Happy Earth Day...Save the Soil and Kiss the Ground!
Co-written with Annika Shah
Throughout quarantine we, like many others, spent a considerable amount of time watching movies and documentaries. Kiss the Ground, a Netflix documentary gave us a perspective on climate change and provided us with clear ways every day people can work to save the planet (narrated by Woody Harrelson, whose voice I recognized as “Haymitch” from The Hunger Games, which made it even more fun to watch).
At first, the movie alarmed me because the science showed that climate change could become irreversible in just a decade, our foreseeable future, if drastic measures weren’t taken!
We are in big trouble, but this film wasn’t just “doom and gloom”. Kiss the Ground gave us hope that if we adopted practices such as regenerative farming and composting we could not simply slow climate change, we could REVERSE it!
While gas cars and energy powered by fossil fuels contribute to damaging the climate, industrial agriculture plays a much bigger, more devastating role in global warming.
Regenerative Farming vs. Industrial Agriculture
Regenerative AND organic farming is a two-layered practice. The first layer is organic farming without pesticides or herbicides, which lead to killing the natural ecosystems in the soil and making the plants we eat toxic. The second essential layer to reversing climate change is regenerative farming. Industrial agriculture involves a practice of using tractors to till the topsoil. Tilling depletes carbon in the soil, increases erosion, causes more water runoff, and loss of soil. The soil becomes useless and infertile after a few seasons and prevents the soil from absorbing the carbon we need it to decrease carbon emissions (picture the 1930s Dust Bowl).
Regenerative agriculture is the practice of no-till or less tilling so that the soil can retain water, keep its nutrients, grow a healthier microbiome so that plants can combat pests naturally without using toxic pesticides and herbicides. Regenerative farming actually leaves the soil more nutrient rich than it was before. It also promotes biodiversity and crop rotation rather than massive monoculture farms. Composting is also an essential ingredient to creating healthier carbon-rich soil. Composting can be done on a massive scale at farms, and even more easily in our own homes and yards. Farms use animal manure from their livestock, food waste, and scraps to feed the soil. On a small-scale, we can all do this at home too (and we don’t need any manure!).
After watching this documentary (which would be a great way to spend Earth Day if you haven’t already seen it) we took the information and inspiration to heart. We have an organic garden with a variety of fruit trees and local drought resistant plants. So we decided to add the next layer: composting.
There are so many different ways to compost at home, but figuring out the right one for us required research and experimentation. Some of the various methods include trenching, indoor composting and outdoor tumbling.
Trenching
If you have the space, trenching is the practice of digging holes and dumping food scraps in with the soil and mixing it. Over time, the soil becomes nutrient-rich and we throw less trash into landfills. We “experimented” with trenching at first, but we have a small yard without a lot of space. We lost our beloved Eucalyptus tree during the winds and fires in October. So we dug one “funeral trench” and threw in a bunch of food scraps, eggshells and coffee grinds. Hopefully something wonderful is happening under there! But that’s where we stopped. (Too much manual labor!)
Indoor Compost
We then decided to experiment with a Japanese method of indoor composting which was inspired by an article we read in the early days of quarantine in the New York Times written by Hiroko Tabuchi called “The Compost by my Couch”. All you need to start is a cardboard box. There was no shortage of cardboard boxes of any size during quarantine and the compostable materials and packaging from our Thrive Market deliveries helped get us started.
We were nervous about keeping garbage in our house so we carefully followed the instructions in the article. In short here’s the easy recipe:
Grab a cardboard box, line the bottom with egg crates, then put cardboard on top of that. This creates aeration.
Add Biochar, which is horticultural ash, coconut husk or coco peat. Coco husk/ash is available at Green Thumb Nursery or probably any garden shop. Mix well.
Find an old T-shirt and sew the head and armholes shut to use as an airtight cover for the box. This prevents bugs/gnats.
After making the initial “mixture” dig a small “trench” in the box and add a few ounces of vegetable/fruit scraps and water.
Finally, add the browns to balance the moisture in the box. We use a mixture of paper and sycamore leaves that fall from the neighborhood trees.
That is literally it! We add a few scraps now and mix it a few days a week. We are creating soil! The items that have composted the quickest have been banana peels, avocado peels, greens, soft fruit and potato peels. So far so good, we have dirt and no bugs and it smells like earthy goodness!
Outdoor Compost Tumbler
Since we accomplished the small indoor compost method, my parents gifted us an outdoor compost tumbler for Christmas (they even wrapped it in a garbage bag and put it under the tree)! It was fun building the tumbler with my brother.
We can fit much more food waste in the tumbler than we can inside. But so far it seems to be taking a little longer to make soil and there are some small gnats inside, but no stink. To start the tumbler, we used some coco peat again and some of the indoor compost we had already generated. We bought this tumbler and it came with helpful directions and YouTube videos. The ingredients are the same: a 1:4 ratio of greens to browns. Maintaining that balance prevents bugs and stink and also helps breakdown the waste faster.
Greens we use
- vegetable and fruit peels (not citrus)
- soft stems from herbs
- coffee grinds
- tea
Browns we use
- leaves
- brown paper packaging from our Thrive and Amazon orders
- shredded school scrap paper
- dryer lint
- pencil shavings
As an added bonus, we traded in our large trash can to Irvine Waste Management for the smallest bin, which is less of an eyesore in the side-yard. We also use our green waste bin for any scraps we can’t fit or aren’t great for the composter: thick stems, stronger branches, and citrus peels. At the same time, we seem to be decreasing the amount we rely on the City to recycle our paper products. We often worry about whether our recycling is truly all being recycled when neighbors often throw out non-recyclables in their bins or bag their recyclables. If you want to make sure you are recycling properly here’s a good link. The City of Irvine also provides great tips on how to compost. Our favorite blog for composting, recipes, and more is The Spruce, which has a wealth of information on everything! You can also call us or stop by to see how we did ours. We love having visitors!
Outdoor tumbler
Ours is a dual chamber tumbler. We add new waste to one side while the other side cooks! Once half is cured, sprinkle it through the garden. Create more compost on that side, while the other side cooks!
If you are looking for a way to celebrate Earth Day today (or my mom’s birthday), I highly recommend watching Kiss the Ground or researching at-home composting with your family so we can all work toward saving the soil!