Kitchen Compost Bin Minus The Worms

I decided to only compost outdoors from now on. It always attracts fruit flies for me.

Awesome! Question for you - can you start the kitchen compost without having old compost to start it? Can you just use regular potting soil, newspaper and food scraps to start? You have inspired us to give this a try.

Absolutely. You should be able to. Make sure you shred up the newspaper nice and fine. Do it and lemme know how it goes.

Great tips, thanks...well I just started mine and wanted to share a tip for reducing possible odours...I took a little muslin drawstring bag (but a clean ole tight/stocking would do too, even a sock), fill it with Bicarbonate of Soda/Baking Soda (deodorizes and draws whiffs), I added a few drops of lemon essential oil, but lemon juice would be ok too...and then tied it to the little hole on mi clip lid (not sure how this would work if the lid has no hole) and popped it inside, closed down the lid...it does mean I can only lift the lid at one side, but hey ho, am happy with the whiff reducer :0)

Thanks for the tip Zoe. This sounds like it would work great for regular aerobic composting bins. Since this is sealed, I'm hoping for odors not to be an issue.

I've never been a fan of worms indoors, so this is a method worth trying, as long as the balance is right and there is no smell!

Trust me I don't want the smell either. I've had that problem before and it was horrendous. With this I'm not planning on opening it for a while. I'm hoping for a quicker decomposition and being able to produce more.

Thanks for the mention and I'm really excited to see how this turns out.

The origin of the idea came from this article (http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/composting-in-cold-weather.aspx) which I came across a while back. What they describe is certainly overkill and I think your method will be successful with minimal issues. A friend of mine was doing this in 5 gallon buckets mixing his compost with hand shredded newspaper with good success (no soil or finished compost). He said the big issue was managing the moisture (draining and adding extra paper will likely help). He also advocates leaving the buckets uncovered to let the excess water evaporate.

I have had the space to compost outside until recently so I'm only just exploring this method now. I don't need to be successful (I live in an apartment but my farm is about a mile away and if things get stinky I can just dump it there) so my current efforts are in finding the minimum effort to make this workable. What that means now is I dump my food scraps in a bucket with the occasional toilet paper roll or used paper towel. No problems so far (a couple weeks in).

I've already filled a 5 gallon bucket and put a pile of coffee grounds on top. I planted tomatoes, basil and cilantro into the grounds (all seeds) and mulched over it with some hand ripped newspaper. I keep going back and forth between "of course it'll work" and "there's no way this won't fail miserably". We shall see. Because I didn't add much in the way of low nitrogen carbon sources and I won't be shaking it, I might need to constantly add newspaper as mulch and throw some worms in to keep things mixed. And yes, I do love irony.

This is a great idea! Thanks for sharing it. I've always been compost shy as I didn't want to deal with worms but this shows me a way to do it without creepy crawlers. Do you add the whole tea bags or do you take the leaves out of the bags. I currently just toss the grinds and egg shells in my garden but never know what to do with the bags.

Thanks. I toss in the whole tea bags. I need to get more containers and start more of these up.

So aside from the coffee grounds and tea bags, you're not adding any kitchen scraps? That's what I like to recycle the most! I generate a ton of peelings, stems and cores.

When I started the bin, I was doing a 10-day cleanse, so I didn't have any kitchen scraps. Just the coffee grinds from my roommate. I'll now have plenty of kitchen scraps to add to it.

What I want to know is how your roommate puts up with this ;)?

Haha. As long as their is no smell, he is good.

You kill me! Poor worms...

Seriously. I killed about a thousand worms. Easily.

Very cool, and simpler than the previous design. We will probably try one of these.

Yes. Much easier. I want to make like a million like this. That way I'll have plenty of compost. I def generate enough food scraps to make it.