DIY Food Scrap Composting

Any uneaten organic foods can be added to your composter.

Recycling the waste from your kitchen and turning it into usable garden compost is a straightforward, biological way reduce the bulk of your trash while adding nutrients to the soil. Through steady collection of food scraps and regular rotation of the materials in your composter or compost pile, you can turn waste to compost in just a few months. As you collect food scraps for composting, be selective and avoid using animal byproducts such as meats, fats, oils, blood or bone, which can attract critters and create odors.

Things You'll Need

• Container or bucket
• Composter
• Newspaper, dry leaves, straw or dry grass clippings
• Pitchfork
• Water

Instructions

1. Designate a large bowl with a lid or a compost collection container to use in your kitchen to collect scraps. Add vegetable peels, coffee grounds, egg shells, apple cores, used tea bags, old leafy vegetables, peanut shells and other organic matter as they become available.

2. Line the bottom inside your composter with shredded 1-inch wide strips of newspaper, leaves, straw or dry grass clippings 2 to 3 inches deep.

3. Use a pitchfork to create nest area in the center of the newspaper or straw. Pour a full container of food scraps into the center. Cover the food scraps with a quantity of newspaper strips, straw or dry grass equal to the amount of food added.

4. Pour approximately 1/2 gallon of water over the pile to moisten it and allow the material to sit undisturbed for a week. Continue to collect new food scraps in your container in the kitchen as the composter is "cooking."

5. Rotate the material inside the composter using a pitchfork to mix the old food scraps with the straw, newspaper or grass. Turn the material well to bring the lowest portions of the material to the surface.

6. Make another small nest-like depression in the center of the mixed material. Pour in the new food scraps from your kitchen, and cover them with an equal amount of paper, straw or dry grass. Add water, and allow the compost to "cook" for another week.

7. Continue to repeat Steps 5 and 6 weekly, adding equal amounts of new food and paper materials each time until the composter is full or rotating the material from top to bottom is no longer possible.

8. Turn the material. and add water each week until all of the material inside the composter resembles black soil. Empty the bin, using the finished compost on your garden, and begin again with Step 1.

Tips & Warnings

• Use more or less than 1/2 gallon of water as needed to keep the material moist but not soggy, using enough water that the material is slightly damp a week later.

• For regular large additions of food scraps, consider starting a second composter once the first one is full. While composter number one cooks with no new material, composter number two can be filling. Empty and begin again with composter number one once composter number two is full.

• The air around your composter should never smell badly. Turn the material more frequently, use less water, or check that animal products aren't included in the pile to correct the odor.

References

• "Organic Gardener's Composting"; Steve Solomon; 2006
• "Growing Fruit and Vegetables"; Richard Bird; 2003