Scraptacular Compost Lasagna Recipe

 

Just like the lasagne we love to eat, compost is made the same – in layers. 
You can make a compost as small as a bucket or as big as a pile – whatever suits your space at home and how much organic waste you make. 
You can watch the compost process that turns food and garden organic waste into valuable nutrients for the soil inside of a bucket in as little as 2 - 4 weeks.

Challenge #4: Can you compost in a bucket?

A. Set up your bucket compost experiment:

• Find a semi shady place where your bucket won’t be disturbed
• Collect your brown and green ingredients – take some photos of the things you collected. 
• Chop up these ingredients to fit into the bucket, but also to be of different sizes to compare later on.
• Fill the bucket half full with green and brown ingredients.
• Fill the bucket another quarter full with soil or potting mix or sawdust.
• While mixing all the layers in the bucket, wet all the contents of the bucket so that it’s as damp as a wrung out sponge but not dripping wet.
• Poke some holes in the lid of the bucket for air and put the lid on

B. Make some predictions about what will happen in your compost bucket –

• Will it smell bad?
• Will things grow in it?
• Will the ingredients look the same in four weeks’ time?
• Will size of the ingredient have an effect on how fast it breaks down?

 C. Every few days, open up the bucket to mix and water the ingredients.

• What do you notice about the temperature, smell, texture?

 D. At the end of four weeks, empty the bucket onto a garden bed to discover the results of your experiment.

Do you have a rich, dark brown, earthy smelling material? If yes, then you made compost!

• Can you identify any of the original ingredients – use your photos.
• Were your predictions correct?
• How much has each ingredient broken down or decomposed – a little, by half, completely?
• Why didn’t an ingredient break down as much?
• How could you improve the compost process? Get some ideas here or visit Dirt Girl World for more activities!

 

Do the conga 'cause you just completed a Compost Conga Challenge!!!