A Simple Guide to Composting for Beginners

Aside from creating nutrient dense soil for your yard and garden, composting also helps to detoxify the soil, protect land from erosion and, of course, diverts food waste from a landfill where it won't have the necessary conditions to decompose properly.

I love compost.  Just the either day I brought a bag of pineapple peelings home from a friend's house because she didn't have a compost pile and I couldn't bear to throw the scraps in the garbage. Seriously. The fact that I can turn kitchen waste into nutrient dense soil for my garden  appeals to my trash-to-treasure heart.

It's also a great way to teach our kids about our planet's beautiful systems of regeneration!

What you need in order to start composting:

Composting is easy and you really only need two things to begin:

1. A place to put the scraps when you are in your kitchen.  You can buy fancy lidded compost pails, but those aren't necessary and are generally far too small for a family.  We use a white kitchen trash pail and we fill it nearly every day.  It doesn't need a lid, because it doesn't stink, because we dump it outside every evening. We keep it next to our garbage pail under the kitchen sink.

2. A place to dump the compost in your yard.  This could be as simple as a ring made out of chicken wire, or as complicated as a store bought tumbling barrel composter. We have a three bin system made out of scrap lumber and hardware mesh.  At any given time one bin holds fresh compostables, one has compost in them making, and one has finished or nearly finished compost.  Whenever we empty out the finished compost we start using that bin for our fresh compostables so that the other two bins can finish breaking down. 

(I built my compost bin with my own two hands and my hubby's power tools while he was at work one day several years ago.  I built it using the plans from a book called "Crockett's Victory garden", but it is similar to this tutorial here.)


What you can compost:
Aside from fruit and vegetable scraps, here are some of the other things we compost:

• coffee grinds and tea bags
• egg shells
• stale bread
• floor sweepings and the contents of my vacuum canister
• dryer lint
•  leftover porridge or rice that didn't get eaten
• little paper cupcake cups
• nail clippings and hair trimmings
• facial tissues
• the occasional half eaten pickle found under the sofa (true story) 
• paper bags, when I have one that would otherwise be recycled (I like to line the bottom of my can with them!)
• Lawn and garden clippings
  

Basically anything except meat or bones. I never, ever, ever compost meat because it can cause a whole host of problems like slow decomposition, pests, and maggots. If there were maggots in my compost I would cry.

What about all this talk of nitrogen rich materials and carbon rich materials? 

Some books and websites are going to stress you out with all sorts of talk about nitrogen rich materials (such as vegetable scraps) and carbon rich materials (such as leaves and newspaper) but it is really as simple as this: if the pile smells bad or is slimy, add some carbon.  Give the whole thing a little turn with a pitchfork every now and then. Easy, right?  

Does it stink?

Compost shouldn't smell unpleasant. Occasionally it smells a bit sweet and citrus-y, but generally it just smells like fresh lovely garden dirt! If it stinks, add leaves, newspapers, or torn up cardboard.

To Recap:

• Take your kitchen compost out to the compost heap often.  Because composting is great, but not if it's happening under your kitchen sink.
• Don't put meat in your compost. 
• If it smells, add carbonaceous material. 
• Relax, this is something nature has been doing for pretty much forever without your help...you'll do fine.

Thanks so much for visiting The Complete Guide to Imperfect Homemaking.