Composting

I love cooking and eating, but there is inevitable waste that is associated with preparing food. I also like gardening. I finish the cycle of food by composting whatever I can. Composting is a simple practice of combining biological material to break it down. Anyone who gardens has surely already heard of compost.

My composting journey started fairly recently since I could not effectively compost on an apartment balcony. Once we moved into a house with a yard I bought a composting tumbler from Amazon. Luckily our house came with places for two trash cans so we dedicated one for compostable things and one for trash. If we didn't have that convenience then I probably would have purchased a composting bin. After getting my composting setup in place, everything else is easy. Just start adding food waste like the leaves from cauliflower or the chopped-off bits of Brussels sprouts. And don't forget the browns like paper, more on that later.

For now, my setup works just fine and I have already been able to add some of my own compost to my raised beds even after less than a year of starting composting. I believe I am making the most of my space for the time being but I can't produce all the compost and nutrition for my garden that I need. Supplementing with extra compost or fertilizer (this is the one I use) will have to hold me over until some time in the distant future when I have more space to produce more compost. My approach is similar to my gardening approach in my small space: produce as much as I can and supplement the rest. A long-term goal would be to produce enough compost that I can use solely compost as nutrition for my plants instead of any fertilizers. But I have a long way to go for that and I'm a realist.

Composting is good because it allows biological "waste" to decompose as it naturally would instead of rotting in a landfill. At the same time, bugs and bacteria get to thrive in your compost and vegetables can extract the nutrients when the finished product is used in the garden. This is essentially how nature gets away with growing lots of plants and never having a deer or raccoon out there spreading fertilizer. Speaking of animals and fertilizers, animals can play a part in adding nutrition for plants either through helping the composting process or directly through their "waste", but that's a topic for another time.

In essence, composting is simple. Nature does it passively through trees dropping their leaves, plants dying off in the fall, and animals using the bathroom wherever they want. Those are all ingredients that mix and, after some time, turn into the soil that we walk on every day. When humans make compost we are trying to replicate the same process and speed it up. To speed it up we can turn compost by spinning a compost tumbler or using a pitchfork to mix up a larger compost pile.

The ingredients used in a compost pile are "greens" and "browns". Greens refer to anything higher in nitrogen. I like to think of greens as anything containing its original moisture like freshly cut grass or food waste created while preparing a meal. Browns refer to anything higher in nitrogen. I like to think of browns as anything that is a "dehydrated" form of what it once was (anything dead and gone) like dry grass or paper. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules, so after a while, you will start to recognize the effect certain items have on your compost.

Most people like to mix their ingredients in a ratio of 3 parts brown to 1 part green. I try to follow this ratio but inevitably always add more greens than browns. From what I understand nothing too bad will happen by getting your mixture too far off of the recommendations. Generally, a higher greens ratio means your compost will be wet and start to smell (which I have definitely experienced) and a higher browns ratio means a dry compost that decomposes slowly. Whenever you start to notice your ratio getting off, just add more of the other type to balance things out. This is a process that has happened naturally forever, so it's pretty difficult to truly mess it up.