My husband and I decided that this year for our little Green Project, we’d show you how we manage our compost. Composting is SUCH a great way to use produce waste to put nutrients back into the soil. See, we have this great little plot out in our back yard that we…
Hold on. Why don’t I just let Matt tell you about it. For the record, can I just tell you what an honor it is to have my beloved describing the contents of my bucket of garbage to you?
And there you go. Our compost plot.
As you can imagine, digging a hole and burying our slimy banana peels and cantaloupe guts is one of the boys’ favorite summer chores. Nothing…I repeat nothing is more fun for them than being sent out with a shovel on a 103° day to bury a bucket of slop.
SO…what’d you come up with for your little Green Project this year? Tell us about anything green:
- Saving Green
- Eating More Greens
- Earning Extra Green
- Going Green
- Your Green Thumb
- Crafting Something Green
You’re welcome to link up an older post if it fits the above categories. You’re welcome to link up more than one post. If you don’t have a blog, please leave a comment letting us know of your little Green Project! Then let’s all go visit everyone’s blog and learn more about their little Green Project!
If you’re linking up a post, please copy and paste the following link into your post…
Join us at Heavenly Homemakers for the little Green Project!
Ok, so I haven’t taken a picture yet…don’t know if I will. I made a Green Buttermilk Coffee cake. Let’s just say, it’s not Leprechaun green…more like olive-drab-disgusting-green. I can’t wait to see my children’s reaction in the morning. I had planned to make Green Velvet Cupcakes but had a hard time getting the kids in bed tonight. It will be fun anyway!
C’mon! It sounds like a blast! Take a picture, put it on your blog, then come link up! We all wanna see!
Hurray! I love compost!
I have my corned beef started and will make Irish soda bread later today! Green velvet cupcakes are for dessert! As for green, we compost and also sepereate out our recycables- paper goes to the school for fundraising. I take up 2 large boxes each week! Since really starting to do this, we have gone down t a bag of trash a week-2 of recyclables- this for a family of 7 with one in diapers! We are saving tons on trashbags. Also, any papers from school that have one blank side are kept for drawing or for printing coupons- I save tons of trees this way. Have a great Saint Patrick’s Day!
I made green oatmeal cookies for my daughter’s preschool class snack today. I even tried to shape them into shamrocks. I really hope those kids eat them! http://spinookie.com
Well… I’m about as anti-green as you can get lol. Recycling I just don’t do… and we aren’t required to do so by our township.
I do plan on adding MORE greens to our meals each day.
I’m irish, at work today we are having a “food day”. Lots of junk food. :-( And I mean JUNK JUNK JUNK JUNK food!!! (can we say SUGAR/processed???????) I brought in a veggie tray… lol. the ONLY thing healthy by my standards and DEFINITELY by your standards Laura.
But I did eat some spinach dip… and I like spinach dip… but this one was not so good.
And I’m wearing green today!! I served my kids (and hubby) green eggs and ham this morning. Of course we read Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham during breakfast!
That video was beautiful. That’s just all I can say! (Can I say that about a video regarding compost!??!)
I had no idea you could compost that way! We have a barrel and it is pretty gross :( My wonderful hubby would be thrilled to dig a hole and chuck it all in! Thanks for the info!!!!
Do animals not dig that up? We tried to bury some veggie scraps once and a some kind of animal (possum, raccoon, coyote, or ?) dug them up. Unfortunately, my dog came up on whatever animal it was while they were in the process and was attacked. 32 stitches and a really big vet bill later and my DH said “NO MORE”. Of course I’m in the south and I’ve got 18 acres of pure red dirt so it’s hard to bury stuff. :(
P.S. I’ve just discovered your blog and liking it so far though! Thanks!
We’ve never had trouble with animals digging it up. We don’t have any pets, but we do have critters all over the place. So far none of the animals have dug anything and we’ve been doing this for a few years. We’ll have to watch for it!
I have a worm farm in my basement that I’ve had for two years! It’s a set of stacked perforated plastic trays and has a roof on top and a spigot on the bottom. It does not stink but sometimes we get gnats. Anyway, my worm friends get all our eggshells, veggie and fruit scraps and they used to get the coffee grounds till my pregnancy got in the way of drinking coffee. We get the worm tea and castings for the garden- free mulch without having to dig holes, have a stinky mess and no attacks from animals. Also makes for an interesting conversation starter “Let me show you my worm farm…” :)
Love your compost! We have are making a three big pile system, but I need to come up with a mountain of dirt to throw on to get it started.
This is Matt. A three pile system will be great. Good luck!
Such a great project-I love going green! Both the color and the pursuit of more sustainable ways of living are inspiring to me! We’ve been decorating with green for St. Patrick’s day because it is so grey outside; I wanted make our home more colorful. We’ll also be making green pudding today. Here’s how:
http://quirkymomma.com/2010/yellow-and-blue/
Thank you..Greg and my next DIY project is a compost pile. Just emailed your inspirational video to him. I find it funny I take the grapefruits from the vine in one part of the garden then into the kitchen to eat then outside to the compost hole!
I hadn’t noticed how toxic my life was until started looking at packaging and ingredients, and supporting LifeLogic to put a bit of money away for college. They have a couple of all-natural baby products that are free of chemicals.
Here’s to green groovy kids!
ps.. we should all make a list of products that are packaged compost friendly!
We’ve been composting for about 8 years and love it! It makes peeling carrots so much more fun when you know that the peels will be dirt soon.
A question regarding your composting – How much time do you allow before you bury additional composting material to the same spot?
Thanks, Wendy
This is Matt. In warmer weather the process is faster. Conveniently, that is when we have more compost material from our canning and preserving.
When we get to the end of the “pile” we start over again. We added length to ours because we would come back through and there would still be food not composted thoroughly yet. In the video there
was still a bit of egg shell from the last time through. That is common for us as well as corn cobs. If I do a better job at chopping them up that also speeds up the process.
The pros that compost in barrels do that so it can be turned and churned. That helps the process as well.
Thanks so much for getting back with me. We’re looking forward to
trying this form of composting.
Wow, that is so simple! My husband and I have been hoping to start a compost pile for a while, but it seems so daunting with all the “ratios” of different materials they always tell you are needed. I think I could manage this method!
This is Matt. Yes, the ratios were daunting to me at first too, but I just did it anyway, thinking that it was better than sending it to a landfill. I don’t bother with ratios, but I do add some ashes and shredded newspaper once each year.
I left a lovely, rich compost pile on the edge of our property before we moved. We also left a garden of some growing veggies for the new home owner. I hope they were able to enjoy and continue. We moved 1000 miles away and I haven’t started a new one as we have a TINY back yard, and I’m afraid of the smell in these long, hot Texas summers.
The benefits of a compost not covered in the video are great, awesome night crawlers for fishing expeditions. Also some mystery plants that grow, such as watermelon or cantaloupe.
The neighbor dog was the only animal who frequented it. I wish the rabbits would have, but they chose to dine in the garden itself and eat all the beans.
This is Matt. Regarding “mystery plants” we are trying to nurture some peach seedlings into trees that were a pleasant surprise to me last spring. We’ll see what happens. When I was about 10-12 yrs old something like that happened in my backyard in central California and now there is a beautiful almond tree that began as a mystery plant.
I updated my green project on my blog with some pictures of our garden we are planting! Yeah I can’t wait for fresh fruit and veggies!
Wahoo! I love the green, money saving, organic-ness of your blog. It’s where I’m striving to take our family too. I finally dumped my junk food coupons a few weeks ago. No turning back. :)
I LOVE this! We really want to start composting. Do you have on your site (or know of a different site) a list of things that you can compost??? Is it pretty much anything that is food? Or only certain foods? Would love more insight on how to get started on this!!!
You can compost any produce or egg shells…but not meat (unless you want a bunch of animals digging up chicken bones in your compost!). Basically we just stick to fruits and vegetable waste.
This is Matt. Also, coffee grounds, ashes and shredded newspaper
Okay, so I just showed this to my husband. Lucas wanted to know what you do after you take the nice rich soil out of the compost plot. Do you add more dirt or what? Thanks for the video, this way looks a lot less gross than what we have been doing :)
This is Matt. Yes, adding more dirt or swapping it with where you are putting the composted soil is what we’ve done. Once a year we add some ashes from our woodburning stove and a little shredded newspaper to our compost area so, it is continually “growing.”
There are some gross smells with composting.
The video is great!
thank you for this post and video clip! my husband and i set aside a section of our garden for our compost and are enjoying saving money by throwing away less (it is expensive having your garbage hauled away!). we began our compost shortly after watching this last month and have not had any unpleasant odors or animal issues yet. hopefuly we won’t as our compost area is literally RIGHT next to our garden! oops! perhaps we’ll have to move it next year if we can find a spot.
So, do you set aside a section of the garden just for composting only? Or do you plant in the same area after it is “done”?
Thanks!
We compost in another section, then transfer it to our garden areas later.