Sunday, January 29, 2006

Balancing brown and green

It has been a warm January. I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon sitting on the back porch in the sun. Normally I will cease my composting operation around Christmas and pick it up again in early March. The problem is that it is in January and February that we are inundated with citrus rinds. They make such a sweet compost that I hate to just throw them away. One particularly cold winter, I put them in the freezer until spring. But then there was no room for real food.

So because things have been so mild and because I don’t have to dig a path through snow to the composter, I have been adding plenty to the pile. The problem is, I have only brown leaves so my balance of brown and green is off. The same thing happens in August when all the leaves have been used up and I have nothing but grass clippings around.

Then on a walk last week I spied this young man trimming these green plants that grow around the trees in the nearby shopping center. He happily surrendered a crate full of greens and I have been “in balance” ever since.

2 comments:

Jenn said...

I like to keep a five gallon bucket by the back door to put winter compost in (a north exposure) I may have to trek out to the back in snow to dump it once during the winter, but I too hate to toss the good stuff away!

Anonymous said...

My compost continues to be off balance, it is frustrating. I have two outside composts going and in the basement I do vermicomposting. I enjoy coming to see how you handle these things--there is always an answer here.