By Tommaso Nicholas Boggia
My Aunt Luisa is the mother of two young girls, is employed full-time and has a very little time to spare. When I gave her a compost bin for Christmas I wasn’t sure whether she would use my gift, but I wanted to give her something meaningful that would add something special to her life. Composting is the process of turning food scraps into an incredibly rich organic fertilizer with the help of naturally occurring earthworms and beneficial bacteria. Starting up takes some time, but once you get comfortable with handling food waste you’ll discover a new appreciation of bugs, worms, decomposition and healthy plant food that will lead you to a healthier, more sustainable life.
Much to my surprise, my aunt started using her compost bin religiously (even though once her gardener decided to move it and stole all of her fermenting soil) and soon started to love it as much as I do. When I went back to visit her this summer she was still really excited about it. She just couldn’t believe how easy it is to be making free fertilizer with stuff that would have just been thrown away!
To me, a proud urban forager, store bought containers like the one I gave my aunt take the fun and experimenting out of the process. It takes quite some time to perfect your very own composting style and you are likely to cause one or two disasters on your way there - but I promise it’s worth all the trouble (just try googling compost failures and you’ll find plenty of examples of people who didn’t give up and eventually succeeded).
The fantastic thing about composting is that it can be done anywhere and everywhere, regardless of how much space you have available. Those of us with a back yard can affordably set up a large container to throw food scraps in. Apartment dwellers can use worm bins to and achieve the same results.
Learning to compost is a trial and error adventure. I’ve heard of people that messed up and created a stinky, moldy and maggot infested goop (me); people who in a desperate attempt to find the right ‘recipe’ added a bunch of large sticks only to find out that they don’t decompose fast enough to make the compost usable (still me); and others who became so obsessed with speeding up the process that they started chopping up all of their rotting food with a small food processor (you guessed right, still me).
The first time I tried composting I failed miserably. I bought a 70 qt plastic storage container, drilled some holes in it and started tossing food scraps in it. It didn’t take long to start attracting bugs and smelling pretty foul. After a couple of months I had a goopy mess that I could barely get close to. I finally decided to give up and take it to some friends who already had a working system and toss my mess in theirs.
In order to compost correctly you need to have access to what composters call ‘brown matter’, an important thing that I stupidly overlooked on my first attempt. Brown matter is anything full of carbon and without much nitrogen - dead leaves, cardboard and newspapers are the most common type. It needs to be present in equal quantities to your food scraps to help air out your greens while providing the carbon base to which all the nutrients stick.
On my second attempt I was determined not to repeat the same mistake. This time I made sure to collect dried leaves and dead sticks from all of my friend’s backyards and tossed them all in my new and larger chicken wire container. I got a little overexcited and threw in too many large sticks that wouldn’t decompose in my small back-yard system. The rest of my ingredients were working wonderfully together, but it became difficult to sort out the good stuff from the large pieces of wood. I eventually decided to start fresh. I tried to salvage as much soil as possible and then had to abandon the rest of my half-decomposed stuff.
My current attempt is looking really good. I got somewhat obsessed with helping my stuff compost fast and efficiently and started chopping up all of my food scraps in a small food processor and bought a straw bale as a reliable source of brown matter. After all of these attempts it seems like I finally have something that works!
Despite failing to produce usable compost the first couple of times I’ve managed to reduce my overall trash by 30% for the past three years and I am finally about to harvest some fantastic compost that I will use to make my tomato plants produce more delicious fruits than they ever had.
For the more courageous of you out there, who are interested in building your own, here are the directions to build a fantastic composting system:
- 4×12 ft roll of chicken wire fencing
- Large food processor
- Bucket with top
- Straw bale
- Twist ties
- Garden fork
Step 1 - Make a cylinder out of your chicken wire fence and secure the sides with twist ties.
Step 2 - Start storing your food waste in a bucket (no meat or dairy! That still goes in the trash). Store bucket in fridge to avoid attracting fruit flies and ants.
Step 3 - When your small bucket fills up, process your food waste and toss it in your chicken wire container.
Step 4 - Cover chopped up food waste with equal parts of straw.
Step 5 - Repeat steps 2 – 4.
Step 6 - Occasionally (about once a week) use your garden fork to mix and air out the compost.
If all goes well, you too will have a good amount of incredible compost to grow healthy plants and reduce your footprint. Learning how to compost gives you a deeper connection to the natural processes that make life on this planet work. It re-establishes the human connection to beneficial bacteria and fungi that recycle nutrients back in the soil and makes us more aware of what we throw away. Composting is a fantastic adventure and, when you finally get a hang of it and develop what works for you, is easy to keep up. Compost happens, so what are you waiting for?
Tommaso Boggia is an Italian expat living in Washington D.C. and working on youth climate organizing at Campus Progress. He is passionate about taking small steps to become more sustainable and recently started a front-yard garden, a back-yard compost, a home energy audit and is helping to start a Washington D.C. bike co-op, the Bike House
