Building an Outdoor Composting Pit

This Sunday morning after church, I was struck with the desire to build a composting pit in my backyard. My family and I have done quite a few "sustainable living" living projects this summer, including starting a small urban vegetable garden (three varieties of peppers and New Yorker tomatoes) and continuing our practice of not using pesticides in our flower gardens.

The next step was building a new composting pit. My wife and I each had one at our respective previous homes, and after being here for a summer and a half it was time to get to work. I set to clearing away a 4'x4' area in our backyard in between the shed and wood pile. After clearing some old fencing that had been left by the previous owner, I went the greenhouse (which in truth is a shoddy addition to the hurricane doors which I insist on referring to as "the greenhouse" because it just sounds cool to me) and see what materials we had on hand to get the job done. We had all the making of a composting pit (nothing fancy), but certainly a sincere backyard composter could be built with what was on hand.

For the uninitiated, there are many benefits to composting:

1. Reduces the cost of getting rid of your garbage--especially when you pay by the bag.
2. Reduces the stink in your garbage bags. With all that wet stuff gone, your trash is lighter and less putrid.
3. Reduce global warming. Food decomposing in the landfill produces methane, a supercharged greenhouse gas; in your backyard compost bin it doesn't
4. Saves space for longer-lived landfills.
5. Produces great soil amendment for your garden.
6. Returns nutrients to the soil such as phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, zinc, manganese, iron and boron.
7. When added to the soil compost helps promote root development, enhances retention of water and nutrients, and makes the soil easier to cultivate.
8. When used on the surface of the soil as mulch, compost reduces rainfall run-off, decreases water evaporation from the soil, and helps to control weeds.
9. And more!

Another great benefit to this project was that each member of our family contributed in its being built: the boys helped with staking and tool collecting, my daughter cut and set up the chicken wire and my wife assisted in the design and adjusting the post tabs to be used in securing the chicken wire. Again, nothing fancy, but I must confess to a great deal of satisfaction upon its completion, especially the manner in which it was built.

If you're looking for a family project that will bring you some pleasant family memories and contribute to preserving our environment I would recommend building a composting pit. The Fall season will be here (in Upstate New York, anyway) before you know it and that, combined kitchen degradables, should help get you started toward preparing garden resources for next year.

Now if anyone could recommend a good counter top composter for our kitchen... ;-)