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Summer Composting

Summer Composting

It's very hard to enjoy outdoor gardening in the summer, this is why after clearing my raised beds of sun-burned plants, I now leave the beds to bake in the heat.. I will not bother to save my plants if I will not take care of them. it's too hot for me to do a good job. This makes summer my composting time. I've been having kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, garden prunings, and grass clippings piled over the last few months, and guess what? It's perfectly matured.

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Since I will not be doing any gardening until September, I decided to mix this mature compost into new compost ingredients to speed up their process.

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These are some dried up grass clippings from my lawn. I made sure to dry them up into a crispy brown, so they would contain more carbon than nitrogen.

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Grass clippings don't go in alone (although they can), I toss kitchen scraps like fruits and vegetable wastes, tea bags, tissues, egg shells (which are excellent for root development) and coffee grounds.

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After mixing the ingredients and filling the bins, I add enough water to keep it moist, but not soggy.

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And that's all it takes to make crumbly, rich compost, which my vegetables love.

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Homemade compost will not only reduce your carbon foot print, it will make your vegetables grow larger, healthier, and tastier. You may find some bugs in your compost, and this is why no one should compost indoors, in my case I have ants, wood lice, and spiders.. It's completely normal, and I'm especially happy to have wood lice shredding away at my compost, and helping it form. They're really harmless.

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To have bug free compost before using it in your garden, just lay it out in the early sun, and most insects will go away from the heat, while others get picked by hungry birds.

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Get composting! Update: Just 2 days after mixing, look what I have..

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Look at how quickly everything is breaking down, and this isn't even the middle of the bin, so its cooking even faster inside. With a quick and simple composting system, I got brown results in 2 days, so I must be doing something right.

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