Compost is a fantastic way of returning nutrients and organic matter to the world so that new life can come out of it again. Sounds pretty good, right?
For too long I lived in a condo building without my own garden. Every carrot peel I threw out was an affront to the dirt, a lost opportunity to put nutrients back into the earth and transform garbage into something green again.
Now I have a house and plans to compost everything that I can. But I have many questions. Where do I start? What do I need? What can I put in and what needs to stay out? It feels like a team of experts should sit down with me and calm my frazzled nerves by a simple question-and-answer session.
Better yet, I could just refer to a comprehensive yet easy to follow guidebook. Leave it to the fine folks at Lone Pine to create just such a volume with the help of Edmonton author Suzanne Lewis. She apparently spent the last decade teaching the public about worms and dirt (and other environmental practices that can be practiced around the home). According to her biography, she always “reuses and reduces before she recycles.” Sounds like she has all of her Rs covered.
She does indeed. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that the A to Z of composting can be covered in less than 200 pages but there it is. All of my questions and more have answers. Even better, those answers were found quickly. Getting started? Check. Equipment? Check. The ins and outs? Check, check and double check.
The first and most embarrassing thing I learned was that worms aren’t necessary to compost. There’s aeration and on-site composting or you can also get into anaerobic composting, although it’s less popular. What was most embarrassing is that if I only had a simple bin of worms next to my kitchen then I easily could have put all my condo carrots back into the ground. All those peels over the years were just wasted. Still, others can benefit from my folly. Of course, they might have to overcome the small squeamish factor of having creepy crawlies in a container.
That’s not a huge concern, Lewis writes, and there’s a decent benefit for smaller families.
“Worm bins thrive on kitchen scraps and typically do not process yard waste in large volumes unless it is used as bedding when starting the bin. Therefore, people who don’t have access to a big yard can still benefit from the opportunity to reduce waste while creating rich compost for their houseplants.”
Yeah, all of those indoor plants that I turned into brown sticks out of neglect easily could have thrived in my care if only I had a bunch of red wigglers or nightcrawlers as pets. Yes, she calls them pets. Sometimes it’s funny that being green is easier than I ever would have thought.
Other important subjects that get covered in the book are types of composters, pest avoidance and troubleshooting. She suggests not throwing avocado pits into the bin unless you want it to start sprouting. Hmm … I might just try that.
