Acquiring a Green Thumb

As part of my nutrition program I did a Co-Op last summer at an herb garden in Toronto working under the watchful eye of a medical herbalist. In the process I discovered a deep love of gardening. The garden is a great place to calm your mind and get a little dirty. So after a bit of convincing my boyfriend was so kind as to let me overhaul his garden this year, with his help of course. So i decided to keep an ongoing blog of my first real attempt at a garden. I am looking forward to sharing my learning curve with all of you out there in blogger-land, as well as hopefully getting some feedback from some experienced gardeners.

One of the first things we did was getting our compost set up. My boyfriend Cody has a condo with a small back yard, so our first challenge was space. We found a lot of great design ideas for building our own compost by using old pallets. Unfortunately these are about 3 feet by 3 feet and we just didn't have the space. So we did the next best thing... took a trip to Walmart.

We ended up using a 34 gallon plastic garbage can (you can also use a metal one). Cody then used a drill bit to punch holes throughout it, including the bottom. This is a very important part, the more oxygen the better, this will keep your compost from getting stinky. A properly done compost should never smell funky.

The next step is to fill it up. The best ratio for compost is 3 parts brown stuff to one part green. The brown portion includes dead leaves, newspaper, egg cartons and mulch, basically anything no longer living. The green portion includes fresh glass clippings, egg shells, fruits and vegetables. We choose to dig up the previous garden and start completely fresh this year and so we also added all the the roots we dug up.

Next you need to add some water and an activator, these you can find pre-boxed at Rona or Walmart for around 10$. We found out that human urine is a very effective activator, and some gardeners swear by it. This is due to the nitrogen content. Of course after that discovery Cody was set on peeing on it, I think its a boy thing. If you are using urine it needs to be diluted however with water, about 1 part urine to 10 parts water. Give it a good stir and then you wait.

Continue to add your waste from your kitchen and yard as the months go one. It is supposed to take about two months to get a good compost, so i will keep you updated. Make sure to keep stirring it as you add new things. This is not only environmentally friendly, but provides some awesome organic matter for great gardening. I included a few photos of our homemade compost. I would love to hear if anyone has any more tricks and of course about your own versions.
Happy composting everyone!

Marcie Brown