Post date: May 12, 2020 5:35:49 PM
Latha Menon
Uma has a fb post on this https://www.facebook.com/notes/uma-shashikant/composting-kitchen-waste/591557744225336/
Meanwhile, enjoy her small snippet on the same topic:
I believe composting is the most under handled activity of gardening.
Composting may be looked at as a dirty activity compared to other activities of gardening.
How can we start getting serious with some baby steps with stuff around us?
People who are practicing can help with tips.
Every house hold has good amount of waste that's getting dumped anyway. We may as well use that and avoid buying nutrients.
Composting 101:
1. There is beautiful design for life, where nothing goes waste but one organism makes food for another. Composting is your way to return nutrition to the soil, from where the food you eat came from.
2. A million organisms get to work decomposing stuff, and you need to create the right environment for them. Three things matter the most: heat, moisture, material.
3. The most efficient bacteria that kill all pathogens generates heat. Compost piles can get real hot and steaming. So build a pile to conserve that heat. Greater the volume, better the result. 4x4 is great. But any bin, box, cage, drum that will hold a volume of material is needed.
4. Good bacteria need air, pathogens flourish when there is no air. If you throw kitchen waste in a lump, they will rot and compact. The bad smell means oh have pathogens not compost. Mix brown leaves 2:1 to all kitchen waste, and pile them so that air circulates.
5. All kind of creepy crawlies work on the decomposing food. A covered bin keeps them out of site. They eat, work and die inside. Won’t harm you. But a bin with holes for air, use a cage and cover it, but have a contraption that will hold you stuff, and ensure air circulation. It you begin in a plastic bucket, make holes for air.
6. Add everything that once lived. No restriction on what goes in as long as you have enough Browns (leaves, paper, cardboard) to absorb moisture. Makes sure you have this mix of green (all wastes) and Brown always. And the pile is aerated.
7. The pile needs to be like a moist sponge. No water should drip if you squeezed it. Manage moisture adding dry leaves when wet and water when dry.
8. If you can turn the pile, great. Builds air and enables good composting. If you can’t no worries. Will take time but will get done.
9. How do you begin? But a composter, or find a corner in your garden where you can set up a bin with hardware cloth or wood. Add your kitchen waste and Browns. Cover to protect from critters and rain.
10. In 45 days to 6 months, depending on how big your pile is, how hot it became, how well you aired it, how you managed moisture, you will get crumbly compost that smells like fresh earth.
Please do not waste the nutrition your kitchen generates. Return it to the soil and witness the miracle of waste turning into black gold.
Some tell me about bad soil. There is no such thing. Add organic materials to soil, compost is on top of that list, and it will come to life. Nothing in nature dies, it simply gets recycled.
Air circulation from below is critical. Place your bin on some bricks. If you build a bin, make sure it is on a raised platform of a few inches.
Trees will send out roots and rob all the nutrition if you make a pile on the garden floor near a tree.
Cooked food will cool compost. And it breeds pathogens. Our elders separated cooked and Uncooked food, for this reason. Don’t add too much uncooked food to compost.