One night I was cleaning up after dinner, putting dishes away and throwing away kitchen scraps. I felt bad about throwing the scraps away, it seemed like such a waste. We have an outdoor compost bin for our garden and there is a large pile waiting for us to add to the beds in Spring. Any new compost making basically halts in the Winter but it doesn’t have to be that way! We couldn’t just let these scraps go to waste…
I quickly started looking up ideas for various bins to use indoors. I settled on a $13 plastic bin with a lid from the local hardware store (waaay cheaper than those ready made compost bins).
We drilled holes about two inches apart along the lid and on all sides of the bin. We stopped about five inches from the floor to avoid too much leakage.
The most important thing to remember about composting is to have a mixture of brown (Carbon) and green (Nitrogen) materials. Both ingredients, air, and a bit of moisture are needed to begin the decomposition process. It’s recommended to have a little more brown than green but you have to do what works for your pile.
Common greens and browns to add to compost:
Browns: leaves, cardboard, newspaper/paper
Greens: kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, plant trimmings
There’s a lot of information out there about what works in compost and what constitutes a brown or green material and what to do if your compost has any issues, like what to do if it won’t decompose or if it starts to smell. I can’t wait to see how much compost we can produce from our kitchen scraps instead of throwing them away!
The Clumsy Gardener 