Gardening Tips and Hacks
How Do You Feel When Veggies Go Bad?
Composting Is An Investment!
No one likes it when food goes bad in the fridge, especially gardeners that grow their own veggies! But, it isn’t worth beating yourself up over it….well that is if you compost. All of the nutrients that are stored in those veggies will break down and be amazing for next season’s soil when you add in that beautiful compost.
What can you compost?
This list is way longer than what I will write here, but here is a short list:
- Vegetables and scraps
- Fruit and their peels
- Paper products (paper towels, copy paper, newspaper, toilet paper rolls)
- Grass clippings
- Healthy plant scraps (Do not place diseased plants in your compost!!)
- Hair (human and pet)
- Moldy Bread
- Dryer Lint
- Pizza boxes (you can’t recycle them, might as well compost them)
My Countertop Compost Bin
You don’t want to walk out of the house every time you have something to compost, and you don’t want to leave it in an unopened bin for more than a couple of hours, because it will begin to get pretty smelly. The solution is a countertop bin that you can take out once it is full. I use the Third Rock Compost Bin! It is fairly inexpensive and it has charcoal filters that keep everything smelling nice and fresh.
Learn About the Three-Bin Compost System
3-Bin Composting System
How I Built My Bins
I built my bins using mostly scrap wood from a new house next door. The builders were happy to let me have the wood, since they were just going to throw it away anyway. I did go dumpster diving in the big demolition bin, so be careful with nails if you can raid a construction site.
There are different ways that you can build a 3-Bin System, and really you could just reengineer from the picture above, but here is a publication from the University of Missouri Extention that has plans for different types of compost bins. It does say that the three-bin system can be fairly expensive (if buying new wood), but it is extremely effective.
