It's Compost Awareness Week!

It's that time of year once again...  Compost Awareness Week, which falls right at the time when people who compost get on with waking up their compost piles after a winter of collecting compostable kitchen scraps.

Some of my winter scraps feed my basement vermi-composting condo, but we produce so much more than the red wigglers can handle that most end up outside during the winter, sitting on top of my compost heap in the snow, waiting to be mixed in with last fall's yard waste. Unfortunately, kitchen scraps don't compost a lot in our chilly winters. The bin pictured above was mostly thawed stuff from the tops of our 3-bin system, mixed with water and more leaves so that the pile would be aerated enough for the bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms to start cooking the pile. It's already starting to work, as you can see from the picture below, taken 24 hours later...

In two months or so, this will all be glorious black stuff. Maybe even sooner if I keep stirring every two weeks and keep it nice and wet.

Composting really isn't all that difficult if you remember the four necessary ingredients of greens, browns, water, and air. Collect your kitchen scraps (greens), mix them with leaves from last fall (browns -- I have enough to share if you need some), wet everything down (water), and don't forget to "fluff" the pile now and then so that all the living things that do the composting can breathe (air). Keep it as damp as a wrung-out sponge (things rot better when they're wet), and you're away.

The City of Edmonton has a wonderful webpage with plenty of information about composting, plus there's Compost 'S cool at the John Janzen Nature Centre, where you can learn from  the expert seen in this cool video (if you click here). Or, if you like, you can contact me. I'm thinking about setting up a Wine, Cheese and Composting party for my neighbourhood over the next couple of weeks. I've done it once before, and it was lots of fun.

The best thing about composting is the black gold that it creates. There's nothing like compost for enriching soil -- it's so much better than chemical fertilizers because it is naturally occurring. If you garden like God does and let leaves accumulate around your plants, you'll notice an improvement in your soil where the leaves begin to self-compost. And if you make and spread compost on your lawn, you'll notice an improvement in just a few days. The picture below is from last year -- the right side of the lawn is where we raked in compost.

Composting is a great way to give back to our planet, which gives us so much. I like the idea of feeding our soil by "recycling" the nutrients we don't absorb as human beings. If you've never tried composting, there's no better time to start than these early days of May!

Simple Suggestion #163... Spread a little compost

It's Compost Awareness Week! Which, of course, is a happy time of year for Master Composter/Recyclers like me. What's better than taking our vegetable scraps and other plant-based items and turning them back into food for the soil? Wayyy better than throwing those nutrients in the garbage. Composting allows human beings to reduce our waste AND feed the earth that feeds us!

And it's actually pretty easy. All you need are your vegetable waste, some carbon materials like autumn leaves, sawdust, and last season's garden leftovers (I have lots of them, being a gardener who believes in leaving things as natural as possible), water, and air. Mix all those ingredients together in a pile (you don't actually need a bin, though it keeps things tidier), and an amazing thing happens -- everything heats up (because of microorganisms in the pile) and starts to rot. If you keep the pile as wet as a damp sponge and stir it frequently to give it some air, it won't smell like rotting vegetables, and it will soon look and smell like delicious, nutrient rich dirt that's better than any fertilizer money can buy.

Because we used up most of last fall's compost in various other places in the yard, yesterday, we had 2 yards of the stuff delivered, and my hard-working farm-boy hubby spread it all over our vegetable plot. I have a bit more spreading to do today.

So, in keeping with the week's theme of Compost Awareness, today's suggestion is to spread a little compost around. This time of year, there's lots of compost for sale -- here in Edmonton, groups sell compost for fundraisers, and I know that the Edmonton Horticultural Society will be selling 40 lb bags of the stuff this Saturday, May 11th, from 9 a.m. til 2 p.m. in the parking lot of the old Prince Rupert Community League, 11303 113 St. Get it while the getting's good! And make your soil happy!

My "compost-y" garden -- soon to be dug and planted!

P.S. For more Simple Suggestions, click here.