Organic Gardening, Tutorial
Closing the circle: making your own compost lasagne
At Sunseed I realized how many resources are wasted everyday when you just throw your kitchen waste away.
When I came here, I did not know anything about compost or how you can fertilize the soil you want to use for planting.
I was very impressed by the ‘compost lasagne’ system we have in Sunseed. It makes our gardens much more sustainable, because we have everything we need for the process. In addition, we can control what we put in our soil and incidentally it saves us money because we do not have to buy manure.
The concept we have is very easy:
The lasagne consists of several boxes. In each is compost in different stages.
We take care of our compost every Wednesday. First we turn the old layers around with pitchforks, so that the compost gets enough oxygen. Than we put a thin layer of paper and cardboard above. Afterwards we add our kitchen waste, put a small amount of earth on the top and water it. All these layers are important to get the right balance of nutrition in our compost. To keep the humidity even when it is very hot, we cover everything with dried material which works perfectly.
At Sunseed we need a lot of manure and therefore we need a fast decomposition process. When you want to try to produce your own compost at home, you just need to move your deposited kitchen waste sometimes and after about a year you have perfect compost. You cannot do anything wrong with the process, it might just take more time.
Our Garden Coordinator Josu explained how you can find out if the compost is ready. You can use it when it holds in shape after you have squeezed it but crumbles again when you move it in your hands.
I love to see how the circle closes, while parts of our food which cannot be used in the kitchen turn back into very fertile soil again.
Learn more
During my research I found an amazing project in Jordan describing their way of composting.
If you want to prepare compost in a small garden, you can have a look at this website.
And if you live in a flat without garden, you don’t have to go without compost. Ways for composting inside are shown here and here.
Happy composting!
