Good afternoon folks.

I have been writing about sustainability in food for the past few weeks because that is where I am at in my life right now. I am transitioning the habits of myself and my family to food sustainability, and I have found that it takes a lot of effort to climb out of unsustainable ruts. The good news is that the ruts are mostly psychological and the long term benefits are worth the effort.

I wrote earlier about square foot gardening, as this is the method I am using to grow my food. A key element to keeping the ongoing costs low in square foot gardening is to be able to supply your own compost, as this is the primary nutrient supply and must be replaced after every harvest.

Lucky for me, composting is easy! I happen to be pretty fortunate in this regard, because the house my family is renting has a rather large backyard, and the area has a semi-rural feel to it. My throwing up a compost pit was not only allowed by my landlord but encouraged.

Some people may have more or less challenges than me between them and composting, but if growing your own food is the greenest thing you can do, composting is the essential fuel of your garden. In the near future as I work on moving to a zero waste household, I will be starting worm composting, which will enable me to use all of my food waste for composting. Right now though I will be limiting myself to basic composting of yard clippings and scrap vegetables and fruit. The main reason is that it is way simpler.

So what do you need to to compost? All you really need is an area in your yard to pile up your plant waste! If you want to keep it contained just buy buy 15′ of 5′ high wire fence, form a circle with it, and start putting your waste green in there. If you live in an apartment, you can buy a composting bin and operate on a more modest scale, but in either case I strongly encourage everyone to do it. The trick is to keep the pile not too wet or too dry, but moist, and to turn it regularly. The more you turn it, the quicker you get compost. If you are able to turn your compost over daily you can have a fantastic soil amender in two weeks, all from yard scraps, kitchen scraps, pennies of water and five minutes a day with a shovel or a pitchfork.

With my operation I got a little fancy with a concrete block lined pit, but it does not need to be this involved. The blocks just happened to be laying around the yard. The property comes with a gardener, and every week he clips about 4-6 trashcans full of green waste. All I have to do is take the cans and dump them into the pit. It almost feels like I’m cheating it is so easy. Now the operation is only a couple of weeks old, but I can already see it is going to give me all the compost I need to grow my vegetables and them some.

To speed up the process I may buy a yard chipper, which will turn all of the branches and leaves into a fine mulch. I saw one used on craigslist for $175, and a new would cost around $500 and up. It is definitely worth it for a larger yard.

For apartments and condos you do not have to be limited to your kitchen scraps. You can easily get some yard waste from the gardener of the complex, and this can be used in the square foot garden on you balcony or patio.

The bottom line is there is no excuse for not doing this. Food sustainability may be the most important facet of the whole sustainability picture, and no matter what your living circumstance you can do it. Grow your own food. Compost your plant waste. Save our troubled species. Repeat. This stuff is very easy, and it will help so much.

Remember, buy local, or grow it yourself everybody!

Love to all,
Millard