Composting is the best and most cost-effective way to create nutrient-rich soil for your garden, though it does come with its challenges. For example, if you compost diseased vegetables or plants, they’ll spread to your garden. If you aren’t turning your compost, it can become unbalanced, smelly compost, and attract critters.
Though, if you do take care of your compost, it’s much cheaper than buying it and certainly easier than hauling it. Creating your compost also gives you ways to reduce food waste by putting it back into the earth instead of a plastic trash bag.
Composting certainly comes with the stigma that to compost, you’re either a farmer or living off the grid, but if that were true, there wouldn’t be so many barrel-turning and countertop composting appliances available to buy. Everyone from gardening hobbyists to apartment dwellers is composting for their backyard, patio, and balcony gardens. Food gardening is most definitely mainstream, and composting comes with it! If you want some luscious, healthy soil for your garden, that is!
If you have a little bit of land, it’s easy to create and tend to a compost pile. But composting can seem elusive for apartment dwellers and those in more urban areas without a lot of space. In the last several years, a number of approaches to easy composting at home have emerged, and you don’t need a lot of room for them to work. A small patio or a spot on your porch is all the space you need to compost. In some cases, your compost bin can fit on the back of your kitchen counter!
In the articles below, we dive into all of these approaches to composting, and you can learn more about gardening and composting in our How to Grow a Vegetable Garden: 10 Things Every Gardener Needs to Know Before Starting a Food Garden freebie. Enjoy!
If you’ve read much about compost, you know it shouldn’t have too much of an odor. And if you’ve been composting for more than five minutes, you also know that sometimes, no matter what you do, your compost smells like ammonia or sulfur. If you haven’t experienced this “lovely” phenomenon, you either will soon, or […]
I don’t want to write about bugs in compost bins any more than you want to read about it, but it happens, so here we are. Don’t worry; I’m not going to get into the creepy-crawly details. For your sake and mine, we’ll keep it vague. I’m still emotionally scarred from that scene in The Lost […]
Composting used to scare me. I should say, compost bins used to scare me. I had heard all the great things about composting: that it was a super sustainable and a great cost-effective way of boosting nutrients into your soil. But, I was afraid of the stink of it all.
Whenever I get to write about composting, I get that feeling you have when you’ve discovered a great new TV show and want to share all about it with your friends. Basically, compost is my Bridgerton. I feel like I’m constantly learning techniques and methods for composting and each one is more interesting than the next.
Figuratively. There are things you’ll want to know before you “figuratively” jump into open-air composting because I’m guessing you don’t want to actually do that. If you’ve read more than a few blog posts here at the Food Gardening Network, you know we like composting. It’s good for the soil, good for your vegetables, and […]
I have some bad news. All that time you spent raking grass as a kid? You didn’t need to do that. You could have been off riding your bike or playing video games while the grass was turning into grass compost. Sort of, anyway.
I sometimes feel like a magician when I work on my compost pile. A few potato peels, a bell pepper core, and some coffee grounds go into the pile, and within a few weeks, out comes gardening gold. Learning how to compost has been such a gardening game-changer for me. I’ve saved tons of money by not having to buy soil additives and bagged compost.
Composting is the gift that keeps on giving. I love turning food scraps, cardboard, grass clippings, and other green and brown materials into a usable and nutritious soil amendment. It saves money and the planet. Not to mention trash day is a lot lighter! With so many ways to compost, finding a method that works […]
It’s no secret that I love compost. For those just getting into gardening, compost is decomposed organic matter that can be used as a soil amendment in garden beds and container gardens. It helps vegetables and herbs retain moisture and prevent pests and diseases. Compost has helped my vegetable garden thrive over the years and is my number one recommendation when someone asks me what they can do to improve their soil quality.
I’m guessing before we get into this, you want to know what the heck compost tea is. It certainly ain’t your afternoon cup of Earl Grey, I can tell you that. I don’t care how much honey you stir in, you don’t want to drink this stuff.
