Lets all give back to Gaia!!!! It's time to have a compost awakening!!

[Kimmie]

YOU DON'T NEED TO LIVE ON A FARM TO COMPOST-

At the time of this posting there are 985 readers on this website. There are 360 members and 625 guests who are all on here learning about what's going on, hoping to find solutions, and some are here to help. So let me ask you..How much food scraps do you think we collectivly (these 985 viewers) will toss into our kitchen trash cans within the next 24 hours that we could give back to Gaia (or Mother Earth)?

Unofficially I can tell you it is about 985 pounds. Now let's add to that our families, neighbors...well heck lets just say ...the other 6 billion+ people on this earth and that will give us about :
6 BILLION POUNDS OF COMPOST/FERTILIZER/HOME-MADE DIRT-in every day!!
All of this should be going right back into the ground as usable soil instead of as part of the mounting land fills-don't you agree?


Let me share with you a personal story and then lets delve deeper into this natural resource so many of us are wasting!!

[SIZE="3"]While in my early teens(1960's) my mother owned an Interior Design Business. After school each day I would walk over to her shop to help make drapes and arrive just as the seamstresses were taking their afternoon break. Momma would greet me, then ask me to take out the coffee grounds, from the fresh pot the ladies had just made.

Mom was very fussy about food smells lingering in the air. "It will permeate the fabrics, and I won't have that in my shop", she would say. So being a dutiful daughter, I would walk the coffee grounds to the back door, step outside and scatter them at the base of the hedge plants that lined the back of the building. [FONT="Book Antiqua"] I didn't think much of it until one day I had to go to the next block over for an appointment and had a look at our building from the view of a block away. The hedges behind the other five shops in the building were barely two foot tall and displayed an occasional flower while ours were over four feet tall and laiden with gorgeous flowers.

This memory set dorment in my mind until ten years later as a young mother I worked in the garden with my mother-in-law. She taught me all about the value of composting kitchen scraps and I have continued the habit all my adult life-even when I didn't have a vegetable garden to toss them in.[/FONT
[SIZE

Now back to our current reality.

Each morning at 5am my husband leaves the house for work with a small lunchbag of hot homebaked Chocolate Chip cookies. We buy the dough in 2lb tubs, that I save to fill with kitchen compost scraps. These tubs get stacked out on a work table to be added into the ground when I have the time.
I dig a hole outside, toss the contents, then cover with the soil I dug out of the hole. Then I hose off the tubs to be used again. I fill the kitchen garbage can with water, add bleach and soak the tubs, after the trash gets taken out to get rid of the smell in the tubs.

You can use any kind of a container to hold the scraps. I know one lady that puts it in a plastic bag in her freezer until she has about a gallons worth-then she takes it out to bury.

WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE FOR COMPOST?
Any fruit /vegi scraps
Coffee grounds/tea bags
Egg shells

No Meat

You will be suprised how quickly it will add up, and how it will enrich your outdoor plants.

You can also bury shredded paper and newspaper.

I know there are fancy composting machines, and you can make a compost bin out of chicken wire, if you don't have to worry about offending neighbors. The bins will smell.

Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock were on the Oprah show a few months back showing how they both work with composting. One of the girls was even going as far as to raise earth worms. They will "eat' through the compost and turn it to soil in record time.

Those of you that live in cities can find a local garden shop and ask who you could donate compost to! You've got to go through a little effort to establish the habit, yet before you know it you will see someone else throwing away a lush banana peel and shake your head at them!!

I know my methods are simple, and my facts vague, yet it feel this is a topic worth digging into. I am asking other composters to post suggestions and help me educate everyone to methods of doing their share to Give back to Gaia

[whitecrow]

Kudos to Kimmie for starting this great thread!!

Composting when properly done is the RIGHT way to grow plants and food, and to appreciate the earth's generosity. It's easy and anyone can do it. For those in apartments, you can create a worm compost that is compact and odorless and will supply you with endless fertile potting soil.

The secret to outdoor composting is volume & balance. Volume: it takes about a cubic yard of compost before critical mass is reached and the inner temperature begins to rise. Balance: 2/3 green stuff to 1/3 brown stuff. The green gives the nitrogen necessary to maintain the organisms that break down the compost; the brown stuff contributes only cellulose and carbon. So a big pile of dead brush will never become a compost pile without a lot of work.

Composter's joke: What's brown and sounds like a bell?








Answer: dunnnnnnng!

[Seva]

EXCELLANT POST!

[TranceAm]

I made a big one behind the house, Concrete foundation, about 8 layers of brick.
(To keep the leeching roots of the trees out of the compost.)
I keep a tarp over it, to keep the moisture in.. And to make sure the rain (Wich is comparable to Monsoon here sometimes.
doesn't flood the composter (And drown my precious worms..))

Also to keep the worms I have caught in the yard in the compost and not wandering off..
Worms (I am told.) will eat the molds and add to the value of the compost.

One but.. Composting takes the Nitrogen out of the material, so the compost you make this way is Nitrogen poor. It will have to be added to the compost.. (I have read this. No scientific backup for that claim.)

Easy natural solution to add Nitrogen in the spirit of recycling that comes from a survival manual: 1 Qt of pee mixed in a Gallon can with 3 Qts of water. .

There is also a building plan out there for a composter for cooked foods, that normally can't be added to a composter, since they would make it stink and attract vermin.
It basically works by making worms get used to eating the food and the compost remaining is their "feces" by lack of a better word....
This link will point you to it -> http://wasteage.com/mag/waste_compos...ms_experiment/

btw, the composter is a great way to raise bait, if you need to fish for survivall..
And if everything goes bad, and the top of the food chain has to go lower in the food chain then normal to survive... They are a great source of protein... But I guess, one has to go long ways before getting THAT hungry. ;-)

btw, I dont know about adding newspapers to the composter..
Brown paper bags, tissues, coffe filters, teabags are ok, but Newspapers?
Don't they contain lead pigment, that would contaminate the soil with more lead, and thus your garden foods you cultivate in it?

Also, Dog and Cat feces 'could' be added to a composter, but since they have bacteria in them you don't want, they have to 'burn' out/compost for 2 years I read.. (Same for human waste.)