Trench Compost Kitchen Scraps

Summer means lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and that means lots of kitchen scraps to manage. Don’t send them down the garbage disposer or throw them away. Instead, recycle them into your gardens.

Worm and pile composting are great ways to manage these scraps. But if these methods aren’t for you, try trench composting.

Cut the kitchen scraps, no meat, fat or cheese please, into smaller pieces whenever possible to speed decomposition. Then bury them in a hole in a vacant space in the garden. It’s really that easy.

My friend Ray would always trench compost in the pathways of his garden. He would bury plant waste in the paths throughout the summer. The following season he would use the amended pathways as the planting area and last year’s planting beds as his path. That way he was continually recycling kitchen scraps, improving the soil, and rotating his crops.

A bit more information: Sheet composting is nature’s way of converting leaves into organic woodland soils. As leaves drop to the ground in the fall; worms, ground beetles, and microorganisms help break them down and incorporate it into the soil. You can do the same. Shred leaves with your mower and use them as mulch in your flower and vegetable gardens.