Composting kitchen scraps and yard waste greatly reduces your amount of trash and can really pay off in the garden. We use a large barrel tumbler for our kitchen composting. It keeps animals out and cooks pretty quickly. It still doesn't produce enough compost to add to all of the garden beds on our nearly 1/2 acre lot. This year, Matt brought in some compost from the city. It was really inexpensive and beautifully rich.
We started to run out of the compost we brought in right as I was turning over the ground bed in our veggie garden. I remembered our barrel compost and we spread it through the center of the ground bed. After only a few days, I noticed little volunteer seedlings popping up right where we spread our own home compost. I decided to let that area stay "Volunteer". I knew that all of the produce we use in our own kitchen is organic. I felt confident about letting these selfless plants grow and prosper.
The volunteers are really the strongest and largest plants in our garden. I am thinking that their ability to survive the compost bin makes them super seeds! I will try and harvest seeds from some of these plants for next year.
I am not sure which plants are squash or zucchini...it will be a surprise. I also found a little watermelon volunteer emerging and numerous cherry tomato plants.
Yay for volunteers!
I've been composting my kitchen scraps for a year or so but don't have a tumbler. I just pile them up in the back yard out of sight. Where did you get your tumbler? I've been hesitant to buy one because they are all plastic and expensive.
ReplyDeleteHi Shannon,
ReplyDeleteWe have this tumbler http://www.composterusa.com/Composters.html
It is made of 80% recycled material. I am not sure what your price point is. This one works well for our needs. We have a very large dog and he has had no luck getting into this one. If animals are not a problem, you may be fine composting as you are now. I took a class offered through the State extension service on composting to make sure I had the basics down.
I should mention that I bought our tumbler at a local store so we didn't have to pay shipping. We also used a program through our city to finance this and our rain barrels. Check to see if your city or county conservation office offers incentive programs. You never know what is available.