Rewilding My Lot

When I started making compost here last year, at first it didn’t work. Eventually I got one successful batch by using an added compost starter and keeping it more wet than I had been doing.

That batch of compost was certainly usable (I put it around my trees), but it was rather wet and sticky. My suspicion is that I don’t yet have a good balance of “greens” (e.g., non-weedy plant parts, vegetable waste, fruit scraps, coffee grounds) vs. “browns” (e.g., dead leaves, branches, twigs) in my compost ingredients. I think that I don’t have enough browns.

I knew that cardboard (not the shiny kind) could be included in compost but it was hard to cut or tear it into small pieces so that rarely happened. Then one day I received something that was packaged in thin, uncoated cardboard and I had the idea of running it through our little office shredder.

That process was indeed quite effective and yielded a small batch of shredded cardboard to be added to the compost bin. I think that I will periodically do that again.