April 12, 2010

Earth Day 2010

Earth Day is April 22nd! Casey and I decided a while back that we wanted to compost. Well this weekend we started. This is a great way to use your food scraps for future soil in the flowerbeds.

Here are the steps to making our compost bin...enjoy
We started saving items to put in the bin. These are rose stems, leaves and orange peels

We then drilled holes all around the trash can, so the compost can get air 
(husband in trashcan not necessary for compost success)

Up close picture of the bin

Always helpful to have a child help you shred the newspaper

Shredded newspaper

Brown layer of leafs

Then another layer of newspaper

Now we put the bin up on bricks so that the bottom holes can get some air too.

At this point we will be putting our table scarps in the bin when we get them. Some of the table scraps that we will use are:  

Carrot peels
Lettuce leafs
Orange peels
Banana peels
All veggie peels and leftover cooked veggies
Egg shells

There are many more but this is what we've got in ours so far. I will keep you updated on what we do to help the process along!

What are you doing for Earth Day?

4 comments:

Amy McFall Prince said...

We started a compost bin about a year ago, and it is amazing how much less trash we have! We put it all in there -- paper towels, napkins, apple cores, avocado skins, banana peels, carrot peels, and the list goes on. I've read the only thing you shouldn't put in there are meats and fats. Ours did attract some icky bugs, but once I made peace with it, all was right -- the bugs actually helped eat it!

E.Gray said...

very interesting..... i will be anxious to hear and see how this goes!

Buffy said...

Okay, so where in the yard do you put it and what does it smell like? We are wanting to start a compost pile, but I am very sensitive to smell. LOL! My dogs make me want to hurl sometimes! Hehe.

Jessica said...

Buffy, we put it on the side of our house by our trash cans. I didn't want it to close to the house in case bugs felt the need to move in with us. We made sure it was in a spot that would get a lot of sun. It is not smelly...yet. I haven't heard anyone say theirs smells. If you make your scraps smaller they will break down faster so maybe that's why. Not sure. Plus if you are adding leaves and other natural items it should mask it.