TOPICAL COMPOSTING TIPS

                                                    Which bin for kitchen waste?

Adding kitchen waste to your home compost bin reduces the waste going to landfill and improves the quality of your compost, so which home compost bins are suitable for kitchen waste?

Most of your kitchen waste can be composted at home provided:
You put the right type of waste in the correct compost bin
You don’t overload your home compost bin
You keep your compost bin working well

Raw vegetable and fruit waste will compost well in a lidded plastic home compost bin such as the Compostabin, Ecomax or Komp.
It can be added to a wooden or plastic New Zealand Box.
These types of home compost bin are designed for a mix of kitchen and garden waste so :-
Layer the kitchen waste with garden waste like weeds, stalky stuff from the herbaceous border and dead flower heads.
Add in soft cardboard, egg boxes, kitchen towel and the centres of toilet rolls, shredded paper and scrumpled newspaper (not flat sheets).
These dryer materials help to absorb moisture from the kitchen waste and also create air pockets so preventing a slimy mess.
As long as you layer the kitchen waste with other material it will make good compost.

Unwelcome guests: a warm, dry compost bin that is left undisturbed can seem like an ideal home for rats, mice and voles. Mice and voles do no harm in a compost bin even though they may startle us when we lift the lid but no-one wants rats.
The best way to discourage all rodent visitors is to : -
keep your compost bin hot by putting it in a sunny place and regularly adding a 30cm layer of grass clippings. (Provided you do not treat your lawn with “feed and weed”, the herbicides in these products disrupt the composting process and can persist to damage plants grown in the compost you have made)
keep your compost bin wet by adding plenty of green sappy material like weeds, grass clippings and the raw kitchen waste. If it is drying out in hot, sunny weather pour in a bucket of water or tip in the dirty water from washing out your compost caddy.

Raw vegetable and fruit waste is also food for worms. See Worms and Wormeries for advice on how to set up and run a wormery.

Cooked food and fish and meat scraps should only be added to a compost digester – a special kind of home compost bin – such as a Green Cone or Green Johanna. See them working in the Composting Demonstration within Woodside Walled Garden.
These compost digesters are sealed in so that they do not smell and so that foxes and rats can’t get in.
The Green Johanna sits on the surface of the soil and can be put in a shady place. You add a mix of kitchen and garden waste and should have usable compost after about a year.
The Green Cone has a basket which is dug into the ground and the upper cones are screwed on to this. It is important that you keep the level of waste below or at the top of the basket, ie at ground level. This way the Green Cone does not smell and will slowly rot down your kitchen waste.
Emptying the Green Cone is a hassle as you have to unscrew the top cones, and dig out the basket. But, provided you put in relatively small quantities of cooked or fish or meat waste, you can position the Green Cone in a shrubbery or by some fruit bushes and never empty it while letting it feed your plants.

Collect your kitchen waste in a compost caddy or small lidded bucket that can be kept in the kitchen. This saves having to trek to the compost heap every day.

Other seasonal tips you might find useful:
Recycle your Christmas decorations and use them in the garden.
Warm up your compost in the spring
Using your compost - make the most of your composting efforts
Making your own compost mixes
Dealing with the Autumn Clearing - shredding and more
Is your compost slimy and smelly? - solve the problem.