3 Kitchen Scraps to Boost Your Garden; No Composting Required

Compost, or more affectionately called ‘black gold’, is an incredibly important and helpful additive to have in your garden. The high organic matter adds tonnes of nutrients that the plants use up, back into the soil. It also helps to reduce the amount of food waste that ends up in landfills every year. In Canada alone, 11 million tonnes of avoidable food waste end up in the landfill.  

What is compost?

Compost is a nutrient-rich, soil-like material created when organic matter (food waste) decomposes with the help of useful microbes, like bacteria and fungi. It can be made of numerous materials, such as green matter (nitrogen-rich foods like food scraps and grass clippings), brown matter (carbon-rich foods like leaves and straw), and manure.

Benefits of compost?

Compost can enrich the soil, improve soil water retention and soil structure, and can help to encourage good bugs and discourage other pests and disease. Overall, these benefits can lead to healthier and happier plants. But aside from that, there are several environmental benefits as well. While improving the soil can help plants thrive, it also plays an important part in preventing topsoil erosion, reducing carbon emissions, and reducing food waste in landfills. It can also help reduce the need for expensive fertilizers, saving you money. Or increasing your plant budget.

One of the challenges of this gardening task is that it takes a significant amount of space and discipline. But don’t worry, you can still turn kitchen scraps into food for your plants without having to invest in a tumbler composting barrel.

If you aren’t quite at the stage where you’re ready to turn a corner of your yard into a compost heap, here are three kitchen scraps that you can add to your garden immediately.

Banana Peels

It’s no secret that bananas are rich in potassium. This mineral is vital for plants during the growth and development stage. It aids in important functions like photosynthesis, and water and nutrient transport, helping the nutrients get from the roots of a plant to the blooms or fruit.

To use a banana peel as fertilizer, you can literally just bury the peel in the soil near your plants or throw it on top of the soil where it will slowly decompose. The potassium from the peel will slowly leach into the soil, providing the nutrient to the plant.

If you’re worried about pests, you can always add the peel to a blender with a little bit of water and liquify it before pouring the mixture around your plants.

Coffee Grounds

Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, an important mineral for plant growth since it plays a crucial role in chlorophyll production (what makes the leaves green). Add coffee grounds to your soil sparingly, since they are quite acidic and can alter the pH of your soil drastically if used too much. Start by trying this method on your acidic-loving plants.

Eggshells

Eggshells are high in calcium which is important in the development of the plants cell structure. Tomatoes are particularly susceptible to calcium-deficient soils and can develop blossom end rot on their fruit if they don’t have an adequate supply.

Read: Diagnosing and Preventing Blossom End Rot in Your Tomatoes

Use up your egg shells by washing and drying the shells out. Then, place them in a food processor or blender and grind them into a powder. You can also add them to a bag and take your frustrations out with a rolling pin to smash them up into little bits. Then, just sprinkle the powder around your plants!  

I hope this will help you start your composting journey and reduce the pressure to go big or go home. Leave a note in the comments if you know of other kitchen scraps that can be added to the garden without composting!