It Really Doesn't Smell

The Earth Machine

When I tell people we compost, the first thing they ask is how bad it smells. To be honest, it doesn't. If you have an aversion to fruit flies, composting might not be for you, since you'll see a bunch whenever you open the lid. But if its the smell holding you back, it's time to start!

When we bought our house seven years ago it had this strange black contraption in the backyard that looked like a bottomless garbage can. It turned out it was The Earth Machine, a composting container that our county sells. Having lived in an apartment with no outdoor space, I wasn't sure what to do with it, but fortunately the county also offers some tips (you can view them here) for what it refers to as "nature's way of recycling."

A hearty hibiscus plant hides the composter during the summer and fall.

As you can see from the photo, The Earth Machine isn't the prettiest thing. Through the summer and fall ours gets hidden by a large hearty hibiscus plant and you would never know it's there.

So what do we compost? We eat a lot of fruit and vegetables (we get a CSA share from a local farm) so all the odds and ends that we don't eat (like the strawberry tops and melon rinds) go in the composter. When we remove our tomato and pepper plants at the end of the season they go in there too (though we're in the process of building a greenhouse so hopefully some of those can stick around this year).

How does it work? You put everything in the composter and put the lid on. With the help of some sunlight and worms

The hibiscus get large blooms throughout the summer.

(and some mixing every now and then) we'll have nutrient dense dirt for next spring's garden.

Can you compost yard waste? While you can compost grass and leaves, we would need about 4 or 5 more Earth Machines to fit all the leaves from the six trees on our property. You can just pile leaves in a corner of your yard and let them break down (some of our neighbors do this), but it takes a bit longer than The Earth Machine and we have dogs who would just run through the piles and spread them across the yard. If you want to compost leaves, shred them (mow over them) and add grass to the mix to help them break down faster. If you don't want to compost leaves and have a lot of grass, you can opt to not bag the clippings and let it naturally break back down into your lawn.

Composting is one small thing we can all do to reduce the amount of garbage going to landfills. If you were on the fence, I hope I helped convince you it's a worthwhile endeavor!

This blog post is an assignment for the Communication Media Design course at NJIT.