I would like to start this post off by stating that I am new to all things gardening. I keep the houseplants alive that I do have by sheer luck and by choosing houseplants that are hard to kill.
That being said, I decided for the following reasons for why I am going to try composting this year.
Reasons to Compost:
- Don’t let the Food Scrap Nutrients go to Waste
- Composted food takes those nutrients from the food and puts it back into the soil. The soil can be used for a personal garden, houseplants, community garden, or a local farmer.
- If on the off chance I end up with more soil than I can handle, I know I can put it in a cardboard box with free written on it and it would be gone within the day. People love healthy soil!
- Reduce Food Waste Ending up in Landfills
- Typically, I throw my food in the trash into a plastic garbage bag, which goes to the dump. At the landfill, the food is just buried.
- Once I started to pay attention to my trash, I noticed that I have lots of food scraps that I could do something with instead of it going to waste at a landfill.
- When food is in the landfill, it cannot properly break down because it does not have access to the air, which is an important part of composting.
- Fight Global Warming:
- When food ends up in the landfill, it will give off a gas called methane into the atmosphere.
- Many individuals look to carbon as being the main reason for global warming, but methane is a huge cause of concern. According to UNECE, “Measured over a 20-year period, methane is 84 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.”
- Science experiment at home
- I just want to experiment and see this process for myself! I am not going to lie, I am going to be very proud (and surprised) when I am able to pour out my first small batch of composted soil.
Fun Fact: Did you know there are cities like Boulder and Denver, Colorado that offer curbside composting? Imagine being able to throw all of your food scraps into a bucket each week that the city would collect and compost. Some of these services allow each individual to come and collect some of that composted soil and anything left over goes to local gardeners and farmers.
How do I plan to do it?
As I mentioned above, this will be my first time composting. I will be following Let’s Make it Clean’s blog on composting using a tumbler. It can be found here.
I will take some leaves, grass clippings, egg shells, paper and some food scraps to combine them into into my tumbler. I will rotate it as often as it mentioned for my specific tumbler. Then after a few weeks (looks to range from 2-6 weeks) I will have some composted soil. I will say, I will be using the great cheat sheets found on Going Zero Waste’s blog to know what I should and shouldn’t put into my composter!
Conclusion
What do you think? Have you composted in the past? What method do you like to use? I am excited to give it a try and fail a bit while I figure it all out. I think it will be great to have alongside my beginner garden as well.
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