Composting in Vanessa's Backyard

To make our compost Craig and I salvage food scrap, lawn clippings, coffee grounds and tea bags, and leaf rakings. While you can buy compost bins for very cheap from the city of LA we assembled our compost out of pallets.

I encourage all to bring a container to work and have your coworkers collect their lunch food scraps (staying clear of meat and greasy dishes). Watch the apple cores, banana peels, and left over salads scraps fill your precious compost! Keeping your compost moist like a rung out sponge really helps speed up the decomposing process.

We filled this compost in August and turned it 2 months later, revealing steam, gray-ash-looking fungi, black beetles, ants, and some grubs

Ash-looking fungi toward the middle is breaking down the material

Container I bring to work to collect scraps

3 months time difference between these pictures including lots of pick axing the compacted clay.