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.
Category: Composting
In the articles below, learn everything you need to know about composting at home in your backyard, kitchen, or barrel.
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!
Did you know that, according to the EPA, the United States produces more than 42 million tons of food waste every year? That’s 210 cruise ships filled top to bottom, stem to stern, with food. Or for something more relatable, that’s how much 9,333 Ford F-150 pickups weigh, or 14,000 Toyota Priuses. Indeed, learning how to make natural compost isn’t going to eliminate that kind of waste.
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.
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.
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 […]
As you might be able to tell by the name, hugelkultur comes to us from Germany. The word translates to “hill culture,” and it is a very environmentally friendly and efficient type of raised bed gardening. Hugelkultur (pronounced Hoo-gull-culture) is sustainable, low-maintenance, drought-resistant, affordable, and can vastly improve the nearby landscape. Better yet, it’s easy […]
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 […]
Ah… the sweet sights and sounds of spring. It’s the time of the year when robins are plucking worms from the grass, tulips and crocuses are in bloom, our radishes and peas are ready to harvest, and our spring composting work is well underway. But what is that exactly? Isn’t composting just a matter of […]
If there is a magic formula to a bountiful vegetable garden, compost has an honored place in the mix. Good compost is rich in the nutrients your plants need to grow. In addition, compost can double as mulch, it’s environmentally friendly, and the process of composting is pretty darn easy. That said, some compost ingredients […]
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Tips for Managing Bugs in Compost Bins
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 […]