Make Your Own Fertilizer

The birds are chirping and tiny pastel buds are popping out of the soil, which means it’s time to start thinking about gardening again. Growing your own garden is one of the best things you can do. It roots you into the Earth, mind and spirit, calming your racing thoughts from taking over in our high-strung, competitive, ego-based world. Sometimes all the anxiousness can fuel people to work harder and achieve great things; other times, it simply digs into a person’s sense of self-worth. Connecting to nature is physically grounding and helps with pushing that reset button on a daily basis so you can feel whole again. As a gardener, you’ll see that it’s not just about getting veggies – you can buy most any veg for just a few bucks. It really is about the process and how it makes you feel.

That being said, having a higher yield crop and really strong plants is a fun goal to work towards and a handful of hacks will help with that. The easiest one is making your own fertilizer. Some people go all out and ship in tons of smelly loam, and that’s cool if you’re into that, but my fertilizer of choice is leftover kitchen scraps. All those peels and skins that would normally end up in a giant trash dump (shipped in plastic bags on giant trucks that burn tons of gasoline…) could instead be broken down into their most basic nutrients and used to enhance your garden – making your flowers bloom and your tomatoes pop.

Keep a bin under your sink and maybe once a week (or more frequently if it’s hot out and things start to decompose sooner) you can dig a hole in the ground at the back of your yard and put them in there. Just cover it with a little soil each time and nature will take care of the rest. You can also speed up the process by grinding your scraps (potato peels, coffee grinds, banana peels, etc.) in a food processor and put it directly under your rose plants, mixing it in with the soil just a little.

This is my favorite compost bin, I just think it has a cute style to it, but feel free to get creative. You can be scrappy with duct tape or fancy with some specially purchased gadget just for the job – there are a ton of options out there to fit your own distinctive style. And the rewards of having a thriving garden to find peace in are astronomical.

Let us know what you think of having a compost bin in your kitchen. Does it impact your garden? What does yours look like? We’d love to know! 🙂