Composting at Home
Composting at Home
Composting is combining food scraps and yard waste to create an organic material that can be added to soil to help plants grow. Composting creates environments good for organisms like worms to work to help break down food. When composting is complete, the result often looks like other soil, however, this soil is rich in nutrients.
Why Compost?
Composting helps to improve home garden beds or plants. Composting reduces the need for chemical fertilizers since the soil is so rich in nutrients. This helps save money. It is also great for the environment. Food scraps or other garden waste when mixed with regular trash decrease methane emissions in the environment. Methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas. This helps to lower your carbon footprint as well.
What can you compost?
Composting has 3 basic parts: browns, greens, and water. Browns are typically yard waste, like dead leaves, branches, and twigs. Greens are items like grass clippings, coffee and tea grounds, vegetable waste, and fruit scraps. Water is also important for proper composting but be careful not to have too much water in your compost. The Environmental Protection Agency lists additional examples of compostable items as crushed eggshells, tea bags, shredded newspaper, shredded cardboard, shredded paper, house plants, hay and straw, leaves, sawdust, woodchips, hair and fur, and fireplace ashes.
What is important not to do?
Do not include meat or dairy products in our compost pile. These may attract animals or other unwanted visitors to your compost. Do not add pet feces or diseased plants.
How can you compost at home?
Composting at home can be quite easy. It is important to understand where you live, how much organic waste your household produces (this includes kitchen and yard waste) and the commitment you can make to composting. You can compost in your backyard by placing your organic matter in a container (easily made from pallets or wood) and turning (rotating the pile) with a tool like a shovel. When composting this way, it is important to ensure you mix in a layer of outdoor organic matter, like leaves, sticks, or yard waste. You can also purchase containers online, which makes it easy to rotate your compost by cranking a handle. There is also a device that allows your organic matter to be composted in a matter of hours. Devices vary in cost. If you do not have the space to compost at this scale at home, you can keep a closed container, such as an empty plastic container or coffee can (with a lid), and fill that up. Once your storage device is full you will need a location to take your compost to. Another option for at home composting is vericomposting, which is a process that uses worms to break down organic material into soil. Check out your local community garden plot https://www2.cortland.edu/about/sustainability/get-involved/model-gardens.dot, Crown City Composters https://www.sevenvalleyshealth.org/crowncitycomposters, or other community resources https://cortland.cce.cornell.edu/gardening/food-gardening.
