Make use of your kitchen scrap. Rather than throwing it into waste mindlessly. A simple DIY compost bin can help you here.
Eggs, toast and coffee may be a good breakfast. But the same can be used to nourish your garden?
You can eliminate home waste – such as coffee grounds, eggshells – while also providing nourishment to plants.
Follow these simple steps to make a kitchen compost bin. Which can help turn ordinary waste into nutrient-rich soil.
What You’ll Need for Indoor Composting:
- Water
- A container with two lids
- A piece of non-coated paper
- Red wiggler worms
- Food/Kitchen scraps
Step 1: Get a container or prepare one.
Make drainage and ventilation holes at the top and bottom of the container. Ceramic or Plastic should be used as the container. The Drainage lid will be used to drain water from the container. Another option is that you can buy a ready-made insect container.
Step 2: Tear the paper into fragments.
One inch strip of shredded paper Use newspaper, aged banknotes, or anything else that isn’t coated.
Step 3: Dip the paper for a few minutes in water.
Wet the paper and squeeze it out until it is damp but not leaking.
Step4: Prepare the container by lining it with paper.
Fill the container halfway with shredded and moistened paper. Fill the bucket about one by a third with paper. This doesn’t have to be precise.
Step5: Put your worms in there.
Put your worms as well as a small amount of soil into the mix. Allow them to lie under the sun. They’ll be burrowing into paper in no time.
Step 6: Put some kitchen waste.
Add food leftovers and hide them under the soggy paper strips. (When adding food, always mix/bury it.)
Step7: Search for a new place for it.
Ensure that the worm bin is in a cool, shady location away from direct sunlight.
Step 8: Continue adding food scrap
Keep adding scraps until the dirt outnumbers the scraps. Then set the mixture aside until all of the waste has decomposed completely. Remove the compost and start over. Remember not to remove worms while doing this.
Step 9: Now start using your compost!
Although if you’re not using a garden, you may use the compost in a variety of ways.
This can be used to nourish potted houseplants.
Also, it can be given as gifts, or simply sprinkle on your lawn.
Anything you decide with compost to do. Remember you recycled your food scrap rather than throwing it away!
So be proud as you did a good job by composting your kitchen scraps.
Let’s see how you can make a Kitchen Compost bin:
Building 2 containers and stacking them, then rotating them. This is the easiest way to go.
The following items will be required for the compost bin:
- Holes in Drainage – when there will be no scrap left then worms will move up through these
- Holes in ventilation
- Holes in the bottom – Try to fill the bottom of the bin first. After this, you can fill the compost bin top.
Worms will first eat the scrap that is at the bottom of the bin. They’ll move up of the bin when they’ve finished composting everything.
That’s when you take your compost and place it on top of the empty container. And you can restart the process!
What to fill in the Kitchen Compost bin?
Nearly anything which can decompose can be composted. But there are certain exceptions like dairy, fish, prepared foods and meat.
A quick tip, compost things that decompose fast with things that decompose slowly. Examples of items decomposing quickly are vegetable scraps, fruit and coffee grounds.
Things that decompose slowly are newspapers.
Items to Compost
- newspaper and paper towels
- Shredded paper: napkins, mail, tissues
- Fruit and vegetable peels
- Pet hair
- Teabags and grounds
- Stale bread
- Old spices
- Pencil shavings
- Lint
- Coffee grounds
- Seafood shells
- Nutshells
- Eggshells
- Paper towel rolls
- Leaves
- Flowers
Items that you should not compost
- Citrus
- Plastic
- Chemicals
- Pet faeces
- Dairy
- Bones
- Meat
Making Your DIY Kitchen Compost Has a Lot of Advantages
Making your homemade compost becomes a project that will last a lifetime. Other than the benefit of having more soil for the garden, building your compost indicates you won’t have to fertilize it as often.
Adding commercial fertilizers regularly be harmful in the garden, therefore making your DIY compost provides beneficial bacteria and essential minerals without the use of harsh chemicals.
Consider the price as well. In the long term, making your homemade compost saves you money.
You may have to spend money to have your compost going at first, however as you contribute to all this, you won’t need to purchase bagged soils frequently.
And, while we’re on the subject of saving, one can keep a lot of biodegradable materials out of dumps.
Composting can be used for more than simply food leftovers. You’re saving stuff like napkins, hair, nail clippings and paper towels from the trash bin.
That would have otherwise been buried in landfills. There should not be an unnecessary waste.
Additionally, composting ensures that your garden receives healthy soil and nutrient-dense.
Is my DIY Kitchen Compost bin getting dirty?
Given that dirt makes up a large amount of the compost bin.
Then there is a possibility that the DIY bin may be a sloppy mess. However, there are techniques to keep the clutter to a minimum.
Remember to place a tray underneath the bin, no matter where you keep it. If you cover the tray using newspapers, you’ll get a buffer in case there is any spillage.
Though the majority of the above will most probably be soil. And perhaps a small amount of moisture will sprinkle from water.
When it comes to soil, you’ll need a lot of that to begin indoor composting.
Though dirt from your backyard will work, I recommend bagged soil at the start.
To begin, a 4-inch layer interior of the bin is enough, while larger containers may require additional.
Where should you keep your DIY Kitchen Compost bin?
Let’s start first by figuring out how much space one has to keep the compost bin.
You can keep it on the kitchen countertop, but compost thrives in warm, moist and shady situations.
You can keep it under the sink or the floor cabinet. It’s completely fine. Otherwise, you can keep it away where bacteria can do their job.
If you do have small animals or children at home, a closed cabinet will protect the composting. It will keep the public eye away as well as hands.
In a huge metropolis, it isn’t always simple to be ecologically conscious. Everything appears to be throwaway wherever you go. However, producing zero waste as well as having a lower environmental impact could be accomplished in any housing situation, even if it’s a little house or a small apartment. Building a DIY kitchen compost bin would be the simplest method to get started.
Instead of getting stuck in one more congested dump, compost containers help remove and convert kitchen waste into useful fertilizer. Kitchen compost containers are simple to construct, maintain, and personalize to meet your style and area.
What materials to put in a DIY kitchen compost bin?
To make good compost, one must first get the optimal balance between compostable materials in the bin.
Five vital components are required for the proper balance of natural matter: moisture, brown waste, soil and air.
Everything rich in nitrogen is called green waste. Stale bread, banana peels, apple cores and vegetable scraps are all examples of this.
All plant-based, even eggshells, will fit into this category.
However, no meat and dairy should be consumed. Those goods will degrade in an unwelcome manner.
They too are likely to generate bugs and emit foul scents.
In this pile, you’ll still need a lot of “browns.” All carbon-rich, such as dried leaves, newspapers, dry grass, coffee grounds and tea leaves. This all falls in this category.
After that, cover the pile using dirt and sprinkle water now and again. It’s worth noting that the pile is not always dripping wet, it only has to be dried to touch.
Is a DIY kitchen compost bin difficult to maintain?
You’ll require regular ventilation in the bin.
Which is why you pierced the small hole before. You’ll also have to stir or sift your bin regularly to ensure that the best combination of aerobic microbes is present. Once, maybe sometimes 2 times in a week, a decent turn should be enough.
You might want to keep some extra strands of paper shreds. You can even add new soil over it if available.
As the compost decomposes, this will diminish in size. However, if you intend to use it as fertilizer or soil later, a little additional soil will increase the pad quantity left.
It’s worth noting that while the bin begins to stink, the mixture may be somewhat out of balance.
You will need to apply additional air or assess what you placed in the following round.
How to utilize your compost?
Use in your Garden: Stir your compost further into soil that covers the bottom of your plantings in the garden, including shrubs to flowers.
Use as food for your houseplants: You can use your homemade compost as mulch which will give nutrients to plants.
Final thoughts
Did you like this easy-to-follow guide on how you can create your homemade indoor compost container?
We certainly hope so!
They’re simple to build and might greatly assist you with the gardening compost requirements.
Remember that composting is not just to generate fertilizer for the property and plants.
But it is also environmentally friendly. It significantly reduces garbage as well as frees up landfill space.
Let me know if you liked this guide or not.
And have you decided to try it yourself?
If you’ve any tips or questions, please leave them in the comments section below!