Composting: A Complete Beginner's Guide

Table of Content

• best home compost bins for effortless composting
• Shop for composting products online
• Discover the Best Way to Compost: 14 Methods Compared
• Ingredients for Composting
• Here’s an Important note on ORGANICS before you get started:
• Best for Gardeners: D.F. Omer 95-Gallon Plastic Odor-Resistant Outdoor Stationary Composter With Latching Lid

Learning how to take cuttings from plants is a fantastic way to increase your pre-existing plant haul – and it's totally free. You can do this with both hardwood and softwood plants. Nick Hamilton, owner of Barnsdale Gardens, suggests not wasting bath water either, as this can also be piped into your water butt.

Of all the ways to compost, cold composting is probably the most tried, tested, and reliable. It’s also one of the most popular forms of backyard composting. Cold composting is an outdoor method in which you create one or more compost piles somewhere on your property . You then add organic materials like yard waste or coffee grounds to the pile and let nature decompose it for you. Photo Courtesy of Fix.com BlogWhen your compost pile smells nice and earthy, you have just the right amount of air, moisture, and browns to greens ratio.

best home compost bins for effortless composting

A helpful analogy is to think of tending to your compost like tending a fire. Just as in a fire you need to structure the wood to get the air going, in compost you have to do a similar thing, adding spaces to give oxygen to those heroic microbes. Diggs says the browns are key because they allow water to flow, and air to flow, something called aeration. Also, you can store the food scraps in a bag in your freezer or the back of the fridge. That's an easy way to avoid odors and insects in your kitchen.

Remove the top of the pile and harvest the compost at the bottom annually, or start a new pile when the first pile is 3'x3'x3'. After three to six months, you will be able to harvest your vermicompost, or worm castings, at the bottom of your worm bin. Vermicompost doesn’t need to cure and can be used immediately or stored for future use. Compost Guide Blog - The Compost Guide Blog is among the more straightforward and beginner-friendly composting resources online. By Stu Campbell is a fantastic composting for beginners book, first published in 1998.

Shop for composting products online

It is not recommended that sick or dead plants or weeds be placed in compost piles. If you put a good pile of seeds and disease pathogens in a hot pile, they will all die. Grass clippings collected from lawns that recently used pesticides should not be composted, as this is how pesticides were introduced into the soil. If left at a low temperature for a long period of time, TMV will degrade. Because compost decomposes at a rate of 120 to 160 F, anything that raises the temperature will speed up the process. Compost Plus contains a proprietary blend of microorganisms that is intended to break down yard waste.

The composter takes up just one cubic foot on your countertop. Its carbon filter eliminates odors and its removable waste bucket is dishwasher safe. From the compost tumbler to the closed compost bin , it’s easy to get started. You can compost indoors or out, though indoor composting looks a little different.

Discover the Best Way to Compost: 14 Methods Compared

Now that you’re in the know about some of the most common composting methods, let’s explore a few popular compost bins for effortless home composting. All of these bins have their own unique advantages that make them a great addition to your household or backyard. Food scrap and yard waste may be the largest percent of your compost material — you can include a lot of items from your kitchen and garden. But other household items, like newspaper and hair, are also fine to add to the mix.

Ideally, pick up a handful of your material, squeeze it, and only get a couple of drops out. I just water the pile until see the water coming out the bottom and check the inside of the pile every few days. The bottom and center of the pile are where most of the action takes place, so make sure to pull back the top of the pile to check for water.

Add more browns/dry material to the pile and turn the pile. You can use your compost to build healthier soil, prevent soil erosion, conserve water, and improve plant growth in your garden and yard. Composting is a resourceful way to recycle the food scraps and yard trim you generate at home all year and manage your waste more sustainably. If you want something low-maintenance or a method that’s perfectly suited to small apartments, you may want to consider an electric countertop composter instead. The best way to compost at home depends on your lifestyle and preferences. If you like spending time outdoors and don’t mind a chore that takes some effort, you could opt for cold composting or vermicomposting.

However, if you find your pile is stinky or too wet , you’ll need to layer in more browns. And if you find your compost is too dry or it’s not composting at all, add a little more green to the layering process. Green materials include grass clippings, coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable scraps, and most kitchen waste. That’s because achieving a good carbon to nitrogen ratio gives your pile what it needs to decompose quickly without odors. If you have an apartment and would like to make your own compost, there are a few things you can do.

Many items don’t belong in compost piles because of the smell they release when they decompose. Meat scraps are one type of food waste many homes have; however, the smell of decomposing meat draws scavengers and unwanted pests to your yard. This is why turning your pile periodically is so important. You will turn your compost pile from the outside in about once a week. It reintroduces oxygen and helps break up organic material that may have matted with time. Use a shovel or a hoe to turn the compost to make sure that oxygen penetrates the compost pile and speeds the decomposition process.

For the truly easiest way to compost at home, look no further than Lomi. All you need to do is place your food scraps inside Lomi and then push a button. And, as Lomi is a small kitchen appliance, it's able to break down all your organic waste in less than a day. With Lomi's grow mode, it turns your kitchen scraps into a nutrient-rich dirt in 20 hours at most. With the Lomi Approved mode, it can even break down all your Lomi-approved bioplastics, something you can't do at home any other way.