<p>I’ve recently started gardening. It occurred to me the other day that instead of sending scraps of veggies through the sink pig, I could be composting them. </p>
<p>If you do this or if you’ve done it in the past, I have some questions.
-What can you put in your kitchen compost pail?
-Is one pail or system better than another?
-I don’t want little flies in my kitchen, is that possible with a compost pail?
-How do you know it’s done?
-Then what do you do with it? I assume it’s okay to put it directly around my flowers.</p>
<p>There are some specialized things out there on the market. But I just use a gallon plastic ice cream container. The top seals nicely, to keep out the flies, and is not too big, not too small. Years ago I had a 5 gallon bucket, when lived in a more rural environment, and that was excessive. </p>
<p>The purpose of compost is to break the stuff down with bacteria, which wouldn’t happen in the same manner around your flowers as is. Plus it might stink. I assume you have a pile or container to dump things in. Our city sells them, sits 10 feet outside the back door, and I dump stuff all winter long. There is a tool to stir, though many years I don’t even do that, and I open the little door at the bottom to take our the black gold after all broken down, to put on plants. Some yard waste goes in there as well. </p>
<p>My rule is no animal products, aside from egg shells. All vegetable matter goes in there, coffee grounds, including the filters are great. Some may be more precise than me in composting technique. But what I do has worked for years, and keeps all that stuff out of the dump and helps my garden.</p>
<p>I am very glad I started this thread as I did not realize that these pails were not self-contained units! I truly thought I could make a little bit of compost. </p>
<p>Thank you both!</p>
<p>Edited to add: I think I’m going to try to do this via the pail and then setting up a little area outside. Can’t hurt to try, right? </p>
<p>My big question now would be…if I go with a fenced-in pile, will it attract dogs? Those plastic bins look great but they are more than I’d like to spend. I’m virtually positive my city does not offer anything but I will check.</p>
<p>If you have an old garbage can with a lid, just puncture some holes in the bottom, then it becomes a self-contained composter. You’ll need to water it from time to time.</p>
<p>I put a bowl on the counter while I’m prepping the meal and everything that can be composted (no meat) goes into that. When I’m cleaning up, I walk it out to the composter. I did buy a fancy rotating one, but I got it on sale. It holds an enormous amount of yard waste, it really packs down, and as it breaks down, gets smaller and smaller. </p>
<p>If you have a relatively remote part of the garden, another way to not waste vegetable debris is to dig a big hole, toss stuff in there for a while, then add dirt. It will eventually break down and it will feed your worms while you’re at it.</p>
<p>We got an ultra-cheap huge plastic storage bin at Home Depot to grow cherry tomatoes. We punched a dozen holes in the bottom for drainage. If we didn’t already have a large composter, I would buy one of these huge cheap plastic bins and improvise. The holes allow moisture to drain, and oxygen and earthworms to enter.</p>
<p>We keep a plastic pail by the kitchen sink and empty it daily into the outdoors bin. No animal products at all. All vegetable products go in including moldy bread, unused rice and pasta, fruit and vegetable trimmings, spoiled fruits and vegetables, corn husks, banana peels, etc. Coffee grinds & filters. Dh doesn’t think eggshells degrade well, nor corn cobs, so we don’t add them. No citrus rinds, which are much slower to degrade.</p>
<p>I made a quick and easy outdoor pile with wooden pallets for 3 sides, chicken wire for the front “door”. My dogs don’t bother it. Inside I use a plastic container from that pre-washed spinach, that we put all of the days veg peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds, etc. I empty it every day, then when it’s too yukky i throw it out and start a new one. Outside I pile on leaves, grass clippings, horse manure. Turn it over every week or so. I have a sunchips bag there from last May that still has not degraded though But everything else has!</p>
<p>I keep a metal bowl in my kitchen covered with a plate for putting my kitchen scraps in. My only rule for the scraps is no meat, no oils. I really just put veggie trimmings and fruit cores and rinds in it and coffee grounds as well as the coffee filters. I’ve never had a problem with flies. </p>
<p>But I don’t compost: I’d taken a free workshop on composting at the local community college and learned that one builds a compost pile 2 or 3 times a year with the right mix of browns and greens and then don’t add any more, just turn weekly or even more often until “done”. (I’d tried composting before but it never seemed to work - but I was constantly adding more kitchen scraps to it, so my pile probably never got hot enough). </p>
<p>Then, what to do with the vegetable scraps? A worm bin. I keep the worm bin in the garage and add my kitchen scraps once a week. Apparently it works best if you just feed the worms once a week since they really don’t like being disturbed. The worms castings make great additives for the garden. I’ve just been a “worm farmer” since the summer and so far its going great. (my initial bucket of worms was free at the composting workshop).</p>
<p>Like Great lakes mom we use a gallon ice cream container. Mostly what ends up in it is coffee grounds each morning, veggie scraps, bread and pasta scraps and egg shells. When it gets full it goes out to the compost heap along with the grass clippings and outdoor “stuff” my husband dumps. It’s “our” worm pile for the kids for fishing. When the compost pile gets to big, my H takes shovel fulls and integrates it into our planting beds or tops off our grass. Been at it for decades. The neat thing is he just made a rain barrel last year for one of our roof downspouts and it’s amazing how much rain water gets collected to be used during the summer on the flowers.</p>
<p>Like many others we have a small compost pail in the kitchen that is emptied into the outdoor composter when full. For a while I was using an old drywalll mudding bucket, but when I bought a new garbage can for the kitchen it came with a mini-sized twin that is perfect for compost and a heck of a lot more attractive than the construction bucket! :)</p>
<p>We put all vegetable scraps into it, as well as coffee grounds and filters, and teabags. No meat, no eggshells–they are good for the soil but take a long time to break down, as do rinds. I know that one can compost paper, probably more easily if shredded, but we recycle it instead. We also pile up all of the leaves in the vicinity of the composter, and occasionally throw some of them in too, although the majority compost in their own pile. </p>
<p>Our outdoor composter is one of those black, recycled plastic things. Our town was selling them for about $35 or so a few years ago. I think full price is about $50-60.</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I really don’t use the resulting soil much, although I do have a bed I plan to enrich with it. It is mostly a way to keep items out of the waste stream.</p>
<p>I collect my compost in a something like a flour tin and take it out to a back yard compost pile every few days. I have gotten fruit flies, the solution is pretty simple - take out the compost! People make a big fuss about getting the mix of a compost pile just right and turning it, but I don’t follow the rules. I just throw stuff out there. In the spring I pull the top of the pile to the side and the bottom of the pile is compost. I put all the kitchen waste (vegetable waste) in the compost and half the back yard leaves. I definitely put eggshells in. I learned about composting from a German woman who we traded apartments with. I inherited her balcony composting techniques which was mostly coffee and eggshells!</p>
<p>I’ve had friends who did worm composting in the basement with good results, but haven’t bothered myself. Lots of how-to’s on the web.</p>
<p>We’re like the majority–pile in the backyard at the first house, cheap plastic bin at the second house that we got as a hand-me-down for free. I don’t think we’d compost if we thought we had to “build” a compost several times a year like Oaklandmom was taught. We throw the stuff in all year, I think H turns it now and then, and in the spring pull out gorgeous black gold for building up the vegetable garden.</p>
Oh yes, and it smells so GOOD. We’re low-tech – toss stuff in all year and leave it. When we pulled out the bottom layer for our container planting, I couldn’t believe how our moldy pasta, dead string beans, slimy everything had morphed into fragrant black soil.</p>
<p>I used to use the bowl-with-plate method and then splurged and got a cute pail with a lid. Wish I’d stuck to the bowl-and-plate. Even though I emptied the pail almost everyday, things still stuck to it and it doesn’t fit in my dishwasher like the bowl did.</p>
<p>We use a bowl in the kitchen and every couple of days dump it in the backyard compost bin made of pallets. I don’t cover the bowl and have never had fruit flies, unless we let it sit there too long.</p>
<p>Dh takes neighbor’s leaves and grass clippings to throw in the compost along with our food scraps.</p>
<p>Second the posters who don’t spend much time and energy on composting. I’ve composted for many years: used cheap black round plastic composters from state of MA–they work well, but fill up too quickly; used big black trashcan on an axis-type things, don’t work well, unless you cut up all your yard waste into bitty pieces; now I don’t bother with them. I make a heap, throw stuff onto it as it comes (kitchen scraps, yard stuff, leaves, weeds [you’re not supposed to use weeds “with seeds,” if your compost doesn’t heat up enough, but I can’t be bothered to worry about it–weeds are pretty persistent, anyway, and I have more problems with stoloniferous weeds than I ever have with self-seeded ones]), stop when it’s too high to throw on it, and start a new one next to it. Eventually (when I need compost), I turn the top layers onto the ground until I hit good stuff that looks like dirt. I use a sieve to get rid of the big bits that haven’t rotted yet (throw that stuff back on the pile), and use the compost, for whatever I use compost for. I tidy up the whole bit by throwing as much of the next heap onto the partially-rotted one I can, and leave it all alone until I need it. </p>
<p>It’s easy to find information on the internet about composting, but keep in mind that there are lots of ways to do it, and it’s hard to do it wrong. There are ways to do it better, but they have tradeoffs in time and muscle, and it’s better to do it simply than not at all.</p>
But everything else has!</p>