Composting’s a great way to get rid of unwanted table scraps and improve the soil, but sometimes the thought of maintaining a big box of rotting vegetable matter can seem a bit daunting to the weekend gardener — especially in a small urban space. But just because you can’t commit to a physical bin or worm ranch, doesn’t mean you can’t compost. Trench or pit composting is a great method for small scale soil improvement, and it’s as easy as these three steps.

What You’ll Need:

*Garden Spade

*Compostable Scraps. A good balance between carbon-rich materials such as dried leaves, pine needles, unbleached paper towels or cardboard scraps and nitrogen-rich vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, and grass clippings is ideal.

How To:

1) Pick your location and dig a trench about one foot deep.

2) Fill trench halfway with chopped up scraps.

3) Cover scraps with the leftover excavation dirt. Compost should decay fully within one month to one year depending on the climate conditions and soil composition. If you’re not rotating the location of the pile, you can continue to layer scraps and soil into the trench throughout the year.

Variations:

If you’ll be planting in the same garden for a long time, consider crop rotation as part of your composting routine. By dividing your garden into three sections, you can use one third for composting, one third as your path, and the final third as your planting area. The following year the compost spot becomes the throughway, the old path becomes the planting area, and the old planting area becomes the new compost pile. Two years later, you’re ready to plant in the original compost area.

Planting a “green manure” crop on top of the compost trench can also help add nutrients to the earth and keep the topsoil in one place. Green manure crops includes alfalfa, clover, mustard, winter cover crops such as oats, and certain beans. Till under at least a month before planting other crops in their place (usually in early spring).

Photo courtesy of Motster.