How to Compost Kitchen Scraps and Yard Waste

Put vegetable scraps to good use in your composter.

Garden composting is a way to limit the amount of garbage you throw away in the landfill as well as provide fertile soil to use in gardening and landscape projects. When most people think of composting, they think of smelly garbage sitting in their back yard. But that couldn't be further from the truth. When the proper rules for kitchen composting and garden composting are followed, it can be a pleasant and rewarding project.

Things You'll Need

• Kitchen scraps
• Yard trimmings
• Shovel

Instructions

1. Set up a garden composting container or select an area of the yard where you will dump composting materials. Pick a shady part of the yard that has good drainage.

2. Begin placing table scraps and yard trimmings into the garden composting pile. Think of the garden compost waste in two forms: brown and green. You should place 3 parts of brown material -- dry materials rich in carbon -- into the gardening compost pile for every 1 part of green material -- wet material rich in nitrogen. This ratio keeps the smell down. Brown material includes leaves, mulch, twigs, and pine straw. Green material includes grass clippings and trimmings from the kitchen including egg shells, coffee grounds and tea bags.

3. Place new material into the gardening compost pile by digging a hole in the center of the pile and placing the new material in. Using a shovel mix it into the old material.

4. Using a shovel, mix the gardening compost thoroughly once a week even if you have not added any additional material to it.

Tips & Warnings

• If the gardening compost pile starts to smell bad, add more leaves, pine straw or twigs and stop putting in table scraps until the smell recedes.

• Never put meat or dairy products from the kitchen into your composter.

References

• University of Georgia Extension: Food Composting
• University of Maine Extension: How Compost Happens