Composting
Backyard composting is a way to quickly turn organic waste from your kitchen and garden, using aerobic (oxygen - air) decomposition, into sweet smelling compost.
Backyard composting works well in an enclosed bin - keeping the rain out so it doesn’t become waterlogged; keeping rats out (doesn’t seem to work in my backyard) and it’s easy to move to start a new pile. Make sure the bin is on soil so that the microorganisms and insects can get to work and if possible in the sun to speed up the process. Your pile does need watering so that it’s ’squidgy’.
If you layer it properly (alternating ‘greens’ and ‘browns’) and fork it over occasionally, your compost will aerate nicely.
Greens: grass, weeds(not the roots), manure, fruit and veggie scraps, and eggshells.
Browns: autumn leaves - there’s a song there somewhere, straw, chopped wood stuff, newspaper, brown paper bags, cardboard egg cartons.
Dig the finished compost (can take 6 months to ‘cook’) into the top few inches of soil in spring or use it as mulch in the summer. If you dump it on top of your soil in the fall, all those battalions of earth worms will do all the work for you and will drag the compost into the soil by spring.
Trench Composting uses anaerobic (without oxygen) decomposition to turn meat, grains, dairy and cooked/processed leftovers into nutrients for the soil. Using this method, you can even compost pet waste. The science bit is that the anaerobic process produces alcohol because of the fermentation that takes place underground. All you need is a shovel and sweat. Dig a trench a good 18-24″ deep and as long as you like a shovel width. Fill the bottom 6″ of the trench with your food waste (collected in a lidded bucket in your kitchen) and it’s a bit smelly. Fill in the hole with the dug up soil. It needs to be deep to deter rodents (although Raccoons might dig that deep) and flies. Trenches that are dug in the fall can be planted on top of by spring.