. If you have a little space in your garden, here is what I did:

Get a sturdy compost bin




some compost starter

 

and just start composting!



Start by layering grass clippings (green things), fall leafs (brown things)and your kitchen scraps together with the compost starter and keep it slightly moist. It should be a fairly balanced mix of everything. Whenever I add new material to the compost, I mix up the contents of the bin just a little bit. Adding fresh oxygen into the compost pile by turning it more frequently will help the compost to break down faster. Worms (earthworms) significantly help the process, too.
Some buy worms, but ours just moved in without us doing anything.



Ideal would be to have two bins, once the first one is full, you let it sit and completely break down, while you fill up the second one. Once full, we just let ours sit for a while and then used the resulting super nutritious compost to plant some radishes and other vegetables. And then started to fill the compost bin again by layering grass clippings, leafs and kitchen scraps....
you get the idea




If you live in an apartment and have only a little balcony space to spare, think about a vermiculture (just a fancy word for composting with lots of worms).

Regardless of how you compost, you can only win:You reduce the garbage sent to the landfill and gain an all natural great fertilizer for your garden and house plants.

Here some clever links to help you get started

Earth Easy

How to compost

Compost Guide

The Apartment Compost Bin Build a compost box in your apartment

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