Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Articles Sections >> Arts + Words Bars + Clubs Dating Festivals Fitness Food Lifestyle Music Theater Travel + Tourism Who's Who > View All Cheap Thrills Green Thumb

A Drop in the Bucket

Julia becomes a composter-in-training with encouragement from her urban-dwelling, composting friend.

Tuesday May 08, 2007.     By Julia Steinberger

Lifestyle Feed

A few weeks ago, while cooking up a breakfast feast of veggie hash, smoothies and the like at my friend Sharon's place, I noticed her reaching under the sink to grab a bucket of scraps before heading for the backyard. Turns out, she and her roommates compost.

Like many city-dwellers, I assumed that composting was better left to country folk (if not for hippies who like to live with worms), so my interest was piqued as I watched Sharon feed her patch of land with homemade fertilizer.

There are many reasons to give composting a shot: It provides a direct route from trash to re-growth—you won't find a better waste-management program in the world. You also won't find better food for your plants. My friends' nutrient-loaded compost is a boon to their awesome herb and veggie garden. Because compost increases soil aeration, retains more moisture than average dirt and is packed with the organic matter needed to attract vital soil-balancing microorganisms, this free wonder-mulch give plants a much healthier, and equally effective, boost as chemical fertilizers.

Newbie gardeners take heart: There's really nothing difficult about composting. Once you put the scraps in a pile, they eventually rot and form compost whether you supervise or not. With a little monitoring, though, you can speed up the process so that you'll have ready-to-go fertilizer in just a few weeks or months. To get things going, shred yard and kitchen waste as small as you can and layer all of it together, using a bin to keep things tidy (FYI: The city of Chicago actually requires that compost be contained to keep rodents away, so don't skip out on this).

Go for a rough balance of browns and greens. "Greens" are the stuff we normally think of composting: fruit and vegetable scraps, grass clippings, coffee grounds, eggshells, nutshells and tea bags. "Browns" are the fuel that feeds the hardworking microorganisms, including dried leaves, wood chips and even black-and-white newspaper (just use paper sparingly).

Once the process starts, your compost might heat up, or even steam, as it decomposes. Your job is making sure the pile remains moist (as damp as a wrung-out sponge) and that it gets plenty of oxygen. Your method of aerating the pile depends on the container you use. My friends built a simple 3-inch by 4-inch enclosure using scrap materials, but you can also buy a bin from a home and garden center or online. Get a rake or shovel, too, to turn things over every few days. Otherwise, if you're up for spending $100 or more, tumblers can make your life a lot easier; just give them a spin.

My big question for Sharon: With a bucket of rotting food scraps under the sink and a heap of decomposing waste in the yard, don't things get smelly, buggy or worse? She assures me that she's never had a problem, and that the below-the-sink pile smells good when it smells at all. Nasty stenches, and potential harmful bacteria, come from letting unwelcome elements into the mix: dairy, meat, bones, pet droppings or diseased plants. And, as the University of Illinois Extension site points out, make sure to stir immediately any time you add new green material; it attracts pests when it's on top.

As for me, I have no yard for a garden, so full-on composting will have to wait for a future apartment (a fact I'm bummed about, having learned how easy it is!). But I've committed to a few simple steps just to feed my houseplants. First, I sprinkle used coffee grounds on my potted plants, which gives them a natural nitrogen fix. Second, I committed to using organic worm castings to round out my potting soils, rather than chemically-enhanced mix. They're tiny steps indeed, but for now, I'll consider myself a composter-in-training.

After four greener-than-average college years as a co-op dweller-turned-aspiring-permaculturist, Julia Steinberger finds it hard not to feel guilty about her one-bedroom apartment, daily commute and indulgence in the occasional dollar burger. She'd like to dream that she could live in a tent/treehouse/rabbit hole, but the truth is, she'd rather stay in the city while doing her best to leave a lighter footprint on the earth. You can contact her here.