Start Composting
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One of the bowls of kitchen scraps headed to my composters. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)
Start Composting
There are many ways you can start gardening and composting is my first recommendation. Why?
Regardless of the seeds you select, the space you have and even your level of experience you need to first and foremost feed your soil. That’s right, before you do anything you need to collect kitchen scraps to feed to your soil.
Soil is actually a fascinating ecosystem full of micronutrients and creatures that live at different temperatures in soil. Did you know there are more living entities in a tablespoon of soil than humans currently living on earth? And all of those micro creatures work together to provide the environment for our plants to grow and generate food for us to eat.
The good news is you have everything you need to compost already.
Plastic bag in a freezer drawer is a good way to start composting. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)
Open your freezer. Do you have a movable basket that pulls out? Great, that’s your composting bin.
Do you have plastic bags from shopping? Cover your bin with one and now you have your kitchen scrap collecting bag.
Once you finish cooking and meals, put your kitchen scraps in the plastic bag. Once it’s full, it’s time to take it outside. At first you can just dig a hole and empty the frozen kitchen scraps into the hole in a garden bed. Space the holes about 4 feet apart and water in. I used to place a rock or brick over the spot to keep wildlife shoppers from digging it up.
As you get into the habit of collecting kitchen scraps, you can graduate to either making a composter out of a plastic container or buy one, adding leaves and grass to your kitchen scraps to generate organic matter. Once it turns to a crumbly black, you can then scatter it on your garden. That organic mixture will feed your soil and make it ready for a new growing season.
And think of all of the cost and space you will save in your garbage by recycling kitchen scraps!
Charlotte
