Sometimes the best thing to do to grow is to buy a very large tomato plant and see it through it’s final growth stage, eat the tomatoes, and pat yourself on the back for becoming a grower.

But this time of year, right before the rains, is a time of year when you can go all the way back to basics. Compost. Compost-seed-plant-eat-compost. The whole cycle.

And if you divert all organic waste from your household away from landfill, over time you’ll get better at it. Inevitably, you’ll start to have the tools to grow better veg.

Some practical ideas for composting everything:

• There are styles of composting that work for small spaces, and some that work well but require larger spaces.

• For small spaces, worms can be a good choice, but you need a large system for an average family’s kitchen waste. An intermediary fermentation stage, in a sealed bucket, can help bridge the capacity gap. If you have a small space, you can find a friend who is willing to take your excess waste. It doesn’t need to go to landfill. Our farm is willing to receive kitchen waste and cardboard.

• Worms can live on carbon, so you can feed them moist cardboard, and they can retreat to the cardboard if your kitchen waste volume is too high.

• If you have a compost pile OR worms. Keep track of moisture levels (always moist but not waterlogged) and aeration. Compost needs these more than a perfect mix of carbon and nitrogen.

• Nitrogen speeds up composting bacteria, and sometimes a compost pile can need more nitrogen. Pee is a really easy way to add nitrogen to a pile. Once added to a pile to help with activation, it shouldn’t smell. A win-win.

• The slower your compost matures, the more volume you lose to the atmosphere. Faster composting tends to require more hands-on turning and management. Both are ok, and you can adjust according to the seasons of your life.

• Bulk up a compost pile (or a few piles) over the next couple of months (leaves, horse manure, grass clippings, whatever is available locally) to get piles that are at least 1m3 in volume. When they rain comes, moisture and aeration will be relatively easy.

• Pests tend to be attracted to nitrogen-rich things (poop, rotting food, etc). If you can cover these with carbon rich materials (straw, leaves, cardboard), you limit access for pests.

Above all, just keep experimenting and don’t stop composting. Your failures will someone else learn. We all provide data points for the next person.

Let me know if you have specific composting challenges, and how you’re navigating them!

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