Backyard Composting Basics

Backyard composting is an excellent way to provide nutrients for your garden while diverting waste from the landfill. Adding compost helps nutrients bind to soil, making nutrients more effective and reducing the amount that washes away with rainwater.  Soil that contains a good amount of compost will hold water well, increasing its resistance to drought. The conditioning of soil that compost provides also helps build good soil structure to combat erosion as well as improve overall aeration of the soil.

Composting takes minimal effort and only requires a slight change in some daily practices. It does most of the work on its own! Composting can be done in commercial bins, home-made bins or even open piles. Unfortunately, backyard bins are not provided by the city, but can be purchased at Kent, Home Depot, Canadian Tire and Lee Valley. This website is a great resource to explore if you are interested in building your own composting container. If you want to be free-spirited and have an open pile, just be sure that it can be adequately covered to prevent it from getting too wet.

What can I compost?

Compost needs a good mix of green and brown materials. Green materials are moist and nitrogen-rich. These can be food wastes (fruit and vegetable scraps), bread, pasta, coffee grounds, tea bags, eggshells, weeds, grass clippings and so on. Brown materials are carbon-rich organic materials and tend to be denser. Brown materials can be leaves, straw, hay, woodchips, paper, cardboard, sawdust etc.

You want to avoid putting diseased plants, seeding weeds, dairy, meat, fish, bones, fat, oil, pet manure and kitty litter in your compost pile. These materials take long to decompose, attract unwanted pests and could transfer disease.

Great optional additions to compost are manure, seaweed, peat moss and bonemeal. These materials are valuable for their nutrient levels and abilities to correct pH. For more information about pH, soil testing and amendments check out this post from earlier this year.

What to do to get started

• Decide on what kind of container or pile you want. Find a nice, shady or partially shady area for it.
• Place a layer of brown material at the bottom of the bin or pile, water it, then pile a layer of green material on top.
• Alternate between brown and green layers, watering each layer as you go.
• Be sure that your top layer always consists of brown material. This keeps critters and pests out, while keeping the important decomposers in! It might be a good idea to have a bag of brown material next to your compost pile for when you add your green material!
• You want to keep your compost moist, but not too wet. Be sure to water it occasionally and cover it before heavy rains.
• You can turn your compost if you want it to decompose faster. For a slower process, poke holes in the centre of the pile with a pitchfork or other garden tool.
• Finished compost has an earthy smell and dark, spongy texture. You can expect it to take between 3 and 6 months to break down.

Now you can use your rich beautiful compost liberally through your garden.Your plants will thank you for it! A good boost from compost-rich soil will effectively strengthen the health of your plants as well as their ability to resist insects and disease.

We want to to know your composting tips and tricks! What’s your favourite compost ingredient? How often do you turn it (if at all)? Let us know, down below!

For Further reading:

Interested in worm composting?

Looking to build your backyard soil?

Curious about compost tea? Check out this DIY compost tea brewing project.

Want to learn about leafmould?

Written by: Mhari Lamarque

Container Gardening 101

One of the best things about gardening is that you don’t really need a garden! You can adjust to virtually any amount of space using containers for your plants. Plants can thrive in containers of many shapes and sizes and make anything look pretty. Containers can be tires, food buckets, pots, old sinks, baskets, kettles, shoes, bags, cans and more. You can really be as creative as you like!

When container gardening, be sure to provide your plants with adequate sunlight and water, healthy soil, proper drainage, and love! Keep in mind that containers tend to dry out much quicker than garden beds, so keep an eye on your pots/tires/buckets to make sure they have enough to drink.

You can also check out this post on how to construct a self-watering container. We built one for the first time this week, it went really well for some first timers! These containers are really handy for those of us who might me over- or under-attentive to potted plants, they do all the watering themselves! Pretty cool.

My Little Container Garden

I finally moved, this spring, into an apartment with lovely south-facing balcony, and a shared backyard. This has allowed me to expand my horizons from indoor herb and house plant gardening, to extensive container gardening!

I was extremely lucky to score several beautiful terracotta pots from a good friend and avid gardener. I also scavenged several 4 gallon ice cream buckets from a local ice cream shop to plant in. The ice cream buckets were a little gross when I first got them, but nothing baking soda, vinegar and a little elbow grease couldn’t take care of. After I cleaned them, I used a hammer and nail put some holes in the bottom for some drainage (next time I might add a little gravel at the bottom), I also placed little pieces of brick to lift them off the deck to ensure water can escape. And voila! There you have a free and sturdy container to put your plants in! In mine, I have tomatoes and kale! They are flourishing and my tomatoes are about to bloom. 

In the terracotta pots I have leeks, herbs, peppers, cherry tomatoes and greens. I have noticed that these pots tend to dry out much quicker than the ice cream buckets, and I find myself watering them more often. The plastic of the ice cream buckets seems to hold water a little bit better.

I also have some nasturtiums in baskets that a farmer friend gave me, they have a special place in my back yard because they’re just so darn pretty.

Thus far, this has been a wonderful and easy experiment; everything seems to be growing extremely well. My biggest expense was soil and compost; I burned through almost 2 bales of potting soil, as many of my containers are pretty large. Hopefully next year will be a little better on the pocketbook, as I intend to employ some tricks to extend the lifespan of the soil (stay tuned for the next post!).

Written by: Mhari Lamarque

Leafmould At Last

The great thing about gardening is that every sad weather moment has a sliver lining. The colder weather means more rest, the rainy days bring water for your plants and the falling leaves means you will have more leafmould at last.

Leaves are an important part of the city garden ecosystem. They are great fungi food,and add lovely humus to your soil. It is often hard to find carbon rich, (or browns) for your compost and garden; we don’t tend to grow straw or mill wood in our cities, but we do have trees that give us a harvest of their leaves year after year.

Leaves can be used as a great winter mulch, protecting your soil from all the snow and wind to come. Simply lay down a layer of leaves on top of your bare soil 6″ to 1′ deep and that’s it. You can also add them to your regular composting operation as a brown material, using whatever ratio of brown to green you’ve come to like. Leaves are also the sole ingredient of leafmould.

Leafmold is simply composted leaves. It is dark brown to black, has a pleasant earthy aroma and a crumbly texture, much like compost. Leafmold is a lovely soil conditioner, greatly increasing the water retention and structure of your soil. Used alongside compost and mulch it works to create a thriving Soil Foodweb in your garden.

Making leafmould is so simple. All you do is pile your fallen leaves in a corner of your garden, or in a wire mesh bin, keep them moist but not soaked and leave them for a year or more to break down slowly. The pile will shrink considerably as the leaves break down, so don’t be afraid to pile an absurd amount of leaves.

Next year when it is time to collect up more leaves and make a new pile, you have some of the sweetest leafmould of your own and trust me, you will be excited.

By: Garity Chapman