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!
Most of us here at the Food Gardening Network love composting. Composting is a great way to deal with waste, the finished compost is super nutritious for your garden, and you don’t need any special equipment. But since the decomposition process requires heat, can you keep composting in winter? Yes. Your compost pile won’t move […]
The great thing about compost is that… wait. Forget that. Everything is great about compost. It’s a great way to reduce the amount of garbage that goes to the landfill. It’s an incredibly healthy addition to your soil. And you don’t need any special equipment to compost. Of course, I’ve been gardening for a while, but when I first started, even though I knew compost was good, I didn’t really know how to use 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 probably no surprise that I love compost. Ever since I began using compost in my garden, all my plants, vegetables, and herbs are happier than ever. And compost is generally worry-free, although I did run into a problem with my compost not heating up a little while back.
When I first started composting, I felt a surge of angst any time I was about to throw something in the garbage. Can I compost it? Is this really garbage? At first, it only happened in the kitchen with food scraps and some paper products.
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.
There is a lot of information out there about how to compost in an apartment. One thing that seems to be missing in much of that information is whether or not it’s worth it to compost if you don’t have an outdoor garden. It does, after all, take a bit more work than just tossing your banana peels and peach pits in the garbage.
