I walked around my gardens yesterday, looking for tulip and daffodils poking through Winter’s snowy remnants. I’m ready for Spring, as is the 50-gallon garbage can in our garage that is full to the brim with table scraps I’ve been collecting since the cold weather settled in for good last Fall. I knew I wouldn’t stay on top of the composting if I had to walk across the lawn in the dark and cold every day to dump scraps in the compost bin on the far corner of the property line. So I devised this “holding tank” a few steps off the kitchen, as an experiment.
I learned that it takes a family of four less than three months to fill a 50-gallon garbage can with uneaten dinners from kids’ plates, and overlooked produce from the fridge. And I learned that as long as I keep it out of sight, my husband can tolerate a family tradition — stockpiling food scraps to feed the worms.
“You’re throwing away gold!” my mother would say if she saw me toss an apple core in the garbage can. “Put that back into the earth where it belongs!”
If I were more religious about the compost, and by that I mean, if my husband didn’t sneak-dump leftovers into the garbage can, I might have needed a second 50-gallon can in the garage for the Winter months’ compost. I didn’t complain that he was throwing food away because at least he was cleaning, the way he didn’t flip out about my aromatic garbage collection in the garage because at least the bowls of compost on the counter were getting thrown out regularly.
I admit, I also had a hand in improperly dumping table scraps. There were days when what came out of the fridge was beyond compost. (Don’t judge me!) There were days when I had to speed clean before company dropped in with no more than a “We’re two blocks away” warning. Deserted breakfasts were hastily dumped in the garbage disposal.
Last winter, all the food scraps that came from heirloom vegetables and fruits went directly into my garden via a very sophisticated chute, called the living room window.
My husband frowned upon it when he caught me walking across the living room rug with a bowl full of scraps. He called what I was doing “white trash”.
I replied to that with a Homer Simpson quote, “It ain’t white trash if nobody sees it.”
At the time the house next door was vacant.
In the Spring, I tilled the heirloom scraps into the garden under that window and in three months I had a garden full of tomato plants, cantaloupe, green beans, pumpkin, squash, cucumbers and peas. All free.
Because I tilled in rows, the vegetables sprouted in rows. It looked planned. When the tomatoes were six inches high, I thinned them out and caged the strongest seedlings. In spite of the tomato blight everyone complained about, we had a spotless bumper crop.
The beans climbed up a trellis leftover from last year’s peas. The pumpkin vines took over as a ground cover to keep the weeds down.
I don’t think I can get away with that this Spring. I didn’t separate any of the heirloom/organic table scraps from the hybrid. I’ve grown cantaloupe from hybrid seeds. They look good, but they aren’t edible. Even the skunks and rabbits turn them down over compost.
Having said that, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this 50-gallon barrel of food scraps. I’m just really glad I have it. It makes me happy in a strange way. Partly because it’s a good thing to do for the Earth, and partly because I can’t believe I got away with it, without Skye sneak-dragging it to the curb on trash day.
I think if I can slide it across the half snow/half soggy lawn, I might be able to dump it into the proper compost bin. The compost bin proper. That’s what I’m going to call it when I talk to Skye about moving it this weekend.
“Honey, can you haul that out to the compost bin proper?”
I can’t wait to see the look on his face. I’ll try to say “compost bin proper” with a straight face.
Before he can process what I’m asking him to do, I’ll add: “That way I can hose it out and clean it up before the flies come this summer.” I’ll make it sound official and practical, responsible and necessary. If I don’t, I run the risk of him slapping a trash sticker on it and rolling it down the driveway.
Subscribe to the
RSS feed or 
Email Updates.Help us promote this article by bookmarking it to your favorite social network via an icon below:
