Composting your kitchen and yard wastes will result in “really awesome plant fertilizer,” according to Adriana Mailloux, an environmental services technologist with Thompson-Nicola Regional District.
It also will reduce the amount of garbage going into TNRD landfills by about 30 per cent.
Mailloux gave a talk about composting to close to 20 local residents during Seedy Saturday at Clearwater ski hill on April 12.
She demonstrated three different systems: a large black backyard composter, a Green Cone food waste digester, and a worm composter.
Making compost means finding and keeping the right mix of greens (vegetable and fruit peels and scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings and so on) and browns (shredded newspapers, dry leaves, straw and so on) she said.
There also needs to be the right amount of moisture (like a damp sponge) and oxygen (the pile needs to be turned occasionally).
Things like meat, bones, fish scraps, pet waste and diseased plants should not be composted, she said.
The Green Cone food waste digester is a little more flexible. It uses added enzymes to break down things like meat and bones that the composter won't handle. The digester produces a liquid organic waste that percolates out through mesh in its bottom into the surrounding soil.
Worm composting is ideal for those with limited space or who have a bear problem and so don't want to put kitchen scraps outside.
Worms eat their own weight of food in one day and will reduce kitchen scraps and other appropriate materials to nutrient-rich castings in a few weeks.
To use the stackable multi-tray worm composter Mailloux had with her, kitchen wastes and worms are first put into the bottom tray. As it is filled, a second tray is added on top, then a third and so on.
After a surprisingly short time the bottom tray's contents are converted to soil. There are almost no worms as they have migrated up into the trays above.
More information about composting is available at the TNRD website: www.tnrd.ca or at your local TNRD library.