When I first started working with my garden, I had no idea how the plants would grow. After all, they were just in containers…. and people buy plants in containers and take them out as soon as possible.
But things have been going very well out there ~ we have bell peppers heavy on the plant, LOTS of jalapenos and habaneros and Santa Fe Grande hot peppers, rainbow chard and lots more.
And the secret to it all is this:
Compost!
I live in a house with 4 vegans, and others always visiting, so we go through a LOT of produce around here. It always seemed to wasteful to be throwing away all of the scraps, so I decided to give composting a try. I first bought one of those round plastic spinning composters, as I’d heard good things about them and it seemed easy enough. That one didn’t work for us, as we have way too much fruit & vegetable matter going in for the size of the container.
Then a friend of ours offered to build us a worm box (she built it with her son and he got community project credit for it at his school), and it has been the best thing for us. It nicely takes all of our plant waste, we mix it with paper and leafy dry matter, and it turns it all into the beautiful rich soil that you see on the right side.
And since we don’t have a garden in the yard, I wondered what to do with all of the compost that was being created. I thought about donating it to a school or community garden, but then I decided to mix some of it in with the plants when I repot them, and it’s working out beautifully. The plants are growing so well (more examples of them below), the compost is being used, and our produce waste is not going to waste. And it’s so amazing to watch the process of the old rotting scraps get turned into something so nicely useable. It is truly a wonderful cycle…..
Lemon thyme, cucumber, cilantro
oregano!
Kelli's Vegan Kitchen 
Composting is probably one of the best things a gardener (and anybody) could do. I hate living in an apartment and not having the room…I also don’t like the quality of store-bought potting soil these days. Would be great to enrich it with my own compost.
I’m so glad that I started doing it – it is great in so many ways! Just watching the process is amazing. When I started mixing the compost in with my soil, I worried about the worms being stuck in the pots, but when I move the pots, I see some of the worms underneath, after they have worked their way out of the little hole in the bottom.
Yeah, I used to love watching my mom turn the two compost piles she kept when I was a kid. And worms will find their way out one way or another! They’ll go up and over the top of the pots just to get out if needed! Lol.