The Garbage Experiment

March 23, 2012 in: Reflections on the River

This looks like a pile of garbage. Because it is. However, I have high hopes for this assortment of orange rinds, coffee grounds and potato peelings.

I decided to try an experiment composting late last summer with some watermelon rinds because they are so heavy and so messy to carry out with the garbage. Having heard elaborate stories about how to turn compost and use a “recipe,” I figured it was too complicated to figure out. But a friend said just to dig a hole in the ground and start piling it up. The microbes in the soil would do the hard work.

So all winter, I’ve been piling on the compost. One immediate benefit is the trash doesn’t smell as much and I don’t have to take it out as often. I keep a bucket on the back porch for compost material. As a country girl, this comes naturally because we always kept a garbage bucket and fed it to the hogs.

I’m curious to see what will happen to the compost pile this spring and how I can use it  to raise strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. I should probably read up on the internet all the right and wrong ways to go about composting, but sometimes it’s just more fun to jump in. And I figure it’s already garbage, it’s not like I can mess it up.

I’m also learning some spiritual lessons through this experiment. Even though it may technically be a pile a garbage, I’m already seeing beautiful things coming out of it. Next time I feel like a load of … um, trash … has been dumped on me, I’ll give it some time to see if it can be used to cultivate something that gives life.