For the past month, I've been getting frustrated about the amount of food scraps that I've been throwing away in the garbage. I've been cooking at home a lot lately, and the amount of fruit and vegetable scraps I've been contributing to the trash has been significant. So this week, I finally decided to get off my hams and do something about it—I built my very own compost pile in the backyard.
When I first thought about making my own compost weeks ago, I figured it couldn't be that difficult. You just throw your food scraps in a container out back and let it decompose. How hard can that be? But after doing research online at several sites, such as Compostguide.com, I started realizing that making dirt was a much more daunting task than I had originally imagined. All of a sudden, I had to be an expert at chemistry and know all about carbon and nitrogen. And I had to put the right combination of "browns" (carbon-rich materials) and "greens" (nitrogen-rich materials) into compost, or else bad things would happen...like having a compost pile that reeks like garbage. Or having a compost pile that doesn't decompose. And then I'm supposed to do all these additional things to the compost—like stirring it up regularly with a hoe, and adding special compost-eating worms to it (now where the heck am I supposed to get worms?)—so it will decompose properly. For just creating a bunch of dirt, this seemed like a lot more effort than I was willing to commit.
So I spent many a sleepless night thinking about this, until I finally gave in this past Monday and found myself digging a hole in the backyard to make way for my compost's new high-rise apartment building. For the high-rise, I took an old plastic garbage can we had sitting in the back and cut out the bottom. You want your compost container to be open on the bottom so bugs and bacteria can come up through the soil and into your compost to help it decompose. I dug the hole way in the back of the yard, so if there was a smell, my roommates wouldn't kill me in the middle of the night. Digging the hole was the most complicted part. I spent 2 hours digging up all these strange egg-like rocks, which makes me wonder if I just desecrated an ancient Indian burial mound in my backyard and have now released evil spirits upon the entire block. There goes the neighborhood.
On Tuesday, I inserted the garbage can into the ground, filled in the dirt around it, and then started populating the compost compound with shredded dry leaves. The website advises you to use a lawnmower to shred the leaves, but since ours is a gas-powered mower and I'm trying to cut down on unnecessary emissions, I just tore up all the leaves by hand like it was confetti. After adding my "browns," I then went inside to gather my "greens"...from the kitchen garbage can. Let me assure you, I did not find much pleasure in this. Technically, you're supposed to place your kitchen scraps in a "compost pail" and cover it with a lid, and every few days, add it to the compost pile. But I hadn't planned that far in advance, so I had to resort to dumpster diving in my own kitchen. Digging through your personal garbage really brings to light what you're consuming. I didn't realize how many bananas I had been eating, or how much coffee my roommates had been drinking.
So, after tearing up banana peels, egg shells, lettuce leaves, coffee filters, and other scraps into tiny bits (which helps the compost decompose faster), I added them to Hotel Compost, threw another layer of shredded leaves on top, and then sealed the trash can with a lid. I suddenly noticed that there was a swarm of little gnats hovering all around the compost container. I don't know where in the world they all came from and how they managed to get there so fast, but it was pretty freaky. Back inside the kitchen, I found an empty ice cream tub to use as a makeshift compost pail until something better arises. These first couple of weeks might be a challenge in getting my roommates switched over to using the compost pail, so I might have to play the role of "Garbage Police" for a while. I'm sure my roommates will just love me as I go around, snooping through the garbage and blowing my Barney Fife whistle on them. I'll keep you updated in future postings about the Compost Saga and let you know whether or not I still have roommates.
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