Urban Compost/ "You're doing WHAT with your garbage?"

You're wondering what in the world made me decide to pursue composting with such fervor. How does an apartment dweller go about composting? Why do I rip the plastic window out of my junkmail, shred it, and keep it in a bag along with dryer lint and other odd shreds of paper? Why do I hoard (yes, I even fish them out of the trash) apple cores, carrot tops, banana peels, green pepper stems, and slimy vegies-in-transition from the crisper tray in the fridge? And what about asking the man at the cutting table at Home Depot if I can have a couple of buckets of his sawdust? What's behind this composting thing of mine?

Well, there are many benefits of compost: It keeps our landfills free of methane and acidic leachate. Methane can leak into pockets of soil, possibly contributing to explosions and acidic leachate can assist in making other soil toxins more mobile and thus more dangerous. When incorporated into soil, compost provides nutrients to a plant's growing area and increases the soil's drainage and ability to retain moisture. It can even promote resistance to pests and disease in plants. Compost has been shown to help prevent soil erosion, clean up contaminated soils, and prevent pollution. Compost takes that which is essentially refuse (rotting/ inedible food or lawn clippings, junk mail, paper waste, dead leves, etc.) and makes it into something beneficial to our ecosystem!

Oh! I'm environmentally-minded! Working for the health of the planet, doing my part to be "green." Well, yes. I think so. I like the idea of doing what's good for the earth, not being wasteful, and being resourceful. I think those things are important. But to be truthful..I suspect this is primarily a genetically-motivated behavior.

I think it's a gene. A gene probably inherited from my mother (I doubt it came from my left-brained accountant father). The mother who reupholsters couches she retrieves from the side of the road which wind up part of the living room furnishings. The same mother who used to "dump in the dumpster"--a term we children (ahem!) affectionately coined for a certain tendency to check dumpsters for things that really didn't need to be thrown away. (By the way, it was never embarassing for us to sit--or rather slink down--in the car while she did this.) Asking the produce stocker at the grocery store, did he have any vegetables that had passed their prime and were going to be thrown away that she could have to feed to her goats and rabbits (..or her children)? Cutting the mold off the cheese and using the still-good part, or cutting the mold off of any food item and using the still-good part. This mother has raised "bummer lambs" (who got sick and died despite her amateur veterinarian skills), goats who had goats and whose milk I did not like, dozens of rabbits, and one border collie who she intended to train to herd the bummer lambs. We butchered some of the goats and rabbits for their meat, although we kids didn't like eating our pet rabbits, but others (like the bummer lambs) I think my mom decided to raise for inexplicable reasons. I think my dad (who always shook his head in confusion but was patient nonetheless) asked her what the purpose for raising bummer lambs was and she used some type of non-sequitur explanation involving Pepper (the border collie) being a sheepherding dog and the fact that bummer lambs need to be raised by humans because their mothers rejected them. Did I mention the time she dug out a root cellar underneath our house in Colorado? Anyhow, you get my drift. Although when I was a kid, and especially when I was a teenager, I wanted desperately for her to stop all these things and just wanted her and us to be "normal," I guess I have eventually inherited an "unconventionality" gene from her that makes me think compost is...cool and fun.

Oh, and by the way, I also cut the mold off the cheese and use the still-good part.

So HOW does an apartment dweller compost? I'm about to tell you:

I wanted to start a porch composting bin. Got the idea for this from http://www.balconycompost.com/ only I made it a 25 gallon Rubbermaid container instead of a 5 gallon storage bucket. Punched holes in this using some scissors (holes in the bottom and the lid, too.) Then it's ready to fill up:















First, I put in some old nuts that were rancid and had been sitting in the pantry too long. And some popcorn seeds that didn't pop.


Some stale chips. And some rice that had gotten infested with weevils.




Kitchen scraps. These are trimmings, peelings, stems, food that's gone too yukky for human consumption, etc. (Here's a link that explains what types of food waste can be composted). Plastic containers like the baby spinach container you see make great collection buckets for compost until you're ready to empty them. Just find one that is airtight. Throw it out and replace with another one next time you buy something in an airtight plastic container.

Bottom layer should be browns and preferably have some bulk...these nuts are OK but it would be better if I had more of them.

Next the stale chips...

Next the rotting food scraps with the rice underneath (rice is a "brown.")

I added some dryer lint (very compostable and considered a "brown.")



Lastly, shredded junkmail, newspaper, torn up brown paper bags, torn up paper towel or toilet paper tubes...basically any paper that doesn't have a glossy finish. These are "browns."
Ok, so these sat on my porch for a while. I added more greens (about 7-8 more baby spinach containers full at a rate of almost 1 container per day) and a little more shredded paper. I tended to pull back the newspaper layer and add the greens to the green layer because I was trying to see if I could get the bin to heat up and start hot composting. (I believe I got the green layer too thick and should have added some brown layers in between.) Then I went on vacation for Thanksgiving for about six days. When I came back, the compost was putrid. Nasty nasty. TOO many greens! It did NOT smell like compost and it wasn't composting due to too much nitrogen (which comes from the greens) and not enough carbon (which comes from the browns) and it had probably become anaerobic. I rectified this by adding a lot of sawdust and a lot more shredded paper and continuing to stir and monitor the smell about daily when I added more of our greens every day. I now have a better balance on adding stuff to the bin and I make sure that for every bucket of greens I add, I also add a bucket of combination sawdust and shredded paper. Here's the way the compost looks right now and the good thing is, no more putrid and it smells like it's composting finally.

When I turn it, I can feel heat in the center when I put my hand close to it. However, it's not heating up to the point where it's steaming. One reason could be that it's too small. Most sources say the pile needs to be 3 feet by 3 feet in order to start heating. However, I have heard that you can hot compost in smaller volume. I do have a lid (with holes in it) on this bin, which might help insulate it. On the other hand, it is December (as I'm finishing this post) and colder weather is another factor contributing to the pile not heating up enough.

I will post updates on how this method works as I continue to use it. I will also be posting on vermicomposting, using a NatureMill, and using a ceramic planter pot on the porch for composting.

So that's the skinny (so far) on my "urban composting" efforts!

Labor Day's Labors of Love

On Labor Day I planted some lemon basil seeds--some from a package and some I extracted from the dried blossoms of the lemon basil I bought at the Farmer's Market (so I may get two varieties growing.) This is the "how-to" video I used to educate myself on how to plant basil seeds. For the topsoil, I used a layer of compost made from my kitchen veggie trimmings + sawdust in my Nature Mill composter. Fast forward 2 weeks, and here is a photo of the little sprouts coming up out of the soil. My babies! Aren't they cute?

Also on Labor Day weekend, I planted some trailing herbs in hanging wall planters (trailing rosemary, oregano, and lemon thyme) and some potted herbs (chives, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, Italian basil, "spicy" basil, and mint.) For some color interspersed with the herbs, I put a yellow Gazania in one of my wall planters and an orange Gazania along with some trailing purple verbena in another wall planter. Actually the Gazania I put in with the verbena is from three cuttings off the mother orange Gazania I planted with a red Gerber daisy. Here's the weird setup I rigged up to get the cuttings to root before hanging it on the wall in full sun:

You can learn how to take cuttings from a plant to propagate another one online. Here is everything I planted on Labor Day weekend:

The next weekend I wanted to try my hand at doing some more cuttings so I did some basil cuttings and a couple of mint cuttings. Here they are:

If you know me, you know I have to do things the *exact, exact, right, proper* way so these cuttings were planted in a mix of sterlized sand (I sterlized it myself by wetting and baking in oven at 220 degrees for 1 hr.) and soilless potting mix in a plastic planter that was sterlized with a 10% bleach solution. As is often recommended, I dipped the ends of the cuttings in rooting hormone to promote root growth before sticking them in their holes and covering them up to root. If I sound like I have acquired just enough gardening knowledge to be dangerous, we can thank Google and the internet for that!

Here's my cute-slash-expensive little cactus garden I put together about a year ago. Only $115 for all the plants and materials! When I start thinking I'm a thrifty person, reality smacks me in the face with the fact that thrifty people don't plant $115 cactus bowls. The barrel cactus only blooms once a year in late summer for a little while. A neat thing I've learned about cacti is that if you've got a chunk (big or small) that falls off the cactus for one reason or another (overwatering will cause leaves to get waterlogged and fall off), you leave it where it lies or just tuck the end into the soil a little and in about six months or so, you'll find that it's rooted and is growing itself into a new plant. Isn't that just amazing? Nature is so joyous and fascinating! You just can't keep nature down!

Here's my palm with Baby's Tears growing in the base, my polka-dot plant, and my fern. They love their lives on the porch. Thank heavens for my large, un-LosAngeles-like porch to give me some greenery and dirt in my life!

But, wait! Tune in for the next post when I talk about...COMPOST IN THE CITY!