If you’ve been around a while, you know that Jeff and I have a fairly large garden for having a small townhome backyard. The past few years, we’ve grown a wide variety of fruits and vegetables: squash, watermelon, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, herbs, okra… you name it.
We grew a lot for having such a small backyard!
Last Fall, I was reading an article about the top luxury kitchen appliances (I love reading those sorts of articles because it helps me to dream big about what I want my dream kitchen to include someday). Among all the culinary appliances, I was surprised to read that owning a kitchen composter made the list!
I was instantly interested in owning a kitchen composter because growing garden-fresh vegetables has been a budding hobby of mine thanks to Jeff (who is the chief gardener – I am his apprentice!), and I generate more than my fair share of food scraps.
Of all the lessons I have learned in the first couple years of gardening, the importance of soil quality is one of them. The quality will drastically impact your harvest. Thus, I have already learned to amend my soil throughout the season. I use certain organic fertilizers, but there is something so cool about fertilizing my soil with the nutrients from the compost created from my own food scraps!
If you are interested in learning more about me and Jeff’s gardening journey, check out this blog post here.
The Reencle Kitchen Composter:
The Reencle composter is a very unique product compared to other kitchen composters because it actually relies on microorganisms to create its compost as opposed to blending and dehydrating the food scraps. This use of microorganisms is preferable because it creates a true compost that works naturally in the soil.
Additionally, the microorganisms are part of the reason why a Reencle composter is virtually odorless even when composting foods that would normally stink up your garbage can such as fish.
It is really amazing how most foods can be composted in 24 hours, which is literally weeks to months faster than traditional composting techniques.
It’s funny how I’m excited now to throw food scraps away, because I have no guilt about wasting food since the scraps will help me grow more food later on.
Fun fact, Reencle has commercial-sized units that can compost literal tons worth of food and are used to manage food waste at places such as Universal Studios!
Reencle Set-Up
The set-up process for the unit is super easy and only takes a few minutes. Here it is:
1. Clip on the Carbon Filter that minimizes potential odors (The unit only needs one filter per year and it comes with two filters).
2. Pour in the microorganism concentrate and add water to activate
3. Only add simple carbs to the composter for the first day or two while the microorganisms finish activating.
4. Begin composting your normal food scraps
5. Harvest compost but always leave it a quarter-full to maintain microorganisms.
My Garden
Despite only having had my Reencle for a few months, I’ve already used compost from it on several occasions! Luckily, I got one during peak summer-gardening season.
I estimate that my food scraps fill up the Reencle composter in about a month or so if I do not empty it. Keep in mind that I put in several trash cans worth of food scraps during that time, but the volume reduces significantly in the composting process.
Also, I’m not sure if it’s because of all the tomatoes that I compost, but my compost has been a rich reddish color! I feel pride as a garden momma by feeding my garden the most healthy diet.
I also had to feed my garden more tomatoes than I would’ve liked to, because this summer, we were randomly hit with a wild hailstorm in the middle of August. Sadly, it destroyed many of my crops.
Fortifying the Soil
Jeff and I just winterized one of our garden beds and fortified the soil with a whole month’s worth of food waste compost.
I just spread the compost over the soil and mixed it into the top few inches. This is an effective technique (and definitely the one you should use!) because it allows the compost to cure properly.
This involves returning to a normal temperature and thoroughly mixing the compost with the soil. Not only will this restore the organic nutrients for next year’s growth, but it will also enhance water retention in the soil!
I’m looking forward to adding more compost to my remaining garden beds in the coming months. Next year, I plan to conduct some experiments to compare the performance of plants enriched with my Reencle compost against those without it! I’m confident it will make a significant difference!
One response to “Summer Garden Update (2024)”
555