Composting in your backyard – a quick DIY project

A while back, I decided to take baby steps towards a greener lifestyle.

I’ve tried to make simple changes around the home – create my own body care products, make my own natural cleaning solutions, paint our own wrapping paper instead of using the tinsely plastic ones, plant a kitchen garden, use cloth bags instead of plastic packets, eat wholesome meals. Little ways of cutting down on the toxins and reducing our carbon footprint, while revving up the health quotient of our family. So, when you’re doing stuff like this, you also begin to wonder about composting.

My mom has been vermi-composting for years, but my attempts at it have always failed. Whenever I’ve tried doing this, I’ve ended up with a bucketful of dead worms and a stinky mess. So, I decided to go with the simpler solution – composting my wet kitchen waste without the worms. And it worked! Right now, the big, blue bucket stands in my backyard, turning months of vegetable peels and dried leaves into rich, black compost - a feast for our garden.

So, if this is something that interests you, here’s a small DIY.

1. Take a large bucket with a lid. Drill holes around it and at the bottom of it because composting needs air circulation. Place this bucket in your backyard.

2. Now start collecting all your vegetable & fruit peels and egg shells in a container in the kitchen. Also start collecting dry leaves in a pile in the corner of your backyard.

3. Dump some dry leaves into your composting bucket, and then add a layer of garden soil. Now start dumping the peels and egg shells into the bucket. Make sure that you chop the peels into small bits and crush the egg shells, so they decompose quickly.

4. After you’ve added a layer of green kitchen waste, add a layer of dry leaves and paper. Top this with a layer of garden soil and sprinkle half a bottle of water on it, before adding another layer of green kitchen waste on top of it. Rinse and repeat.

5. Composting needs both, greens and browns to turn rich. So alternate the layers, by adding equal amounts of green waste and dry leaves.

6. Try to give this composting mix a stir with a stick once every week or two, so that the mixture will stay aerated and compost better.

7. Composting, like most good things, takes time, so give yourself and your composting pit a bucket load of time.

Notes:

I compost vegetable and fruit peels, egg shells, dry leaves and grass. But there are a multitude of things that you can compost. Here’s a list of all the things that you can dump into your composting bucket to turn into black gold.

Here’s a website that can give you detailed information on composting.

 #naturalliving #compost #greenliving