Composting

There are numerous reasons that you should take up gardening as a hobby. Chief among them is that you have the opportunity to create food! This could be an immensely helpful ability down the line.

One of the important parts of gardening is supplying the nutrients that your plants require. You can hop down to the store and pick up a bag of compost or manure today, but you can also make it on your own.

Composting is also a good way to deal with some of the trash we produce. I could go into what compost is and why you should do it, but this wikipedia entry does better than I could:

Compost wiki-style

Last weekend I built my first-ever compost bin with the primary intention of creating compost for my wife's garden, but also as a way to deal with some of our trash.

It's been coming along fairly well. I have added scraps a few times and I think I'm starting to see the beginning of the compost process. It's pretty cool.

Composting is an important part of becoming more self-reliant. It's getting harder to say with certainty what state the world is going to be like in the coming years. During World War II food was rationed. In today's world there would probably be rioting in the streets if the government tried to ration your Lucky Charms or Doritos - imagine what would happen if the government imposed rations on sugar, nylon, copper - that's what happened in World War II. Start your Victory Garden now.

TWO MONTHS LATER: I've built my second compost bin and the first is nearly ready to be emptied back into the ground. I filled my first bin over about eight weeks and have been letting it compost since. It'll be fully composted in about four weeks or so. At that point the second bin will be full and ready to sit. I'll then start using the first bin actively after that.

The experiment has thusfar been successful. I'm excited to see how the compost helps the garden next year.