Homemade compost

Homemade Compost

Composting my food scraps has been on my mind ever since I was introduced to it 5 years ago when I first moved to California. Before then I had no idea what composting was or how wasteful it was to toss our vegetable scraps into the trash. For those not familiar with composting, fruits and vegetable scraps should only go into the pile from the kitchen. Anything containing meat, butter, dairy products i.e. any animal products should not go in as this will surly attract any vermin/animals that are looking for a quick meal. Yikes and yuck!

My husband made me my first homemade composter out of a plastic trash can we bought from Ace hardware using directions from this website.  Here are some pics of our first homemade compost bin.

Trash bin from Ace hardware

Poking holes to allow the compost to areate

Lining the bottom with newspaper

Finished setting up

The first time we tried it, we failed. On the bright side, there were several things I learned from this experience:

1. Don't add orange peels. Little did we know orange peels take a long time to compost. There are naturally occurring chemical compounds in the rind that kill bacteria and prevent the peel and the compost from decaying. Not only did we add the peels, we didn't bother to chop them up into smaller pieces either, further distressing our compost pile. 
2. There is a fine balance in the brown:green ratio. After reading several internet websites and composting book (How to build, maintain, and use a compost system by Kelly Smith) there is a delicate balance of carbon:nitrogen ratio in a healthy compost pile. A healthy compost pile consists of 25:1 of carbon to nitrogen, but if you want to guestimate the ratio of 3 carbon to 1 nitrogen works well too. You can and should (if you're interested) read more about that here: C:N ratio.
3. If possible, start the compost during the warmer time of year. Everything degrades faster in warmer temperatures. We started our pile during the chilly month of February, not necessarily prime time and was another cause for the demise of our pile. 
4. Composting a pile - from start to finish - can take more than a month. We gave up on our compost way earlier because of the smell. It was a soupy, slimy mess that, in retrospect, could have been salvaged by adding more cardboard or newspaper. 
5. Don't give up, troubleshoot! I guess I kind of freaked at the stank and the sight of our compost, so we did end up chucking it. Again, in retrospect, the pile could have been salvaged. Here are some troubleshooting tips: troubleshoot1

New compost bin!

This time instead of building a compost I repurposed an old, plastic hamper. It fortunately had a crack in the bottom of it that I could use for drainage purposes. I liked the idea of using the hamper because it is much wider and not as deep as the trash can, which makes it a lot easier to stir the contents using my garden spade. It conveniently has holes in the sides that I use for aeration so that I didn't need to poke holes. And lastly, the hamper would have went out to the landfill to take up space, so reusing it made it a more greener option.

I first lined the bottom and sides with newspapers to give the pile a base. I added some potting soil and then added my food scraps along with more newspaper. I gave it a little water and mixed the contents and voila! Compost! Here is the top view.

We had a random Ikea bookshelf outside that was used to put plants on top. I ended up using the wooden shelves to cover the top of the laundry bin. It's nice and discreet, hopefully no one will complain about the sight of it. 

It's been about four days since I've started the pile and it looked like my fruit scraps were gathering fruit flies. After reading this site here I was able to get the flies under control by mixing in shredded cardboard and burying the fruit scraps deeper into the pile. Luckily it doesn't smell either, a small victory in my mind. I intend to keep this compost till the end so I'll keep you all posted on my results!