After cooking breakfast I started cleaning up and my trash quickly started filling up. I looked in the trash and realized that a great majority of it was food waste. Since I have been considering setting up compost for a while I decided that with such an abundance of food waste today would be the day. I don’t watch football and don’t even have cable, so it gives me something good to do while everyone else is watching the Colts and Saints duking it out.
Fertilizer
From http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/f/Fertilizer.htm
Composting is just one of many methods of producing fertilizer for plants. Fertilizers are chemical compounds given to plants to promote growth. They typically provide (1) three major plant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium: N-P-K), (2) the secondary plant nutrients (calcium, sulfur, magnesium), and (3) sometimes traces of elements with a role in plant or animal nutrition (boron, chlorine, manganese, iron, zinc, copper, molybdenum and selenium). Though nitrogen is plentiful in the earth’s atmosphere, relatively few plants engage in nitrogen fixation (conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to a biologically useful form). Most plants thus require nitrogen compounds to be present in the soil in which they grow.
Carbon & Nitrogen
From http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/needs_carbon_nitrogen.htm
You will see that in the process of composing the ingredients include materials from the Nitrogen-rich group and materials from the Carbon-rich group. Both of these are required, but play complimentary roles. Oganisms that decompose organic matter use carbon as a source of energy and nitrogen for building cell structure. They need more carbon than nitrogen. If there is too much carbon decomposition slows when the nitrogen is used and some organisms die. Other organisms form new cell material using their stored nitrogen.
Conditions
As I started researching I quickly realized that there are many options for home composting, so I started narrowing down my search with a few key conditions.
- Limited indoor space or balcony
- Get started today (I want instant gratification)
- Don’t want to spend significant amount of money
- Use supplies I can get here or from a store nearby
Solution: Steps for creating a Simple Style Composter
After my research here is the proposed solution that I am implementing based on those conditions. This is primarily based on the two sites that I cited below.
From: http://www.balconycompost.com/compost/methods/simple-style-composter and http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/apartment-compost-guide.html
- Before you get started, here are a few things you will need immediately, and few things over time.
- Immediately: (1) 5-gallon bucket, (2) hammer, (3) screwdriver, (4) few cups soil
- Optional: quart container
- Eventually: A few cups of soil
- (optional) Put a little quart container somewhere in the kitchen. When cleaning up dump compostable materials into this container. Put a coffee filter on the bottom of container to more easily remove the materials later.
- On the balcony put out the compost bucket. To create the bucket do the following…
- Take a 5-gallon bucket with a lid
- Using a hammer and screw driver hammer holes about 3-4 inches from one another all around the bottom half of the bucket.
- Put about 5 or 6 holes on the bottom of the bucket for water to release.
- Add a few holes on top. May need to cover top to prevent rain water from falling in if you are in an area where it rains a lot (e.g. Seattle)
- Layer the bottom of the bucket with about 3-inches of soil (source of microbes to start process) and some sprinkle some carbon material (See below section “What to Compost?” for definition of “carbon-rich material”).
- Start adding Nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps (see “What to Compost?” below) from the quarter container in the kitchen to the balcony composter.
- To expedite the process, shred/cut/pulverize the scraps. You just need to add a handful of soil every fortnight
- For every 3-4 inches of Nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps add add another 2-inches of Carbon-Rich material.
- You will have to perform a few management steps along the way…
- Stir the mixture every week or two.
- Add a handful of fresh soil every two weeks to refresh microbe supply.
- If composter emits odor, add more dry bedding (carbon-rich material).
- if composter is dripping liquid, add more dry bedding
- Once your original container gets full, scoop out fine soil-like compost into a new container and start the process over. You’ll have one finished compost and one box for compost in the making.
What to Compost?
From http://www.metro.ca/art-de-vivre/environnement/compost.en.html
Nitrogen-rich“Green” / “wet” |
Carbon-rich“brown” / “dry” matter |
No noMaterial that shouldn’t be composted |
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What’s next?
This same system can be used as a Vermicompost as well (more info here) which expedites the process and enables composting indoors during cold winter seasons. (In Seattle it doesn’t get very cold in the winter).
Once the container is full, I haven’t figured out how much time it takes thereafter to complete the composting process. It obviously takes a while longer as you can create a new “compost in the making” container as the first is still processing.
Interesting reads
Other than the links already cited, here were a few more related notes.
