How to Compost a Green Garden - Urban gardener video

DENTON TARVER: Today on Urban Gardener, we're going to Ditmas Park to see a garden that uses its own compost. OK, so this is one of my favorite things to do in gardens. This right here is a lawn roller. One of the things that you can do to really sort of draw focus visually in a garden is to put a man-made artifact inside of it. If you put too many of them in, however, it's going to look like a junk field. So be careful about that. What we face in urban gardens a lot is views that we want to mask. So people planted ivy, and it's created a visual green screen, instead of just a big, ugly, cement block wall. FEMALE SPEAKER I've had this garden for about 11 years. This was a jungle. It was a huge jungle. Grass up to here. But there were some beautiful plants in here already. I've got raspberries over here. I have blackberries. This is where I throw all my leaves and yard waste, but I don't put any food in there, because we have raccoons. We have possums. I don't want rats. And then I have more flowers over here. These are lilies, iris. I have asters. I have Black-eyed Susans. I like to have flowers all different times of the year. DENTON TARVER: Excellent. So I wanted to ask you about the compost, though. So what's the point of compost? FEMALE SPEAKER Well, the point of compost is reducing our waste. So all these leaves-- I have trees here. I have trees in the front. And instead of just dumping them in the garbage and putting them in the landfill, I'm able to make them into dirt. This is a food compost, and this is like the premium, deluxe compost. It's really strong, and it's fantastic. And I put it on only my most special plants. You can tell what we eat at our house by our compost. DENTON TARVER: Whatcha got in here? FEMALE SPEAKER There's, like, eggshells and pits. What you do is you take the compost already. You put it on top of the screen, and then you kind of push it down. So it breaks up anything that is not completely broken down. DENTON TARVER: Right. So now, will this take the place of a chemical fertilizer? FEMALE SPEAKER Yeah. I don't use any chemicals. DENTON TARVER: Don't use any chemicals. FEMALE SPEAKER No chemicals. DENTON TARVER: This is an all organic garden. We'll see you next time on Urban Gardener. TRACY METRO: Like home and design? Have Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest? So do we. Want to get some free exclusive content and giveaways? So do we. Subscribe to Spaces right here.