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 your idea of a fun afternoon is reading academic research papers, just Google “Salmonella in compost.” You’ll get titles like Cascading effects of composts and cover crops on soil chemistry, bacterial communities, and the survival of foodborne pathogens.
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 a love/hate relationship with my indoor compost bin. I love that I don’t have to walk out to my compost heap every time I peel a banana or empty my tea pot. I hate that it can sometimes smell like I’m downwind from the town dump. Even though I empty it regularly, it can still develop a nose-turning aroma. And for some people without an outdoor compost pile, it’s a lot more difficult to empty the indoor bin regularly. Some friends that live in the city have to wait a full week before their compost gets picked up.
If you’ve read much about compost, you know it shouldn’t have much of an odor. And if you’ve been composting for more than a few minutes, you also know that sometimes, despite your best efforts, the pile suddenly smells like ammonia or rotten eggs. If you haven’t experienced this particular delight yet, you either will […]
Composting is one of those gardening habits that just keeps paying you back. I love turning kitchen scraps, cardboard, grass clippings, and other green and brown materials into rich, nutrient-packed compost for the garden. It saves money, cuts down on waste, and is a win for the planet. Plus, there’s something deeply satisfying about rolling […]
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.
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 […]
To talk about the best plants for straw bale gardening, it’s probably important to clarify what straw bale gardening is exactly. The short version is that you can grow vegetables in straw bales just as you would in a raised bed or large container. It’s a popular option in areas where the soil is contaminated or simply not conducive to growing plants.
Pine needle compost might be one of the most misunderstood areas of composting. Sure, there’s some confusion about whether that take-out container is compostable, but when it comes to pine needles, there’s a longstanding assumption that they are too acidic.
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.
