Food waste composting – it can be a baffling affair, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be a glorious, slightly magical process to help facilitate.
We’ve just popped up another little backyard video as part of our Covid-19 Crisis Gardening series, showing three ways people can compost their food waste – you can now watch it here.
A little disclaimer – it’s so hard for me to put this very brief overview up as I know there’s a million more bits of information that I missed out on telling y’all. For example, things to NOT put in a small compost bin (as seen above) include:
- Weedy plants, i.e. runner grasses, oxalis and seeds from invasive species. As it’s a cold compost they wont break down and you’ll end up spreading them everywhere!
- Diseased plants – if you’re plant’s sick, bin or burn it instead of putting it into your compost bin.
- Large bits of meat/bones.
- Glossy paper/magazines (too much heavy ink).
- Some tea bags have polypropylene plastics – check with the brand if you’re not sure.
So be sure to dig a bit deeper into some of our free resources below for a lot more information and inspiration for you to wrap your beautiful brains around.
- Worm farms – in many shapes and sizes.
- Which worm farm is best for you?
- How to build a worm farm seat or bench.
- How to rodent-proof your compost bin.
- We also wrote a little book for our local Council on heaps of ways you can compost food waste that you can download for free.
- The Home Composting Project was another initiative we did with local Council with data collection, education and giant compost artwork billboards in our city (swoon).
- Oh, and then there’s our blog all about compost tea!
I’ve been making several of the classic mistakes so this was most helpful information!
Thank you for making this such fun.
Pleasure!
Hey guys
Thanks for the video! I was wondering how I know when my compost is ready to put back in the garden bed? Especially as I keep adding scraps and turning it.
Thanks,
Claire
It’ll look dark brown (like soil). the key is to have more than one compost system, so you can let one sit as long as it needs to fully break down. While you’re waiting, you can be using a different bin/worm farm.
Hi Hannah,
I would like to make another raised garden bed, but use the bed as an open compost heap until it builds up enough to ultimately use compost as the soil for the garden bed (rather than bring in more dirt).
Would I just apply the same principles that you demonstrate for the green bid with the lid, and put some wire over the top to stop rodents?
Thanks :)
Hello! thanks for these wonderful videos. I have a big compost bin like the first one in the video but wondering when/if I need to turn it like you do with hot composting or if the lasagne layers should just be left to break down?
we also have a rotating bin/tumbler, do you have any tips for that method?
For your compost bin you can turn it to accelerate the composting. We just let ours sit there, add compost worms (who turn it slowly) and use another compost bin or worm farm while the others break down nicely :-).