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What do you do with your food scraps after you finish cooking? If you throw them straight in the bin (like many people do), you are missing out on a great opportunity to improve the health of your garden. Those old food scraps actually have a lot of potential uses, so think twice before you throw them away next time. These are some of the great ways to use food scraps in your garden.
Making Compost
This is one that you probably already know about, and many people assume that this is the only way to use food scraps in your garden, but it isn’t. However, it is a good place to start, so gather up your food scraps and start making a compost pile right away. A good mixture of green matter (food scraps, grass clippings etc.) and brown matter (wood chips, dead leaves, paper etc.) will create a rich compost that improves the health of your garden. If you use a Maze compost tumbler instead of a heap, it is easier to mix all of your materials and they will break down into compost a lot faster. Making compost will use up a lot of your food scraps, but it’s important that you don’t have too much green material, so you should look for other ways to use food scraps in the garden too.
Sheet Mulching
Sheet mulching is a great alternative to composting when you are getting your garden ready to plant. Instead of creating a compost pile, you put the food scraps directly onto the soil. Then, cover that layer with some wet cardboard or newspaper and then top it with a few inches of mulch. The cardboard or paper will prevent any weeds and the mulch locks in the moisture while the food scraps break down and attract worms. Once the process is complete, you will be left with rich soil that is perfect for planting.
Getting Rid Of Pests
Pests are a gardener’s worst nightmare and if you don’t keep on top of them, they will ruin your plants. But a lot of people don’t like the idea of using things like slug pellets and they want to find eco-friendly ways of controlling pests. You can use food scraps to deter pests because there are certain things that they don’t like the smell of. If you keep old scraps from chilis, peppers, and garlic, you can sit them in water to create a spray. Pests will hate the smell, so if you spray it around your plants, it should deter them. Sprinkling old coffee grounds around the base of plants is a good way to scare off the slugs as well.
Growing New Plants
A lot of the vegetables that we eat can easily be used to grow more plants. For example, if you keep the bottoms of cabbage, celery, and lettuce, you can plant them and they will grow. When you buy a squash and cut it open, you don’t normally eat the seeds, so why not plant them instead? If you’re looking to start a vegetable garden, this is one of the best ways to do it.
The majority of your food scraps will go on your compost heap, but that isn’t the only way to use them, so try out some of these other ideas too.
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