How to Use Dinner Scraps for Compost

Using fertilizers can harm both your health and your environment. But maintaining a small garden in a small backyard also taxes the soil's nutrient content. Solution: enter the kitchen compost pile. Composting is an ancient practice, but has contemporary benefits.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Covered Bucket
• Mesh Wire
• Sunny Spot in a Backyard

1. Place a closed bucket next to your sink or your dishwasher if you have one (you can also put it underneath your sink if that is more in line with your sense of kitchen aesthetics, of course). Every time you clear your plate, dump the remainders into the bucket.

2. Create an enclosed mesh wire fence around your scrap pile. You can do this best by using a few stakes to secure a 3x3 patch of ground. Make the mesh wire reach about 3 feet -- higher than any stray neighborhood pets can jump, so they won't be able to get into your scrap pile. Don't push the fence's stakes in too deeply, since you'll want to remove them in step 4.

3. Once the bucket reaches capacity, dump the contents over the fence. Stir them with some of your gardens dirt and earlier scraps you dumped into the pile. If you have them, you can add leaf litter from raking. You can also mix in newspaper scraps in small amounts since these will degrade quickly and counteract some of the acidity.

4. Each spring, when you are ready to add compost to your garden, dig out the dirt from below the fresh scraps and spread it on top of your soil. Use a rototiller or a hoe to till the soil so that the compost and its nutrients are integrated into the soil.

Tips & Warnings

• In summer time, you will probably want to relocate the bucket to a secure area outside, since it will likely smell and attract flies if left indoors. Be careful to put the lid on tight and put a heavy rock on top, since the food odors from the bucket are likely to attract pests like raccoons and squirrels.
• If you have pets yourself, you may want to add extra reinforcements to your compost pile. Decomposing foods can be very harmful to domestic dogs.