Reuse Halloween Pumpkins, Gourds through Composting
If you’ve never tried composting, post-Halloween is a great time to start, with plenty of leaves on the ground and leftover carved pumpkins, both good ingredients for a compost bin or pile. A large amount of space is not required; a composting bin can be as small as three feet wide. Materials to place inside include “browns” (brown leaves/grass, cardboard, newspaper) and “greens” (plant-based food scraps, green leaves/grass) in a 2:1 ratio.
If you live in an apartment and don’t have yard materials for a compost bin, or a way to use the compost once it’s created, you can still collect food scraps to help create compost elsewhere for local farmers and gardeners—click here and here for programs that offer local drop-off locations (one is at CityLine) as well as pick-up service.
The City of Richardson supports composting and mulching (both can decrease the amount of trash the City sends to the landfill by 20-30 percent), and encourages both through its “Make Mulch Not Trash” lawn care initiative and its partnerships with Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension Service, Texas Pure and the Dallas County Master Gardeners Association.
View free composting classes and how-to-compost videos online from AgriLife Extension’s Water University.
Video: https://youtu.be/8b8859riyhk
Video: https://www.facebook.com/104166676449970/videos/3324941937554444
Website: www.cor.net/mulch
Website: https://wateruniversity.tamu.edu
