The Creaky Old Gardener's Tip of the Week: Easy-to-make Compost

My husband Randal and I have gardened organically for decades. Of course, one of the keystones of organic gardening is the making of compost. Unfortunately, for those of us with a few years on us or a few disabilities creeping in--or both--making compost can become too much to deal with if approached in the traditional manner.

My solution is to compost in place using kitchen scraps. I maintain a large Rubbermaid container (the kind big enough to hold a five-pound bag of flour) on my kitchen counter near the sink. I place all the coffee grounds, eggshells and vegetable trimmings that need to be discarded in this container. After about three days the container is nearly full. I then take it to the garden and put it in the spot I want to enrich.

I have bad shoulders that prohibit me from flipping great mounds of compost, but with a hand trowel I am able to easily dig a small hole in a flower bed. Into this hole, I place the kitchen materials and cover these scraps with dirt. By working slowly down the length of the flower bed, I can cover the whole thing in about a year. By the time I am ready to plant, the materials will have rotted into wonderfully dark and friable compost and will have enriched the ground in that spot. To make this go even faster, I sometimes cover the compost with a scoop or two or bagged composted cow manure. (This sells at Wal-Mart for about $1.34 a bag.)

If the weather is bad or the ground is too frozen for digging, the scraps can be placed in a plastic bag and frozen until the opportunity to "plant" them arrives.

Almost any raw kitchen scraps can be used but no cooked foods, grease or meat should be included. Also, I do not recommend using onion trimmings as these produce a bad smell.

If the container starts to pick up odors, after emptying it, fill it with hot water and a 1/4 cup of cider vinegar. Let it soak for a half hour or so before washing and the odor will disappear.

To make emptying the container easier, I put a used coffee filter on the bottom of the container and start the next batch on top of that.

Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used without prior written permission and proper attribution, including a link to this site.