Sunday, November 24, 2013

City Science Kids Presents: Composting!

All living things die and decompose (that is, rot).  When they do, the nutrients they contained when they were alive, still exist—and can be used to feed other living things!

In this episode, our friends at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in Brooklyn, NY, explain how we can make compost from all the fruit and vegetable matter that’s left over in our kitchens—apple cores and banana peels, wilted lettuce leaves and the skins of onions. This not only breaks down into a nutritious soil we can sprinkle under our trees and shrubs and flowers and crops; it makes less garbage that we send to landfills (where things break down veeeerrrry slowly, if at all).

Try an experiment at your house: Keep all your fruit and vegetable scraps in your freezer for a week. How much organic garbage do you end up with when 7 days are over?


1 comment:

  1. A second teacher writes: "My second graders [compost] as their science experiment every year. I have a 3 level composting bin in my classroom." She also says she's got compost worms in her bins: "Red Wigglers. The Queens Botanical garden started off teachers with the bin, worms & great book for $15" 10 years ago. Write in with your compost stories!

    ReplyDelete