Posts from — February 2008

How many of the following items would you normally be tossing in the trash:

• banana peel
• corn husk
• apple core
• coffee grounds
• tea bags
• carrot tops and peelings
• egg shells
• onion skin and scraps

Sure, the individual bits may seem small, but when you add up all of the biodegradable kitchen waste that gets put into the garbage rather than the compost, you can begin to understand what a radical change making your own compost can be.

Composting starts inside the house in the kitchen. Kitchen scraps provide the “wet” factor to balance out the dry stuff that we can call yard waste– the leaves, weeds, small twigs, grass clippings that accumulate from yard work. Again, why place these naturally decomposing materials into plastic storage bags to save for future generations to deal with? There’s really no good reason at all. Although there are those who strongly advocate compost “recipes” that suggest that certain proportions of kitchen waste and yard waste need to be added to make compost correctly, that’s generally not the way we view compost. We practice laissez-faire composting and our experience is that it always works out fine.

For gathering up our kitchen waste, we now have a nifty stainless steel container from the lovely Lee Valley Tools to keep our kitchen scraps but when we first started to compost we used a plastic bucket and that worked just fine. You can keep your compost bucket under your sink where you might store a waste basket or, if it’s a cute stainless steel one, even on the counter.

Some people are concerned that composting will smell. Actually kitchen waste stored in a bucket with a lid for 2 or 3 days will not smell bad. If you leave it longer, you might start to notice some new scents. In that case, empty your kitchen bucket regularly.

A few words of caution about what does not go into compost. Never add meat scraps or bones to your compost. They break down differently than vegetative materials and will cause bad odors. They’ll also attract the types of insects and vermin that will otherwise leave your compost alone. You will also want to avoid putting oils and dairy into your compost. Leftover grains, however, will break down just fine.

Composting kitchen waste is a very simple change of habit that will have a large impact on your garden in the form of homemade compost and a very positive effect on the earth in terms of less garbage output.

It’s snowy, cold and the only thing growing in our 20minute garden are the icicles hanging from the storage barn. It’s the perfect time to build something useful, like the trellis I made a couple years back for our black raspberry canes.

The reason why I wanted a trellis is to keep the tips of the canes from touching the ground. Raspberry canes will sprout roots and eventually will create a new plant if the tips touch the ground. I’m already pushing the limits of how many plants I can keep healthy in a small amount of space. Plus, if the canes aren’t pointing upward, I can’t see them to prune and thus encourage more fruit.

This trellis was built entirely of scavenged wood plus a couple pieces of hardware that made the task MUCH easier than I expected. Normally I despise traditionally treated lumber but I made an exception with this project because the wood will never actually touch the soil, plus since I had scavenged it, I rationalized that most of the surface chemicals had already washed off. Having said that, BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL with the sawdust. Don’t breathe it and be very careful to collect the sawdust and discard it properly. DON’T COMPOST IT.

I am including a sketch of my actual trellis as built plus a page of scribbles I made as I was working toward the final design. Don’t just build what I did. Think about it a moment and you probably will come up with something that suits your tastes better. My design is obviously based heavily on telephone pole because the line that support the canes reminded me a lot of telephone lines.

The cut list for my design is:

4×4’s (for BOTH trellises)
• 4 vertical posts @ 36″
• 2 upper horizontal supports @ 36″
• 2 lower horizontal supports @ 24″

Hardware:
• 8 galvanized 4×4 fasteners (used for fastening deck posts perpendicularly);
• lots of stainless steel screws (pre-drill!) The kind of fasteners I used required 12 screws apiece;
• enough plastic coated clothes line for the number of holes times the length of your bramble bed;
• 4 of those cute copper fence toppers. (This solved a couple problems not the least of which was an UGLY cut I’d made on a couple of the posts. Also, they divert rain from pouring right down the most vulnerable side of the post. And they look cool;
• 4 “spiked post holders” for lack of a better name. They hold a 4×4 and helped me avoid having to use a longer post and bury half of it in the ground. Another trouble with a buried post is they are wont to rot out, just around the 6 or 8 inches where soil contacts the post. Lower down, there’s no oxygen and higher up, it’s not constantly wet. The concern I had using these spiked post holders was that they seemed to be designed for structures where most of the stress was applied directly downward, that is, not torqued, that is, they would most definitely NOT be good for a fence of any height. Since the weight of the canes and wires is negligible, I thought I’d give these a try. So far they’ve been pretty good, though I won’t discount the contribution of our thick clay soil.

If you are planning to start composting in your yard, the first thing you’ll need is a container of some sort.

Actually, you don’t even need that. If you want to do the lowest tech-style of composting, you can create a compost pile. The main advantage is absolutely no cost. You could start one today. The disadvantages are more plentiful. A pile is unprotected from the local animals, who might be surprisingly interested in your compost. The other disadvantage is that a pile decomposes more slowly than a container.

Before purchasing a container, you might want to check with your city or other local municipality to see if they offer subsidized composters for sale. City governments have caught onto the fact that helping residents to compost kitchen and yard waste will save a lot on waste disposal expenses, compared with the costs of adding those items to the local landfill.

A simple composter made of dark durable plastic with a locking lid and some ventilation is a really easy way to get started with composting. Several models are even available from Amazon, with free shipping to boot.

Either of these would be a welcome addition to my yard.

If you are a little bit handy, you can make your own compost container pretty easily. Four wooden pallets attached at the corners can create large square compost area. Unless you have a lot of yard waste though, you might need a long time to fill it up. I’ve also heard of people using old window screens to make a smaller compost container. One of our previous composters was a length of chicken wire attached to 4 stakes. If you fashion your own container, you’ll want to allow for ventilation and some portability in the future.

Ideally, you should place your composter in a handy place, although you might not want it to be the centerpiece of your garden. We traditionally place ours along the back fence. Late this fall, however, we had the good sense to move our empty compost to the middle of the yard so we wouldn’t have to make as long a trek through the snow to empty our kitchen waste.