Composting is Free "Black Gold"

The benefits of composting are many, such as free vegetables, healthy flowers, and the joy of knowing you are removing garbage from landfills.

I started by attending a local "clean and beautiful" event in my hometown of Tucson, where I live in the winter, and bought 2 composters. One for my summer home in Pinetop, Arizona and one for Tucson. I have a friend in Colorado who made one in her back yard with chicken wire. Both will work, but we have lots of desert animals and black bear so we need to keep ours covered.

I used the handouts from the local event so I knew what to compost. I notified friends and neighbors as I knew the two of us couldn't generate enough to make much compost. I was amazed how fast it will accumulate from neighbors coming by on their walks, the coffee grounds from our weekly community breakfast at our summer home, items at home like dryer lint, fruit and vegetable scraps, of course, and trimmings from the garden which add up.

In the fall, we shred our pine needles and oak leaves then add what I don't use to cover the garden for the winter. Starbucks gives away coffee grounds and my husband is good about stopping on his trips around town to pick up bags for me. We also have a Sunflower Market which has weekly food scrap give-aways in their parking lot for gardeners to pick up.

What I didn't expect were the "free vegetables", which I will explain. In the early summer, after arriving at our summer home, I spread compost around my flowers for fertilizer. Several weeks later, a tomato plant surfaced by a rose bush. I watched it for awhile then decided to transplant it into my small container vegetable garden. By the end of summer, I had beautiful and delicious grape tomatoes. I dug the plant up in October and moved them to Tucson for the winter, and they flowered and produced fruit all winter. I then dug them up in May and brought them back to the mountain and, again, I have fruit and flowers this summer. An amazing plant which must have come from the tomatoes I bought at the supermarket over a year ago. They seem to be so hardy and I would love to be able to identify the variety. I hope you will try this and enjoy as I have.

By sandra gaskill from Tucson, AZ

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