compost 101

Compost -- yum.

Look at me becoming all environmental and earthy, starting to compost.  Kind of makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

I'm usually all about starting a garden, dumping in some new topsoil, maybe mixing in some cow manure on top of it, and then religiously spraying my produce with Miracle Gro.  Add in the plants, and you can get a little bit of money wrapped up into it.

I'm not so sure what my biggest motivator was with composting.  It sure as heck wasn't because I wanted to save the earth.  (I use some CFLs and reusable bags when I think to, but that's about as environmentally friendly as I come.)  It might be because I want to save some money.  Or maybe I just find composting to be interesting.

Last year when I started, I just collected eggshells and coffee grounds and would occasionally put them on my plants.  It seemed to help a lot, so I was encouraged.  (I still used Miracle Gro, so maybe the Miracle Gro did all the work and my little compost fertilizer did nothing?)  We started collecting compost again this spring when we planted our garden.  We had an old plastic container we used, and when it came time to put it on my plants, the tiny little heap had turned moldy and had a few gnats flying around it.

That's awesome, especially since it was in my kitchen.

So I went online and bought this cool countertop compost bin.  And I'm collecting all sorts of scraps.  From the picture above, I've already thrown in some coffee grounds, a banana peel, lots of eggshells (we love eggs around here), and newspapers.  After I took this picture, I decided to see what would happen if I threw in some ends of rhubarb I cut off and some strawberry tops.  It's all natural, right?  (Well, maybe not the newspaper.)  And I threw in the coffee filter for good measure.

I've priced large compost bins, but haven't found anything in our price range that I absolutely love.  I ran across this how to article on composting on one of my favorite sites, Young House Love.  So maybe we'll just go a little more cheaper and create our own out of a Rubbermaid container?  That might have the potential to smell up our backyard real quick though.  Plus, Henry likes anything about food, so I can see him being drawn the compost, as gross as it could be.

So does anyone else compost?  Anything else I could consider besides what I've already mentioned, plus vegetable peels and Sun Chips bags?