Home » It’s Easy Going Green

It’s Easy Going Green

What you’ll need ·     

  • Poultry netting and metal posts, concrete blocks or wood pallets
  • Pitch fork or garden spade    
  • Organic matter

What you’ll do  

  1. Remove grass and weeds from a four-foot square or circle with a four-foot diameter. Cover the area with 10 layers of newspaper (not the shiny, colored inserts) to help keep weed seeds that remain in the soil from germinating.
  2. Skip the expensive commercial compost bins and build your own. A three-sided enclosure of concrete blocks or wood pallets, about the size of a four-foot cube, works well. With concrete blocks, alternate placement so every other row has the “holes” for better air circulation. With poultry or field fencing, make a round container but leave a front flap unattached for easy access.
  3. Add organic matter. A three-inch layer of cut grass or raked leaves is a good start.   Tip: Let cut grass sit in a separate pile until the top few inches turn light brown. Fresh grass tossed in all at once simply creates a slimy blob that is hard to work with. And mulched leaves (run them over with a lawnmower) break down faster than intact ones.
  4. Keep a covered container in your kitchen for organic waste suitable for composting: spent coffee grounds and teabags; vegetable peelings; old or spoiled produce; overripe fruit (remove the pits of stone fruits such as peaches and apricots); discards from tomato canning; out-of-date herbs and spices; banana peels; crushed eggshells; winter squash skins are just some examples.
  5. Take a minute to chop items into smaller pieces before putting them in the small kitchen container; an entire banana peel will break down eventually but one chopped into ¼-to-½ inch pieces will decompose much faster.
  6. Dump your kitchen scraps into the compost pile and toss some browned grass or leaves on top. This helps control unhelpful insects, such as flies.   Tip: Hold the walnuts. Walnut branches, leaves, husks and shells contain a toxin that kills helpful bacteria and poisons the compost.
  7. Grab the garden spade or pitchfork and mix it up. You can toss the pile every day, twice a week or once a week. Nature will take its course regardless of your schedule.
  8. If it hasn’t rained, hose the pile so it is like a moist sponge. The process needs air, moisture and heat (created by chemical reactions and helpful organisms that aid decomposition) to work.
  9. Get your (gloved) hands on manure from cows, horses, goats or donkeys. Waste from animals that eat grass, hay and other plants will enrich your compost.
  10. You’ll know the compost is “done” when it smells like earth and is moist and crumbly. Dig the good stuff from the bottom of the pile, or, if you have room, build a second bin after your first pile is three feet high. Keep tossing it but add the new material to the second pile.  

Remember: Organic matter derived from plants is fine; waste from meat or other items that contain oils is not. The fat both attracts vermin and makes the pile smell rancid. Steamed veggies that have no butter are OK but bread, pasta and other foods with oil in or on them are not. Cooked legumes that have spoiled are fine but not if they are covered in salad dressing.