Trash and treasure

One of the first things we started in preparation for our new life out here was the creation of the "other black gold," compost. While we lived in our last apartment, we kept a couple of smallish plastic bins on the porch and threw in vegetable and fruit scraps as they accrued and mixed in the odd handful of potting soil or dirt to try and keep things covered. These two slightly smelly, drippy bins made the move with us and served as the cornerstone of our great compost heap.

Compost is quite important to our gardening efforts by adding organic material and an array of nutrients to our mostly deficient heavy clay soil that we have to work with. You need moisture, air, and a balanced blend of "greens" and "browns" to create the ideal environment for bacteria/fungi to thrive. The "greens" in the pile are things like food scraps and grass clippings, while the "browns" are straw, paper, and old leaves. Without getting into too much detail, the greens provide a relatively high portion of the nitrogen and the browns provide more of the carbon, the two main determinants of whether the micro-life is happy. With plenty of air in the mix, the pile smells nice and earthy, not bad. Without enough air, this opens the door for anaerobic composting whose byproduct is methane, causing a stink and much messier result (though I've heard some use anaerobic digestion to create gas for heating).

The particular variety of composting we're shooting for is a thermophilic process, meaning that the pile will naturally heat up to at least 160 degrees for a few days to kill off and weed seeds and diseases that might be present. I was pleased to find that after sticking a pitchfork into the compost recently, a great billow of steam rolled out, meaning that things are going well.

We keep a compost bowl in the kitchen to haul out to the pile after it gets full. It gets very little respect, as you will no doubt notice by the heavy abuse on its rim.

In addition to the compost heap, we also keep a worm bin. Worm castings (poop) are an awesome fertilizer, which is one of the reasons why it's great to see them in your garden. The bin is a very simple setup, is smell-free, and will be a source of free fertilizer for us for the foreseeable future. Our worms like old vegetable scraps, and fortunately for them, we tend to eat a lot of vegetables. They have a nice bed made of peat moss and a little sand, and they're covered in a heavy layer of leaves, which serve as their homes and food.

When we add food each week, the worms work their way away from the older stuff, leaving lots of tiny worms behind to finish it off. The juices drain through a length of rope into a jug to make a concentrate for "worm tea," yet another fertilizer that is heavily diluted before use.

Composting is a great way to divert part of the garbage from the landfill to the garden, it doesn't smell, and it's free.

The inside of the bin. Little Javier is journeying his way to the top on a dare from the worms below (not pictured).