It’s a dirty topic, folks, but let’s discuss our feelings about compost.
I find it amazing gratifying that we can take scraps of food like this ::
And make it into something that grows more food, like this ::
These are pictures from our worm composter that we’ve had in or basement for a little over a year and a half. It took us a little bit to get our little wriggly ones up to speed and the “formula” of food scraps to paper ratio correct, but now that we have a good colony and we’re better at keeping them happy, we get great worm casting compost at the rate of one box every two months.
This past weekend I put three boxes full of compost into a bed behind our deck to plant peas, radishes, and some sorrel.
It was a little strange at first to not only think about composting in our house, but doing it with worms. Who has worms in their basement and is happy about it? We were both worried that it would smell and that we’d get worms everywhere. But honestly, those worries were misplaced. We have had an odor issue once or twice which was noticeable only when we lifted the lid. It was easy to fix by adding more dry matter, in our case, shredded paper, which has been great way to get rid of our private financial and medical paperwork from years ago that might have things like our social security number on it. I also throw in our used paper towels, which makes me feel a bit better about using them in the first place. It’s a habit I’d be happy to break—our reliance on paper towels—but that’s a project for another time.
I am happy to say that this particular experiment has gone well for us. We’re going to build a larger composter outdoors for our yard waste in the summer, but I think the worms do a great job with our kitchen scraps, so I plan on keeping them around for a while.
There won’t enough to fill the beds I’m frantically working on, but we have another solution in place for that.
First step :: Build it.
(First and a Half Step :: Blog About Needing to Build It!)
