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 #127 revisited... Fertilize your lawn with compost

On the May long weekend, when Lee and I installed two new raised bed boxes in our front yard, we got more compost than we needed to fill them. We didn't want to leave a pile of it sitting on our front boulevard, so Lee spread it on the grass around our yard, and two weeks later, we are definitely noticing the difference.

This picture gives you an idea of the difference compost has made in ten days. This piece of lawn is on the south side of our house, and the way the sun beats down between our house and the neighbours' has meant that our neighbours' lawn (which is shaded by their house) is always greener while ours fries in the sun. But with compost added, our side is greener than theirs this spring -- first time ever.

Above is a shadier spot where our neighbours' lawn meets ours. I can't get over the colour difference in the two lawns. The story is the same on the sunny city boulevard below... where the compost landed (clearly not spread in the straightest line) the difference is very noticeable!

no compost over here                                              compost sprinkled on this side

I know a lot of people who like to spread those tiny fertilizer pellets on their lawns just before a rainstorm, but compost is a much greener alternative, both literally and figuratively. There are no chemicals involved -- compost is composed of well-rotted plant matter that is safe to use for a light top-dressing anytime, whether it rains or not. Good compost offers a slow release of nutrients every time it rains. We spread ours and then it didn't rain for four days, but the rich, dark, crumbly humus was working its way down to the rhizomes as we walked around on it. And when it did rain... what a difference!

If you know me, you know I'm not a lawn fanatic -- I much prefer to see interesting flowers and shrubs rather than boring green monocultures that don't feed bees and butterflies or offer any kind of habitat for birds. In fact, I could be accused of grass neglect because I have never made the effort to fertilize a lawn in my life. But this year's extra compost turned our neglected lawn a rich and healthy green (and the dandelions are happier, too, of course). I've known about the benefits of using compost with my perennial and vegetable beds for a long time, but having some to spare for grassy places, I have been floored by how green our grass has become in just ten days and one good soaking rain!

The moral of the story? If you're someone who appreciates a great lawn, get rid of the chemical fertilizers and invest in a load of compost, or make your own from your plant-based kitchen scraps. Compost is better for our environment because it recycles plant matter to enrich our soil -- which is good for everything we grow!