Happy Earth Day!

This coming Sunday is Earth Day. So go ahead and get the ball rolling in your own backyard by starting a compost pile! Whether you decide to use it as a mulch or mix it into your  soil, you can never have too much compost for the garden. Here’s a few helpful hints and tricks to keep your pile really cookin’:

• Never use meat, fish scraps, or cooking fats in your compost pile. They’ll attract varmints and insects, cause bad odors, and slow down decomposition of the pile.
• Whether it comes from a human or any other kind of animal, hair is full of iron, manganese, and sulfur—all good stuff for your garden. Work it into the soil or toss it onto the compost pile, and watch your plants eat it up!
• Give your compost pile the air it needs for speedy decomposition—without having to turn the pile with a pitchfork every few weeks! Just drill holes along the length of a large PVC pipe, place the pipe upright in the center of the pile, and add your compost materials around it.
• If you don’t have the time or space to for a full-scale compost pile, try this trick instead: Save your non-meat table scraps—citrus rinds, potato peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds, and so on. Every few days, liquefy the scraps in a blender along with enough water to cover them and a tablespoon of Epsom salts. Pour the resulting cocktail onto the soil in your garden, lightly hoe it in, and your plants will jump for joy!