Composting with kids

Looking for something to do with all those fall leaves? Why not start a compost pile with your kids?

One thing I love to do is grow my own vegetables. I take so much joy in seeing something grow that can sustain my family. Plants fascinate me. I started a little garden last year, but then we went to Georgia for a month and everything kind of...died.  The kids love to help in the garden as well. Not so much the pulling of weeds, but they love to reap the harvest! When we moved in to our current home, there was already a compost bin in the yard. For the last year I've been thinking about composting but have never committed. It's really silly that I haven't because it isn't very hard.

It seems as though almost all of the leaves have fallen, so the time for raking and bagging has begun here.  The kids helped rake up some leaves and filled up a big bucket to haul to the backyard to the compost bin. Even Gavin got involved.

When composting it is important to have an equal volume of brown and green materials.  Brown materials are carbon emitting things like: dead leaves, newspaper, twigs, or cardboard.  Green materials are nitrogen emitting things such as: grass clippings, vegetable scraps, and even egg shells.

They started a brown layer with the brown leaves. I sent them on a hunt to find things that we could add to the brown pile.  They found newspaper and some twigs and in they went! For the green I had them scour the fridge for things that were probably not great to eat anymore. They came out with some lettuce that was on it's way to the garbage and some old kale leaves.  Some other things we added were egg shells and some old ground coffee.

Finally, we watered it and added some worms. Kaileb had a blast digging up those worms!

If you would like to know more about composting to get some wonderful dirt brown gold to fertilize your garden, here is a link!

Happy composting!