Keep On Composting

Kermit the Frog may have said “It’s not that easy being green” but we beg to differ…

We all want to be more environmentally conscious and with a little bit of know how, you can reap the benefits of collecting your vegetable and fruit scraps – big time.

Composting your food waste (if done properly) will not only give you nice, enriched soil to feed back into your plants and improve the quality of your garden soil, it also cuts down on your waste, clears our air, and keeps our planet from overheating.  

And since food waste makes up about 20 percent of what a typical family throws out, composting is worth doing.

When food waste is taken to landfill, it breaks down without oxygen because it’s buried. That means that it decomposes into methane instead of compost, a greenhouse gas that’s damaging our atmosphere.

Making your own compost is easy and will improve your garden, Home-made compost is one of the essentials of sustainability. And with summer nearly here, now is the time to look to your backyard or balcony and start thinking about mulch and compost.

A composter doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective and they are easy to put together and use. (Prices range from about $40 up to $500 for more attractive and user-friendly varieties – incentives to keep them full.)

Composting reduces kitchen waste and makes environmental sense. We do it and we recommend you do too.  All you need to know are the few simple rules of composting…

1. Ingredients: Carbon to nitrogen ratio 30:1, brown to greens. For one pail of food scraps add three pails of mulched leaves.

2. Moisture: Ensure your pile always contains moisture.  Compost with the right moisture level should feel like a damp, wrung-out sponge. Check your compost pile’s moisture level once a week and adjust it if necessary by adding water to increase moisture or more browns to help dry the pile out.

3. Maintenance:  Turn or stir up your pile at least once a week, not more than three times. 

4. Remember: Chop your food up into small pieces.  The more surface area exposed the faster items will decompose.

So start saving those veggie peels and fruit scraps, and get ready to get your compost on! Your garden – and the planet – will thank you.