Compost

Enrich your soil and reap major rewards in the garden with our step-by-step guides to composting. Learn about the many benefits and methods of recycling food waste.

Healthy Soil, Healthy People: Why Composting Food Waste Is So Important

Catherine Sherriffs

Every year, a third of the food we produce is wasted. That alone is a travesty, but what’s even worse, is the wasted food often ends up in landfills, where without proper airflow, it decomposes and emits methane into the atmosphere. One of the most effective ways to cope with food waste is something we…

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Modern Composting Ideas

Microbes and bacteria haven’t changed, but how you approach composting can. There are some great tips for the modern gardener in the new book by Michelle Balz, Composting for a New Generation. Things that will interest both newcomers to building soil with kitchen scraps, and seasoned gardeners alike. Surprisingly, not all gardeners take advantage of…
February 5, 2018
Tammy Clayton

Keyhole Garden: Growing & Composting Combo

A drought tolerant garden is a must in places where it’s consistently hot and dry through the summer months, making a keyhole garden of huge interest to people in the southwestern US. But there are more benefits to building this kind of garden, and not having to water your veggies as often makes sense no…
June 7, 2017
Callie

Home Composting

Home composting relies upon one of the simplest axioms of nature: Things of the forest live by eating from the forest, and at their end, they are eaten by the forest. In some ways, the forest floor acts as a stomach. It breaks down dead plant matter and debris to make nutrients available to living…
May 27, 2017
Grubbycup Stash

Kitchen Composter: Zera Food Recycler

Whether you garden or not, an indoor kitchen composter makes a lot of sense. It’s the sustainable and earth-friendly way to handle food waste. Unfortunately, your current choices don’t work for everyone, or doesn’t work as advertised. Things are soon to change with the arrival of Whirlpool’s new Zera Food Recycler appliance. Real compost does…
May 2, 2017
Tammy Clayton

Making the Best Compost

It appears that what we think about making the best compost is all wrong. Adding any compost that is pesticide free to the garden is definitely better than none at all, but is there something amiss with the widely used acceptable ingredient list? What about the process itself? For starters, if you’re not actually turning…
October 24, 2016
Callie