Considering Composting and Worm Wonders
If you are considering composting, Dont add meat, dairy products, pet manure, or cooking grease to your compost heap: They don`t break down easily and tend to attract vermin. Most compost piles smell earthy, like the forest floor. If your pile smells unpleasant, you`ve either added too many grass clippings, which can produce an ammonia-like odor, or you need to aerate your pile (a sulfur smell is the telltale sign that not enough air is circulating).
No Fuss, No Muss
If composting seems like too much work to you, another option is to simply mound leaves, grass clippings, and kitchen scraps in a corner of the garden or an enclosed container and allow the debris to decompose naturally.”cold” compost heaps require a basic mix of “green” and “brown” ingredients and should be kept moist aerated. The advantage of this method is that no turning is required. It will, however, take anywhere from six months to a year before you`ll have compost suitable for use in your garden.
Worm Wonders
Composting by using red worms, or “vermicom posting” is increasingly popular way to transform organic waste into earthy humus, especially among apartment dwellers, who lack the outdoor space compost heaps require. Unlike earthworms, red worms enjoy many of the same foods humans do, and they have voracious appetites, eating nearly their own weight in kitchen scraps each day.
Available at bait stores, live worms can be kept indoors or outdoor as long as temperature don`t dip below 45 F. Worms are happiest in covered box that features air holes (box size depends on how much space you have available). Fill your box with about a foot of topsoil or wet, shredded newspaper, then deposit leftover fruit, vegetable, coffee grounds, and eggshells inside and let the wrigglers go about their business. When the worms` castings begin to outweight the bedding, it`s time tp harvest your compost. Live worms cost about $20 a pound and will multiply rapidly.