Making a Garden Grow

One man’s food scraps is another woman’s compost bounty. Of course that’s adding a slight twist to the old adage about garbage, but in the case of compost materials this is one cliché that seems to ring true. And, more to the point, composting has never been easier than it is right now.

Here’s how it’s done at the Moore family residence: Wedged between the shoe rack and the hot water heater in the garage, sits a small electronic composter by Nature Mill. (Actually, it’s the Nature Mill Plus XE3 Indoor Automatic Composter Value Pack - Item# 434810 at Costco, to be exact.) Inside the black box casing, the composter’s motor whirs quietly. A green light on the face panel glows a reassuring message that all is well with the family’s most recent deposit of orange peels, coffee grounds and celery stalk root. About once a month the machine requires a small deposit of wood pellets (the same as those burned in a pellet stove) and a tablespoon of baking soda be added to the brewing cocktail of organic waste. These ingredients are needed to ensure texture and reduce smell. In a few days, the food scraps and additives reduce to a brown sod-like substance, ready to fertilize the garden. Once the composting process inside the unit is complete, the next step is to transfer the compost into the box’s lower chamber. Then the lower chamber’s canister is removed and the compost material is spread in the garden. Viola! The Moore family has home made fertilizer.

Although composting has been around for a long time, it hasn’t always been as easy as placing food scraps in a small black box. Historically, composting has been a bit more labor intensive. For example, recent archaeological evidence shows that about 8,000 years ago people in the Amazon rainforest were composting fish bones and egg shells with charcoal from burnt trees to create a unique blend of dark soil known in Portuguese as terra preta do Indio, or dark earth of the Indians. In short, the earliest inhabitants of the Amazon were adding compost to the red dirt of the rainforest, thereby making it more fertile and better suited to meet their needs. As a result, pre-historic rainforest dwellers were able to grow over 120 different kinds of trees and plants. In effect, they were producing a garden in the jungle which supported large human populations thousands of years before the Spanish and Portuguese arrived in the 16th century CE.

Of course, Elk Grove is not a jungle and there really is no need to alter the already fertile lands of the Sacramento valley. So, why compost? It’s a good question, and one worth addressing.

First, composting reduces the amount of materials that go into regional landfills. Indeed, between recycling paper, glass and plastic, and composting organic materials the Moore family has managed to reduce its overall garbage offering to one small can each week, and that’s for a family of eight people.

Second, composting is beneficial because it closes the loop. When organic matter remains on the property – rather than gets shipped to a landfill – it becomes a part of the cycle of life. Yes, we’re getting kumbaya here. Compost feeds the tomato plants and orange trees and celery stalks which will later be consumed, except for the peels and scraps, because these will eventually go back into the composter. Thus, the loop is closed.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, composting is fun. There’s something distinctly satisfying about putting home made fertilizer on a home grown garden. This last item is made even more enjoyable because the moment is often shared with my 7 year old daughter and 4 year old granddaughter. Nothing beats turning the spade in good clean dirt that’s fed by compost and plowed by worms as the girls squeal “Ewwww!” under the warm spring sunshine.

And so, to turn a phrase from Emma Lazarus’ famous poem, instead of “give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses” this composter clamors “give me your strawberry tops, your tea leaves, your apple cores” for making a garden grow.