In No-Waste Composting, you’ll discover the hows and whys of composting and find over a dozen practical step-by-step plans for building both indoor and outdoor composting systems that require a minimal amount of space.
“I don’t have enough space to compost.”
“I don’t know what’s safe to compost and what isn’t.”
“I live in the city, so I don’t think I can compost.”
“Indoor composting systems are smelly.”
“I don’t have a garden, so I don’t need to compost.”
You can actually overcome all these doubts and obstacles with the advice found in this book!
No-Waste Composting: Small-Space Waste Recycling, Indoors and Out. Plus, 10 projects to repurpose household items into compost-making machines by Michelle Balz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an excellent book. Content, organization, visual appeal and composition, it’s just perfect. I learned a lot. I’m a hobbiest gardener, it’s one thing I’m super passionate about, and one thing I could do all day, every day, gardening is so incredibly rewarding!
FTC disclosure: I would like to thank Quarto Publishing Group – Cool Springs Press for providing me with an advance reader copy via access to the galley for free through the NetGalley program.
I’d recommend this to any gardener, whether a novice gardener starting out, nervous and a notorious killer of your gifted house plants to an expert who can grow passion fruit and lemon trees indoors like my sister, I think anyone will find a treasure of gardening value in this book.
To answer to the book’s first question, I would say I’m definitely obsessed with composting. Whenever I throw a banana peel away without having access to throwing it into a compost, my heart turns a little, thinking of what could be in the little garden of mine.
First, the sans serif stylistic heading and body fonts made the reading experience fun and allowed for an ease of reading that drew me in, which is what I’ve really felt I needed this year.
As far as content, it makes a great case for composting and the enthusiasm is inspiring. I liked the troubleshooting, many methodologies, and the boldness to present how domestic animal manuring could be done.
The writing style is very conversation like, inviting, not overly academic yet packed with useful scientific information and rationale.
Structurally this book is very solid. Introductions to a concept, followed by real-life examples, then how to, step-by-step instructions in creating your own project with very affordable options. You can go fancy or budget.
It has a great amount and mix of photos with graphic images along with excerpt tidbits of supportive, detailed side notes that expanded on a lot of good topics.
I will say there were just a few small parts that were repetitive in nature like the urine being higher in nitrogen, benefits of coffee grounds, layering with leaves, burying the fruit and vegetables to avoid pests, but they were minor and I suppose it was good to be reminded of those principles.
I am so excited for next gardening season! If you are too, I’d highly recommend this one!
Looking forward to trying Bokashi method and I’m curious to try spraying the Bokashi tea on leaves, the terra-cotta method, and the Hügelkultur method. Be sure to tag me with your gardening adventures, I’d love to see what you’ve been up to and what methods you use to amend your soil.
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