How to Use a Planter to Compost Vegetable Waste

A planter can make a great container for composting vegetable waste. It can provide you with rich soil for potted plants and gardens. Planter composting is good for small spaces like patios, balconies, and stamp size yards.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Vegetable waste
• Potting soil
• Potting spade or large spoon
• Large planter

1. The planter can be any largish planter you have laying around. A 15-16 inch diameter planter and 15 inches deep would be excellent. If need be, you can always go to a store and buy yourself an inexpensive plastic planter. The one I use is a plastic green one with the built in water tray on the bottom

2. To set up the planter to compost vegetable waste start by finding a place to put it. I keep mine on the patio in a corner near some of my potted plants. I use the potted plants to screen the composting planter from visitors.

3. After finding your place for the planter, you will want to add the potting soil. You should add enough soil to fill the planter to about the halfway mark. I use standard inexpensive potting soil bought from the garden center. It's basically just dirt – no fertilizer or other additions.

4. You compost vegetable waste by simply chopping it up into small pieces and adding it to the soil in the compost planter. You can cut it up using a knife, a chopper, or a blender. Since I usually have only small amounts of vegetable waste to process, I generally use a knife to dice it up. If you want to make the process go faster then run the vegetables thru a blender.

5. Use the hand spade or large spoon to mix the chopped up vegetable waste into the soil. Mix it up real good to make sure the soil covers up the vegetables. As you get more waste vegetables, add them to the soil. Just mix them real well into the stuff that is already in the planter. Over time bacteria in the soil will break down the vegetable waste and incorporate it into the soil.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't let the soil dry out. Keep it moist but not soggy. Add just enough water to keep the soil moist but still allows the soil to crumble as you turn it. Eventually you will end up with a rich, water retaining mix that you can use for your potted plants or garden.
• You can also add eggshells to the compost mixture. Let the eggshells dry completely, then crumble them into tiny pieces and mix them into the compost. They take longer to decompose, so adding them as itty bitty pieces helps disperse them in the soil and not make them so noticeable.
• Do Not add meat or fatty stuff like cheese. Fatty stuff has a tendency to stink real bad as it decomposes.

[gregpardo]

on 9/10/2009 Intuitive. 5+rec. Please return the favor.

[jxhmylife]

on 8/12/2009 very great idea! people like you make our world better!

[dressyourhorse]

on 8/5/2009 Just check out your articles and this one is just plain clever.

[mweise]

on 6/18/2009 Recycling always rocks! Thanks for making it easier :) 5*