Easy Composting Method - The Best Time To Start Is Now!

Every year I see people burning and bagging leaves, are you one of those people? If so check out this easy and basic process for composting that we have found to work very well.

We stopped giving away our free fertilizer a few years ago and we will never turn back. We now do not throw away any organic material from our yard or kitchen unless it is somehow toxic or gone really, really bad. All of our leaves, sticks, sawdust, chicken manure, food scraps, cardboard, compostable paper products, and much more all end up being processed right back into our garden beds. Is there any other way? I can't imagine going out to the store and buying fertilizers and compost that some company is selling back to the same people that left their yard waste at the curb, doesn't that seem silly?



There are many resources out there on what you should compost and how much of each type of item to put in the pile or bin or whatever you have setup. I go with a simple and very general rule of thumb. We add about 75% carbon material (leaves, saw dust, cardboard, paper, wood chips, etc.). This is the base to any good compost and handily this also makes up the majority of most peoples yard waste (remember that giant pile of leaves you had to rack up last year?). The next ingredient is nitrogen materials (chicken manure, vegetables, plant materials, last years jack-o-lanterns, and all of our kitchen waste). Just to be clear you cannot add any leftovers or meat products to your compost, only things that at one time grew from the ground in some way.

Now that you have all those goodies mixed together the only thing left to do is to wait and turn it over as much as you can remember. I mix mine up about once per week. This allows air to get into the pile and for the bacteria to get to work doing their thing. Many people suggest watering the pile as well but up here in Michigan I would not do that unless it was a drought. I might pour a bucket of nitrogen rich aquaponics water on it if that was needed.

We have found the best way to get started and make sure that our lazy genes don't take over is to keep a small container on the counter in your kitchen for scraps and one just outside your door to move them into every day or two. We use an old mixing bowl inside and an old trash can outside. Once per week or so I take the trash can back to the "pile" and dump it and stir it up with a pitchfork.

If things go well and the pile gets cooking you should be cooked down to useable soil in about 60 days or so depending on your weather. This soil has everything that your plants, flowers, vegetables, or anything else needs to grow. If you do this right you should not need to buy soil, compost, manure, or fertilizers for your garden.

I hope this encourages someone to get started and save some food scraps from ending up in a landfill for goodness sakes!


~The SSL Family Dad

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Garbage 101: Ways to Reuse Paper Waste Around Your Home

In our first Garbage 101 article, we discussed it was best to keep paper and other biodegradable materials out of landfills as much as possible.  We are lucky enough to have a recycling service that picks up our recyclables every two weeks, but we really try to reuse as much of our paper waste as possible before we even consider recycling it.

It all starts with our recycling bins where all of our paper waste is sorted.  We added labels to the bins for the girls.  We even had a LANDFILL sign on our trash at one point.  It was a good reminder to us all. 

The trick to sustainability is viewing your trash as a resource instead of garbage, and we have found lots of re-uses for paper around our home.

Cardboard makes great landscape fabric.  It keeps the weeds out, just lay the mulch right over it.

We have had a problem with rabbits eating our new bushes and trees.  So we reuse our paper towel and toilet paper rolls and wrap them around the base.  It has worked like a charm!  The SSL Family Dad has a post and video on this topic.

After we have weeded out the boxes for landscape fabric & storage, and the paper towel rolls for the trees, we then shred everything else.  But first we separate the glossy paper out.  The non-glossy paper and non-glossy boxes are shredded separately and used for the outdoor compost pile and worm bin. 

The glossy paper and boxes are then shredded and soaked in water for up to a week so that it all breaks down.  The SSL Family Dad then takes that soggy paper mess and turns it into paper logs with this paper log maker that he burns in our outdoor wood burning stove.  We use this stove to heat our pool in the summer and heat our garage in the winter. 

Here is the contraption my wonderful husband put together for the shredding and soaking of glossy paper.  He mounted our old paper shredder on top of a 55-gallon barrel that he cut in half.   Yes, we're weird.  And yes, some things around our house are weird.  But because marriage is all about balance, I would like to think that I balance things out and keep things from getting TOO weird around here.  (Let's just not ask the SSL Family Dad about that, okay?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, Homestead Blog Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop

 

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Garbage 101: Adopt a Meat Garbage Disposal & Never Waste Food Ever Again

"40 percent of food purchased for the home is wasted.  Half of the world's produced food is wasted."  That's a huge amount of food wasted, food produced but never eaten.  And certainly most of that wasted food ends up in landfills. 

We are proud to announce that we  here at Simple Suburban Living waste 0% of our food.  Absolutely no food whatsoever finds its way from our house into a landfill.  Remember from yesterday's post that landfills should be the last resort for our waste.

All of our food scraps get fed to the dog or chickens, and anything they don't eat ends up in our compost piles.  We have a worm compost bin in the basement, and a compost pile in the backyard. 

Our chickens are our vegetable, grain, fruit, and dairy garbage disposals.  They are fed chicken feed also, but they just love the food scraps, too. 

 

 

 

 

~ Our Meat Garbage Disposal ~

 

If you have ever read the ingredients on most dog food packages, you will notice the first ingredient listed is corn.  You don't even want to get me started on the subject of corn, but more importantly, dogs are not meant to eat corn.  They are carnivores.  They need meat.  With that said, our dog eats all of our meat scraps and leftover meat.  We do give her dog food also, but not nearly as much as we used to because her diet is supplemented with our leftovers.  We have noticed a huge improvement in her coat and bathroom habits since we've changed her diet. 

 

You can help save the environment and a stray by adopting a faithful friend and meat disposer.

 

 

 

To make things easier and more convenient, we keep food "garbage" bowls on our kitchen counter.  One bowl is for the chickens, the other for the worms and compost pile.  We found that we compost more when we don't have to walk the food scraps outside.  In other words, we found that we are a very lazy environmentally-minded folk.


Serving our food waste to the animals and compost piles is now an integral part of our life and the changes were easily implemented over a short period of time.  Even the girls take an active part and know where to separate the food scraps.  I just love it when the youngest SSL Kid says "compost".

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” --Maya Angelou   


This post was shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Homestead Blog Hop

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Garbage 101: Paper or Plastic? It All Depends on What You're Going To Do With It.

We all want to be environmentally friendly and do the right thing for our planet, don't we?  But how do we know which choices will leave the smallest footprint, and which items to throw away and which items to recycle?  Finding the right answers are hard and when you do, they may surprise you.

The SSL Family Dad and I love to watch Ted Talks.  If you haven't heard of Ted, click here.  Ted talks are available on all different topics but we seem to migrate to those dealing with sustainability and farming.   One talk we watched earlier this year really changed the game for us, and I just love it when that happens.  I love it when information just hits you over the head and changes the way you look at life forever. 

This talk is so powerful, I think you should watch it right now and then finish reading this article because I will never do this topic the justice it deserves by trying to explain it to you myself.  For those of you who are worried about burning up your data for the month like I would be, click HERE for the transcript of this talk.

And for those of you who didn't have time to watch or read it, I'll recap for you but only if you promise to watch or read it later.  It's seriously THAT good.

The speaker, Leyla Acaroglu, states that "everything at some point comes from nature, and it's how you use the material that dictates the environmental impact....what we need to do is we need to learn to do more with less."

Biodegradable materials, such as paper bags, do not decompose in a landfill the same way they would in nature.  Landfills are anaerobic (meaning no oxygen) and biodegradable materials emit methane gas when they degrade. Some facilities actually capture the methane gas and use it to generate power, which is a good thing, and gives us an alternative to fossil fuels.   Bottom line is, if you're going to pick the paper bag but take it home and throw it in your garbage destined for a landfill that does not generate power with its methane gas, then you're not picking the best choice for the environment.  Landfills should be our last resort for items we cannot reuse or recycle. 

Reduce, reuse and recycle.  Sounds so "elementary", doesn't it? 

So the best answer to the great paper or plastic debate is actually neither.  The best option is to use reusable bags instead.  But if you really need to pick one, pick paper.  And reuse that paper bag, and then compost it.

Writing this article has forced me to look at everything we're doing now with our waste as a result of this talk we watched, and I have to laugh because it seems that a majority of what we do here at Simple Suburban Living is centered around our trash.  That surprised me, a lot.  But it also reminded me that we are being good stewards of our planet by being good stewards of our garbage.  Here comes Luke 16:10 again, "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much."  It's so true, isn't it?

We've made some serious changes around our little homestead this year with regards to what we do with our trash.  So this week, we'll be sharing how our family reduces the amount of our waste that ends up in a landfill.

We're calling it Garbage 101.  (And don't forget to watch that video!)

This post has been shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Homestead Blog Hop

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From our SSL Family Dad: Indoor Worm Bin and the Ultimate Fruit Fly Trap

Here is a video describing how to setup a quick and easy worm bin to compost food scraps. I also include some tips on how to get rid of fruit flies and the best fruit fly trap I have ever used. This worm bin does not include a compost tea collection but it is expandable to almost any size.

This fruit fly trap idea came from:  http://youtu.be/AnDCReoxdHo

We keep this bin in our basement and it's been amazing to watch our food scraps turn to compost.  Very easy and an excellent way to reduce waste!  Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Thanks for watching! 
Todd

 

 

Fruit Fly Trap

 

 

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