Hey! I just read your article on ohdeedoh. I am really curious about your composting process. We’ve just finished redoing our backyard and are getting ready to garden next year and one of my dilemmas is composting. I don’t really want to give up garden space (or ruin the newly planted grass). So any advice you have to give… ~S

THE GARDEN BOX COMPOSTER METHOD:

We built up garden boxes (we have “cool decking” or “a big cement yard” and couldn’t get to the dirt with out MASS DESTRUCTION!)…which you can see at this link here.

We built up compost extender sections (1′x1′ squares we place on the dirt in the box seen in the upper right and left corners of the instructables link and peeking through the cuban oregano above), and use it as a regular composter: veg, fruit, organic plant mater, coffee grounds, tea bags (w/o milk), egg shells and whatever else you feel the desire to put in…we stay away from baby poo and all animal poo for that fact (but human urine is a great source of nitrogen for plants, I have yet to pee on my plants though, so we will save that for another Urban Homesteading post). These sit in our garden boxes, but you can put them directly on the ground in your garden.

Anyway, we fill up the box over a couple weeks, then dump about four inches of dirt on top of it. You can plant directly in this and the plants LOVE IT! Plus you don’t lose the great liquidy goo (”black tea”) run off like you would in a separate compost bin: it leeches off into the other plants along with the nutrients. As the plants begin to grow, the stuff under the dirt begins to disintegrate, and the whole mess collapses to the point you can pull the extender box off and move it to a new area. We have three of these guys in our boxes right now. If you can time it right, you can catch a new section as the old plants die off. I’m still working on that. About once a year you will want to mix all the dirt in your garden up, or at least plan your crop rotation for half sections and do a half at a time.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don’t use pressure treated wood if you make the boxes, it has arsenic that leeches off and could poison the plants and yourself.

What else have you found to work in safe saving composting for urban gardening?

Stick around for Part 2 of the Space Saving Composting for Urban Gardening Series. Subscribe and never miss an Urban Gardening tip.

DO YOU HAVE AN URBAN HOMESTEAD GARDENING QUESTION? Send me an email at shellgreenier_AT_yahoo_DOT_com or via one of the social network links at the top right!