« Get Cheap Stuff At The Recycle Shop | Main | Homemade Tofu Planting Pot »
Put Your Veggie Scraps To Good Use: Compost
By thomas | April 15, 2008
Fresh herbs are expensive in Japan. Can we spice up our cooking on the cheap? Yes! Reader kk sends in a 2-part tip that can save you cash and has the nice side-effect of putting your trash to good use:
- Grow your own herbs
- Use your food trash for compost
In kk’s words:
I grow my own fresh herbs since the herb selection at most markets here is dismal and expensive for fresh. I also grow cherry tomatoes and zucchinis sometimes on my balcony.
Anyway, a perfect use for your old rice and scraps from your veggies and meals is compost! Much better for your plants than the fertilizer they sell in the store. I have two buckets I use for this purpose. You will initially have to put a little dirt in your first bucket. Then start adding the food. Shake up the bucket every time you add new food. Eventually you will start putting food in your second bucket so the first can fully compost. Then you have a constant rotating stock of compost.
If you have coworkers that garden at all, you can give them compost too. Most will love it because from my understanding homemade compost isn’t a common practice in Japan.
What a great way to use all your old akebi peels, hassaku pith and old rice. Thanks kk!
Like this post? Give me the Thumbs Up!
Share: Stumble This | Zoom This | JapanSoc This
Topics: Japanese Food | Trackback
April 15th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Make Your Garbage Useful | nihonhacks.com…
Do you cook? Do you live in Japan? If so you may have noticed that fresh herbs aren’t cheap, and sometimes you can’t find a non-powder form of the herb you want. Here’s a hack about growing your own and using your old food scraps for compost….
April 15th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Yeah, food in general in Japan is kind of expensive.. especially when it comes to fruit! So you may want to try growing your own too!
May 8th, 2008 at 6:35 am
You know, a lot of herbs can grow from a single leaf. If you have leftover herbs, or, well, even some vegetables, like negi, you can try planting your leftovers.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 am
I just moved back to the centre of Japan, and found that our town has a free composting service. You have to sign up, but then you can take all your biodegradable garbage over once a week, and after some (unspecified) amount of time, you’ll receive compost back for fertiliser. I believe most towns are now doing this - it’s free, and a lot easier than the two bucket system (though I guess maybe that’s sheer laziness on my part).
Good luck with the herbs!