FREE Fertilizer for your Garden!

You can create fertilizer out of materials that are in your trash!  REALLY!  Believe it or not gardeners have been spending thousands of dollars on nitrogen and calcium enrichment fertilizers while at the same time throwing out after their morning meal thousands of dollars of perfectly great sources of nitrogen and calcium !!

Ok.  So I have a apartment garden and it is constructed on cement out of reclaimed wood and potting soil.  How do I keep my soil healthy if it isn't actually "real" soil? 


 I add what other folks would consider breakfast, still others may consider 'trash,' or here in the Seattle what many consider something that goes in the yard waste container.  . . . Coffee & Eggs!


Coffee Grounds
Get this!  Used coffee grounds (minus the filter) are great as mulch on the garden AND it deters slugs!  It adds nitrogen to the soil and can either be added to compost, dug into the soil, or placed on top directly.  Vegetables and other plants that grow fast love this nitrogen-rich amendment!  check out this great article by the Seattle Pi on the benefits of using coffee grounds in the garden: Give Your Garden a Jolt. . .   I suggest getting organic coffee!  Chemicals used on non-organic food sources leech there way not only into your body but into the dirt!

Egg Shells
Clean, crushed eggs shells make the perfect amendment to soil that is lacking in calcium.  Tomatoes LOVE calcium.  See my previous post "Huevos! How to get More Out of your Breakfast!   for more details.  I use organic, free-range  egg shells only!  If you haven't tried organic, they are worth the extra cost!  The egg shells are thick and rich with calcium!

Here is to gardens everywhere!

SAY NO TO OOOZE! Compost Your Kitchen waste!

Kitchen Composting bins: Some of these kitchen bins are pricey.  NO FEAR EVERYONE CAN COMPOST their kitchen waste!  It is easy as pie! 

Keep food waste out of your garbage can! NO MORE OOOOZE from the organic stuff in the garbage bags. No more gooey icky stuff  to clean up. Now it can all go in the yard waste container!

Check out this website for ideas on how you can collect your food waste! Seattle is one of many cities in the USA.

Hello! to all of those folks on the other side of the pond!  What is your country doing with regards to composting?  I know from living there that Seoul, South Korea composts ALL FOOD WASTE!  ROCK ON!

Composting Tips:
1. Get  paper when you don't use your re-useable bags at the grocery store. PAPER IS COMPOSTABLE! Put your food waste in the paper bags and take out to the yard waste container.

2. To cut down on smell you can compost shredded paper.  Got important paper that needs to be shredded? Line your kitchen composting container or the yard waste container.  Great way to make sure no one steals your info!  (No plastic or waxy paper please).

Say NO to STRYO!--Compostable "TO-GO!"

ROCK ON SEATTLE! Last year we instituted a law that says "SAY NO! to Stryro!"

Restaurants have to use compostable products! The forerunners in this whole process for the most part were the active students at the University of Washington in Seattle. They pushed forward with an initiative to get composting and compostable products available on campus. Check out this article from the student newspaper the UW Daily. By July of this year all restaurants in the city of Seattle will have to switch over. Many already have! Seattle's own KOMO 4 News ran a story back in October 2009 about the switch. The most striking info I found was that each and EVERY day a train loaded with over 3 tons of trash heads down to Oregon---it stretches nearly a MILE! EVERY DAY. Lets do the math--365 days x 6,000 lbs=2,190,000 -that is 2 million, one hundred and ninety thousand pounds each year!

How many people live in Seattle? Wikipedia has Seattle at a metro population of 3,344,813 so each and every one of us throws out over a 1/2 lb of waste EACH DAY! That is over 182.5 lbs of trash PER PERSON each YEAR! The Clean Air council double quadruples (how to you say 8x) my estimate at a whopping 4.39 POUNDS/Per person PER day!

OK people that is JUST RIDICULOUS!

I'm SO sorry Oregon! Beautiful Oregon---ya'll probably have enough waste of your own don't you think? What if Seattle had to KEEP all that trash? Geez...............do you think we would think twice about what we do with it?

COMPOSt THIS!

Hay there ya'll

With Christmas coming I thought I would talk about the importance of composting all that food waste! Food and paper waste takes up over 50% of our landfills! Can you believe it??

And a staggering 50% of all food created..................gets thrown away before it can be eaten, in the USA! That is just downright ridiculous!

Check out these outrageous facts from Duke University:

1. Food and paper are the two largest contributors to landfill, and make up more than half of all landfill waste – more than all plastics, diapers, Styrofoam, and tires, COMBINED. [source: US EPA]

2. Food and paper are biodegradable in nature but not in landfills, due to lack of OXYGEN being buried deep and saturated with water. Landfills EMBALM food and paper for many years. The only real decomposition is anaerobic (lacking oxygen) which produces methane horrible greenhouse gas (see global warming).

3. Food is the #1 LEAST recycled [composted] material [US EPA]

4. The average American produces 4 lbs of landfill waste every day – that’s more than 50 TONS over a lifetime. Half of this waste is compostable .

5. The US is far behind the rest of the world in recycling– most Asian and European have far more advanced recycling efforts, in many cases with steep fees and more categories for separating recyclable materials (including compostables). In some countries, clear plastic trash bags are required so that “trash police” can inspect trash and issue fines for non-compliance.

•6.We are literally running out of landfill space – even with all of our wide open western and mid-western states. Suburban sprawl requires hauling trash longer and longer distances to landfills – with great expense and environmental impact.

7. The US creates more and more trash every year, despite increased recycling attention. This is because of population growth and overall economic growth (we’re buying and trashing more stuff as we “trade up” to higher levels of prosperity). In many cases, even the rates of recycling are decreasing, due to general apathy/complacency.

8. Many communities in the US don’t even have curbside collection of recyclables

SEATTLE has a wonderful composting program that became mandatory last year. Not only does composting remove waste out of the garbage cycle. It is also responsible for providing clean air. Remember the days of dumpster smell? The odor would permeate the dumpster, a sickly sweet, grotesque smell ............never would I want to live in the apartment above the trash pickup area. With compost, it is a clean smell. No more methane trapped in plastic.

I challenge all of you to go out and get your community in on the composting craze! Heck Seattle makes it into something people will by for their gardens!