One of my favorite actions that my family does to be environmentally friendly is home composting. Seeing how much food waste was going into the trash just to sit for years in a landfill was painful. I know that food does not break down there and when samples are taken from landfills they can find bananas that are 50 years old! I have often wished that Norfolk, VA did a citywide composting program, but to date this has not happened so it is up to us as individuals to compost our scraps. Below I will talk about how to make composting as easy as possible and give a few possible methods to try. Although at first it might seem daunting, almost anyone can find a compost method that works for them.
A few years ago I read up on different composting systems and are there a bunch of options! To start I read about worm bins and the three bin method. I wanted a method that would fit with our lives without being so arduous that we would give up before too long. For that reason, I ruled out a worm bin. They looked cool and seemed like a neat way to teach my kids about the life cycle but in the end I thought it would be a lot to keep up with. Also you have to be careful how much you feed the worms as there is only so much they can break down at a time. If worm composting is your thing, kudos to you. Some people love it, but it didn’t seem the right fit for my family.
Instead we settled on two methods. The first one is two cylindrical black bins that sit on a stand about a foot and half above ground. We like these because they are easy to fill and turn. Additionally, they were fairly easy to assemble and only took my husband a few hours. When one is full, it can sit and be rotated occasionally while we fill the other one. After several months, the bin is ready to be emptied and used in the garden. Being above the ground allows the excess liquid in the bins to drain easily. We tried the bins that sit on a collection tray that collects the compost tea (the fancy name for the liquid the compost produces) but the trays were cumbersome to empty. We have been happy with our current bin system but it is important to have the right mix of brown and green. The brown is dried matter like dead leaves, shredded paper, cardboard, etc. and the green is wet material like food scraps. The right ratio is about 2 parts brown to 1 part green. If there is too much brown then the compost will take a long time to break down. If there is too much green, it can become slimy and bug infested. Because we have a small yard that doesn’t make a ton of brown material, we ended up with too much green and a healthy case of maggots. Yikes!
If you are reading this and thinking that you might be in this situation, don’t worry. There are a few things you can do. You can use shredded newspaper or cardboard. You can also dry out your grass clippings and then add them. Or you can do our other composting method- the green cone.
I first saw a green cone at the Ernie Morgan Environmental Center by the zoo several years ago. I was immediately intrigued by this cone sticking out of the earth so I did some research. Green cones have two parts. The bottom is a basket that is buried in the soil and the top is a dark green cone that sticks up above the ground. The idea is that you put in food scraps and the cone warms up in the sun creating heat to help the decomposition process. The decomposing material slowly leaches out of the basket through the holes in its lower half and enriches the soil. You can also add some accelerator powder to speed up the process. We really like this method because you don’t need to balance a ratio of brown and green material. You can add all green stuff including meat and dairy although we don’t add those to ours. There is a lid that keeps out animals and it doesn’t take up much room. We put ours in one of our garden beds so it helps our veggies grow. For some people a downside to this method is that there is not an end product to spread in your garden beds. Combine with the rotating bins, we find this is a good way to ensure we are composting as much of our food waste as possible.
If you like the idea of a green cone but don’t want to spend that much, another idea I have seen is to get a metal trash can with a lid. Drill holes in the bottom and up the sides stopping about half way up. Then dig a hole and bury the bottom half of the trash can. This is the same concept as the green cone at a fraction of the price. The internet and YouTube have tutorials on doing this.
To collect our food waste, we have a stainless steel bin on our counter. We tried a plastic bin but found the handle came off and it was harder to clean. When I am cooking, I leave the bin open and put in food scraps. It is best if you cut up your food scraps into small pieces but I am not great about this and it still works. Then every few days we take it out and put it in the composter.
Recently my mom who lives in a more suburban area asked me about starting to compost. She has a lot of wildlife that visit her yard and was worried about them getting into her compost. I recommended that she try a food cycler. They are pretty pricey and I have to admit I have not tried them but I think they would help with this. A food cycler is an electric device that you can keep in your kitchen or garage. You put your food scraps in including small bones and run it. Over several hours it grinds up and dehydrates the scraps. You can’t add them straight to your garden but you can put them in your compost and they will break down quicker and attract fewer animals. They would also be good if you lived in an apartment and wanted to compost. I think that you could probably offer the resulting product to your neighborhood gardeners.
Another easy idea is the one used by my friend and fellow gardener in Richmond. He digs a trench in his garden bed and puts in his scraps. Then he covers it over with dirt and lets things rot. This method enriches his soil but he does need to let the area sit for a while before planting in it.
For more information about composting, check your local library. Our local library had several great books you can check out. I particularly like Compost City: practical composting know-how for small space living. Most of us in Norfolk have smaller yards or no yards at all and this book is very helpful for learning to compost when it at first does not seem feasible.
Composting and saving food waste from the landfill is an important way to help the earth and contribute to the natural cycle of growth and decay. It’s also a great way to enrich your garden and if you have compost tea you can dilute it and feed it to your house plants. Hopefully this blog gave you some good ideas to get started. As a person who wants to help the earth but also has to work, raise kids, and keep a house, I promise you that composting can be done without too much fuss and quickly become part of your everyday routine. Although if you want to get a petition going to ask Norfolk for curbside composting, I am happy to sign!
Instead we settled on two methods. The first one is two cylindrical black bins that sit on a stand about a foot and half above ground. We like these because they are easy to fill and turn. Additionally, they were fairly easy to assemble and only took my husband a few hours. When one is full, it can sit and be rotated occasionally while we fill the other one. After several months, the bin is ready to be emptied and used in the garden. Being above the ground allows the excess liquid in the bins to drain easily. We tried the bins that sit on a collection tray that collects the compost tea (the fancy name for the liquid the compost produces) but the trays were cumbersome to empty. We have been happy with our current bin system but it is important to have the right mix of brown and green. The brown is dried matter like dead leaves, shredded paper, cardboard, etc. and the green is wet material like food scraps. The right ratio is about 2 parts brown to 1 part green. If there is too much brown then the compost will take a long time to break down. If there is too much green, it can become slimy and bug infested. Because we have a small yard that doesn’t make a ton of brown material, we ended up with too much green and a healthy case of maggots. Yikes!
If you are reading this and thinking that you might be in this situation, don’t worry. There are a few things you can do. You can use shredded newspaper or cardboard. You can also dry out your grass clippings and then add them. Or you can do our other composting method- the green cone.
I first saw a green cone at the Ernie Morgan Environmental Center by the zoo several years ago. I was immediately intrigued by this cone sticking out of the earth so I did some research. Green cones have two parts. The bottom is a basket that is buried in the soil and the top is a dark green cone that sticks up above the ground. The idea is that you put in food scraps and the cone warms up in the sun creating heat to help the decomposition process. The decomposing material slowly leaches out of the basket through the holes in its lower half and enriches the soil. You can also add some accelerator powder to speed up the process. We really like this method because you don’t need to balance a ratio of brown and green material. You can add all green stuff including meat and dairy although we don’t add those to ours. There is a lid that keeps out animals and it doesn’t take up much room. We put ours in one of our garden beds so it helps our veggies grow. For some people a downside to this method is that there is not an end product to spread in your garden beds. Combine with the rotating bins, we find this is a good way to ensure we are composting as much of our food waste as possible.
If you like the idea of a green cone but don’t want to spend that much, another idea I have seen is to get a metal trash can with a lid. Drill holes in the bottom and up the sides stopping about half way up. Then dig a hole and bury the bottom half of the trash can. This is the same concept as the green cone at a fraction of the price. The internet and YouTube have tutorials on doing this.
To collect our food waste, we have a stainless steel bin on our counter. We tried a plastic bin but found the handle came off and it was harder to clean. When I am cooking, I leave the bin open and put in food scraps. It is best if you cut up your food scraps into small pieces but I am not great about this and it still works. Then every few days we take it out and put it in the composter.
Recently my mom who lives in a more suburban area asked me about starting to compost. She has a lot of wildlife that visit her yard and was worried about them getting into her compost. I recommended that she try a food cycler. They are pretty pricey and I have to admit I have not tried them but I think they would help with this. A food cycler is an electric device that you can keep in your kitchen or garage. You put your food scraps in including small bones and run it. Over several hours it grinds up and dehydrates the scraps. You can’t add them straight to your garden but you can put them in your compost and they will break down quicker and attract fewer animals. They would also be good if you lived in an apartment and wanted to compost. I think that you could probably offer the resulting product to your neighborhood gardeners.
Another easy idea is the one used by my friend and fellow gardener in Richmond. He digs a trench in his garden bed and puts in his scraps. Then he covers it over with dirt and lets things rot. This method enriches his soil but he does need to let the area sit for a while before planting in it.
For more information about composting, check your local library. Our local library had several great books you can check out. I particularly like Compost City: practical composting know-how for small space living. Most of us in Norfolk have smaller yards or no yards at all and this book is very helpful for learning to compost when it at first does not seem feasible.
Composting and saving food waste from the landfill is an important way to help the earth and contribute to the natural cycle of growth and decay. It’s also a great way to enrich your garden and if you have compost tea you can dilute it and feed it to your house plants. Hopefully this blog gave you some good ideas to get started. As a person who wants to help the earth but also has to work, raise kids, and keep a house, I promise you that composting can be done without too much fuss and quickly become part of your everyday routine. Although if you want to get a petition going to ask Norfolk for curbside composting, I am happy to sign!
@elisa.lewis.58
Elisa lives in Norfolk with her husband, two kids, and their dog. She enjoys gardening, crafting, making pottery, and cooking. Her passion for the environment started as a teenager and has helped her grow into a sustainability junkie who collects mason jars and uses everything to the last drop. In her spare time she is also a school social worker.
Home Composting by Elisa Lewis
One of my favorite actions that my family does to be environmentally friendly is home composting. Seeing how much food waste was going into the trash just to sit for years in a landfill was painful. I know that food does not break down there and when samples are taken from landfills they can find bananas that are 50 years old! I have often wished that Norfolk, VA did a citywide composting program, but to date this has not happened so it is up to us as individuals to compost our scraps. Below I will talk about how to make composting as easy as possible and give a few possible methods to try. Although at first it might seem daunting, almost anyone can find a compost method that works for them.
A few years ago I read up on different composting systems and are there a bunch of options! To start I read about worm bins and the three bin method. I wanted a method that would fit with our lives without being so arduous that we would give up before too long. For that reason, I ruled out a worm bin. They looked cool and seemed like a neat way to teach my kids about the life cycle but in the end I thought it would be a lot to keep up with. Also you have to be careful how much you feed the worms as there is only so much they can break down at a time. If worm composting is your thing, kudos to you. Some people love it, but it didn’t seem the right fit for my family.
Instead we settled on two methods. The first one is two cylindrical black bins that sit on a stand about a foot and half above ground. We like these because they are easy to fill and turn. Additionally, they were fairly easy to assemble and only took my husband a few hours. When one is full, it can sit and be rotated occasionally while we fill the other one. After several months, the bin is ready to be emptied and used in the garden. Being above the ground allows the excess liquid in the bins to drain easily. We tried the bins that sit on a collection tray that collects the compost tea (the fancy name for the liquid the compost produces) but the trays were cumbersome to empty. We have been happy with our current bin system but it is important to have the right mix of brown and green. The brown is dried matter like dead leaves, shredded paper, cardboard, etc. and the green is wet material like food scraps. The right ratio is about 2 parts brown to 1 part green. If there is too much brown then the compost will take a long time to break down. If there is too much green, it can become slimy and bug infested. Because we have a small yard that doesn’t make a ton of brown material, we ended up with too much green and a healthy case of maggots. Yikes!
If you are reading this and thinking that you might be in this situation, don’t worry. There are a few things you can do. You can use shredded newspaper or cardboard. You can also dry out your grass clippings and then add them. Or you can do our other composting method- the green cone.
I first saw a green cone at the Ernie Morgan Environmental Center by the zoo several years ago. I was immediately intrigued by this cone sticking out of the earth so I did some research. Green cones have two parts. The bottom is a basket that is buried in the soil and the top is a dark green cone that sticks up above the ground. The idea is that you put in food scraps and the cone warms up in the sun creating heat to help the decomposition process. The decomposing material slowly leaches out of the basket through the holes in its lower half and enriches the soil. You can also add some accelerator powder to speed up the process. We really like this method because you don’t need to balance a ratio of brown and green material. You can add all green stuff including meat and dairy although we don’t add those to ours. There is a lid that keeps out animals and it doesn’t take up much room. We put ours in one of our garden beds so it helps our veggies grow. For some people a downside to this method is that there is not an end product to spread in your garden beds. Combine with the rotating bins, we find this is a good way to ensure we are composting as much of our food waste as possible.
If you like the idea of a green cone but don’t want to spend that much, another idea I have seen is to get a metal trash can with a lid. Drill holes in the bottom and up the sides stopping about half way up. Then dig a hole and bury the bottom half of the trash can. This is the same concept as the green cone at a fraction of the price. The internet and YouTube have tutorials on doing this.
To collect our food waste, we have a stainless steel bin on our counter. We tried a plastic bin but found the handle came off and it was harder to clean. When I am cooking, I leave the bin open and put in food scraps. It is best if you cut up your food scraps into small pieces but I am not great about this and it still works. Then every few days we take it out and put it in the composter.
Recently my mom who lives in a more suburban area asked me about starting to compost. She has a lot of wildlife that visit her yard and was worried about them getting into her compost. I recommended that she try a food cycler. They are pretty pricey and I have to admit I have not tried them but I think they would help with this. A food cycler is an electric device that you can keep in your kitchen or garage. You put your food scraps in including small bones and run it. Over several hours it grinds up and dehydrates the scraps. You can’t add them straight to your garden but you can put them in your compost and they will break down quicker and attract fewer animals. They would also be good if you lived in an apartment and wanted to compost. I think that you could probably offer the resulting product to your neighborhood gardeners.
Another easy idea is the one used by my friend and fellow gardener in Richmond. He digs a trench in his garden bed and puts in his scraps. Then he covers it over with dirt and lets things rot. This method enriches his soil but he does need to let the area sit for a while before planting in it.
For more information about composting, check your local library. Our local library had several great books you can check out. I particularly like Compost City: practical composting know-how for small space living. Most of us in Norfolk have smaller yards or no yards at all and this book is very helpful for learning to compost when it at first does not seem feasible.
Composting and saving food waste from the landfill is an important way to help the earth and contribute to the natural cycle of growth and decay. It’s also a great way to enrich your garden and if you have compost tea you can dilute it and feed it to your house plants. Hopefully this blog gave you some good ideas to get started. As a person who wants to help the earth but also has to work, raise kids, and keep a house, I promise you that composting can be done without too much fuss and quickly become part of your everyday routine. Although if you want to get a petition going to ask Norfolk for curbside composting, I am happy to sign!
Instead we settled on two methods. The first one is two cylindrical black bins that sit on a stand about a foot and half above ground. We like these because they are easy to fill and turn. Additionally, they were fairly easy to assemble and only took my husband a few hours. When one is full, it can sit and be rotated occasionally while we fill the other one. After several months, the bin is ready to be emptied and used in the garden. Being above the ground allows the excess liquid in the bins to drain easily. We tried the bins that sit on a collection tray that collects the compost tea (the fancy name for the liquid the compost produces) but the trays were cumbersome to empty. We have been happy with our current bin system but it is important to have the right mix of brown and green. The brown is dried matter like dead leaves, shredded paper, cardboard, etc. and the green is wet material like food scraps. The right ratio is about 2 parts brown to 1 part green. If there is too much brown then the compost will take a long time to break down. If there is too much green, it can become slimy and bug infested. Because we have a small yard that doesn’t make a ton of brown material, we ended up with too much green and a healthy case of maggots. Yikes!
If you are reading this and thinking that you might be in this situation, don’t worry. There are a few things you can do. You can use shredded newspaper or cardboard. You can also dry out your grass clippings and then add them. Or you can do our other composting method- the green cone.
I first saw a green cone at the Ernie Morgan Environmental Center by the zoo several years ago. I was immediately intrigued by this cone sticking out of the earth so I did some research. Green cones have two parts. The bottom is a basket that is buried in the soil and the top is a dark green cone that sticks up above the ground. The idea is that you put in food scraps and the cone warms up in the sun creating heat to help the decomposition process. The decomposing material slowly leaches out of the basket through the holes in its lower half and enriches the soil. You can also add some accelerator powder to speed up the process. We really like this method because you don’t need to balance a ratio of brown and green material. You can add all green stuff including meat and dairy although we don’t add those to ours. There is a lid that keeps out animals and it doesn’t take up much room. We put ours in one of our garden beds so it helps our veggies grow. For some people a downside to this method is that there is not an end product to spread in your garden beds. Combine with the rotating bins, we find this is a good way to ensure we are composting as much of our food waste as possible.
If you like the idea of a green cone but don’t want to spend that much, another idea I have seen is to get a metal trash can with a lid. Drill holes in the bottom and up the sides stopping about half way up. Then dig a hole and bury the bottom half of the trash can. This is the same concept as the green cone at a fraction of the price. The internet and YouTube have tutorials on doing this.
To collect our food waste, we have a stainless steel bin on our counter. We tried a plastic bin but found the handle came off and it was harder to clean. When I am cooking, I leave the bin open and put in food scraps. It is best if you cut up your food scraps into small pieces but I am not great about this and it still works. Then every few days we take it out and put it in the composter.
Recently my mom who lives in a more suburban area asked me about starting to compost. She has a lot of wildlife that visit her yard and was worried about them getting into her compost. I recommended that she try a food cycler. They are pretty pricey and I have to admit I have not tried them but I think they would help with this. A food cycler is an electric device that you can keep in your kitchen or garage. You put your food scraps in including small bones and run it. Over several hours it grinds up and dehydrates the scraps. You can’t add them straight to your garden but you can put them in your compost and they will break down quicker and attract fewer animals. They would also be good if you lived in an apartment and wanted to compost. I think that you could probably offer the resulting product to your neighborhood gardeners.
Another easy idea is the one used by my friend and fellow gardener in Richmond. He digs a trench in his garden bed and puts in his scraps. Then he covers it over with dirt and lets things rot. This method enriches his soil but he does need to let the area sit for a while before planting in it.
For more information about composting, check your local library. Our local library had several great books you can check out. I particularly like Compost City: practical composting know-how for small space living. Most of us in Norfolk have smaller yards or no yards at all and this book is very helpful for learning to compost when it at first does not seem feasible.
Composting and saving food waste from the landfill is an important way to help the earth and contribute to the natural cycle of growth and decay. It’s also a great way to enrich your garden and if you have compost tea you can dilute it and feed it to your house plants. Hopefully this blog gave you some good ideas to get started. As a person who wants to help the earth but also has to work, raise kids, and keep a house, I promise you that composting can be done without too much fuss and quickly become part of your everyday routine. Although if you want to get a petition going to ask Norfolk for curbside composting, I am happy to sign!
Elisa lives in Norfolk with her husband, two kids, and their dog. She enjoys gardening, crafting, making pottery, and cooking. Her passion for the environment started as a teenager and has helped her grow into a sustainability junkie who collects mason jars and uses everything to the last drop. In her spare time she is also a school social worker.