Kitchen/Indoor Composting

Adding compost (also called humus) to your garden soil and potted plants provides nutrients essential for fertility and growth. Compost is rich in nitrogen and carbon nutrients. You can buy compost from nurseries and home improvement stores. Alternatively, you can recycle organic kitchen wastes and paper to make compost in your home. The latter option is a green way to keep organic wastes from getting dumped in landfills and from serving no useful purpose.

While many people like to compost their wastes in the outdoors, kitchen or indoor composting is a good option for people living in apartments and for people with little outdoor space.

Indoor composting is very easy to implement. Use a suitable steel, ceramic or plastic bin large enough to hold at least 2 weeks of your kitchen waste. Drill some holes in its bottom and lid to allow water to drain and air to circulate into the bin. This is your compost bin mean to collect organic wastes. Place this bin in a larger bin with a lid. Place the combo underneath your kitchen sink or in a corner in your patio.

Add you daily kitchen wastes like vegetable and fruit peels, rinds, tea leaves, etc. to the compost bin. These organic materials are rich sources of nitrogen. Add paper, saw dust, etc. to the mix to provide carbon content to the compost. Add a handful of soil or commercially available compost starters to introduce composting micro-organisms to the mix. Stir the mix on alternate days to aerate the entire content of your compost bin. When the mix gets the appearance of brown soil, the compost is ready to be used in your garden. It can take a few weeks to a few months for the compost to form depending on the contents of the waste matter.

The vents in the lid of the compost bin will keep bad odors away as the wastes decompose. If the contents in the bin are too dry, mix a little water without making it soggy. Never add meat or fish wastes to the compost as this will attract flies and insects. Also avoid organic wastes treated with pesticides and fertilizers.

There are alternatives to the compost bin described above. You can buy a compost bin with carbon or charcoal filters to absorb the odors. Even more sophisticated indoor composting bins are available - they run on electricity and provide computerized controls for air flow, temperature and moisture.

Whichever technology you use for kitchen composting, it is a green way to care for your environment.