Our fresh new compost! See how black it is?

It started a few months ago when our local government passed a measure that was supposed to be environmentally beneficial, but I felt would just hurt the finances of people already struggling financially, without actually benefiting the environment as it was supposed to. As a protest, I wrote an article about more effective ways the government could actually help the environment without hurting the poor.
On that list was the suggestion that there be community wide composting programs, so that people’s organic waste didn’t go into landfills, and instead put them in composters.

Growing up, we never would dream of throwing decomposable material into the trash. We kept a little trash can under the sink which we filled with this kitchen trash, and when that filled up, we dumped it into our compost heap in the back corner of our garden. The compost there would then be used in our garden where we grew all sorts of delicious things (of which the snow peas, fresh tomatoes, and asparagus were my favorite… though can’t forget about the wineberries.)

When I moved abroad and got married, it took convincing to get my husband to be willing to have a compost in our yard, but when he got on board, he saw how cool it was, how we were able to get such rich soil that way, which we then used in our small garden (tomatoes, swiss chard, and potatoes are what we successfully grew).

Then about 5 years ago we moved into our current small apartment, where we have no yard and even no real porch, so that curtailed our gardening abilities. (The few things I tried to grow didn’t turn  out to be so successful.) One of the things that bugged me most was throwing out my decomposable waste since we no longer had a compost heap. I’d thought about making a guerrilla compost pile in a public place but then never had the guts to do so. (Eventually a neighbor did exactly that not far from my home.)

I had heard about a concept called vermicomposting, which is an indoor composting method that is supposed to be smell and mess free. It uses worms to convert food scraps into fresh compost, but when I brought up the idea with Mike he said no way, no how, our house is small enough that we don’t need to be taking up room with a composer inside, just to assuage our environmental conscience. If I had known where to even get worms locally I may have pushed it, but since I didn’t, and admitted space was at a premium in our house, I didn’t. Instead, for the last 5 years, our kitchen waste just contributed to landfills.

Then less than a month ago, Mike decided that he was finished with emptying out the food caught in the kitchen sink drains into the garbage, which would often drip across the floor, making a mess, and then made the kitchen garbage stink. We had a planter with a small layer of dirt in it from our previous failed windowsill gardening attempts sitting on the sill outside the kitchen window which was right in front of the sink, so Mike decided to empty the sink drains into there and let it decompose on a small scale.

I told Mike that if  he was going to start a compost there, I was going to put my decomposable kitchen scraps there as well; I wasn’t going to throw it in the trash if I had a means of composting. He argued with me at first, saying that there wasn’t room for all our scraps, but I won the argument.
So for approximately the last 30 days, any time I had non animal product kitchen waste, such as fruit peels or cores or produce that spoiled before we could eat them, into the planter they went. It would start to fill up, and then after a day it would sink down, compacting, and there’d be room to add things yet again.

We didn’t do what you’re supposed to do with a compost- turn it over to encourage decomposing microbes- it wasn’t easy with a planter that size behind the kitchen sink.
And I’ll admit, there were some bugs, mainly fruit flies, and a mild sour smell. Not horrible, but not the most pleasant in the world either. And a pile of kitchen scraps isn’t so pleasing on the eyes either. So the kitchen window stayed closed, covered by a curtain as well, other than when we opened it to add things to the compost.

What we’ve been keeping out of sight- our compost planter.

Last night, I wanted to put more things in the compost but saw that it was overflowing, so I decided to deal with it- to remove it and my other two planters, and see if there was any ready compost underneath that we could move to another planter, to make room, and also plant things, and also turn over the compost as well, so it would decompose faster.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw that there wasn’t just a little bit of compost underneath- but a very large amount!

Look at the difference in the dirt! Bottom is just compost- dark and rich, middle is compost and “old dirt”- notice the differences in color! And top is the non decomposed plant matter.

Nice, rich, nearly black compost, that, despite its origins, didn’t smell bad. It smelled fresh and musty, kind of like you’d expect a forest to smell after it rained. Compared to the dirt we’d originally had in the planters, the difference was startling. The planter dirt was a light brown reddish dirt, hard, dry, and clumpy, and our fresh compost was was super dark, wet, fluffy, etc.

We moved the ready compost into our other two planters, and then put the non decomposed plant matter back into the composting planter.

Seeded compost- now can I make this grow?

In the fresh dirt, we’re going to attempt to try gardening again, on a small scale. I scattered some seeds for various greens (baby greens, arugula, various lettuces, spinach, and cilantro- all already in my house) in one planter (all things I can harvest early, and are entirely edible, not plants that I can only eat the ripe fruit, etc…)

Lemon verbena and mint in our fresh compost.

We’ll see how successful we are at growing those things. Can I turn my brown thumb into a green thumb?

One of my biggest issues I have with gardening is forgetting to water, so I set myself a daily reminder via Google Calendar to water.

Hopefully this will teach me new habits, and responsibility for a garden, important skills because when we move into our new home (I recently heard it may be as soon as July or August!!!) with a yard I want to intensely garden and grow as many of our vegetables as we can… so its important that I practice first on a small scale with these two windowsill planters, before we make a bigger investment of a larger garden.

But more than anything, I am glad that we finally are able to compost again, and I am also super stoked that we managed to do it with no yard, no porch, and no worms! Apartment composting IS doable!
And it took less than a month from when we first started to when we had good, workable, beautiful compost. I think that is super awesome!!!

And anyone who used to be bad at gardening, dubbed themselves a “brown thumb”, anyone have any tips for someone like myself who wants to “turn over a new leaf” (pun intended) and become better at not killing plants?