Let’s Make Dirt

Compost is one of the most eco-friendly fertilizers there is, and since you can make it yourself, it’s totally free! I like to mix a variety of natural materials together in one of my garden beds, and let those decompose on their own. Coffee grounds make wonderful food for almost any kind of plant or flower. I sometimes spread them around the base of my indoor container plants, and sometimes I mix them into my soil when planting something new.

In the winter time, I tend to have a lot of fireplace ashes. Since I’ve got a fire going regularly in my fireplace, it needs to be cleaned out every week or so. When it’s time to clean out the ashes from my fireplace, I simply scoop them into a bucket. Then I take that bucket to a garden bed that’s right outside my office door, and I dump them in the corner.

I have coffee every day too, but I don’t always remember to dump my used coffee grounds, so this is done randomly and occasionally. The same simple proceedure applies though: Just empty the coffee grounds into a bucket, and take them outside. I dump them into the same corner as the fireplace ashes. Then once in awhile I may stir, mix or spread the pile if it’s gets a little big.

If you drink tea instead of coffee, tea grounds work just as well. In fact, you can toss the entire tea bag into your compost pile, but it will take longer to decompose that way.

These everyday household items are all I tend to use for enriching my garden bed soil. In the spring when I start preparing the beds for planting, I simply mix the ashes and coffee grounds into the soil itself. I then scoop out some into buckets and spread it around to other beds around my yard, and mix it into the soil in each of those too.

Creating compost or enriching your soil in this casual manner does take a bit longer, but it works wonderfully over time. If you’d like to speed up the process you can of course create a full fledged dedicated compost pile in your backyard, or buy a commercial compost bin. Some of them turn your scraps into rich compost within just a month or two.

Other every day items that you can add to your pile include:

Newspaper scraps – they’ll decompose faster if you shred them first.

Fruit and Vegetable scraps – These also will decompose faster if you chop or shred them first. Be aware though: Adding these to your pile can be a bit “smelly”.

If you don’t have enough of your own compost to start, you can buy compost, preferably the organic variety, if you’re growing organic fruits and vegetables. Adding compost to your garden soil, will give your plants nutrients and makes the soil richer and easier to work with.

How about you, what do you think?