Category: Manhattan

I was at my Grandmother’s one day and talking to one of her friends about gardening. We got talking about compost, so I mentioned the indoor composting set up in my kitchen.

She said that she’d blend up the food scraps and put them in her composting bin when she kept one. That’s a great idea and not sure why I never thought of it. Especially since my composting mistake.

By putting the food scraps in a blender or food processor, it helps to break the it down. Then when it’s put in the compost bin, it’s closer to being fully broken down.

When you throw in the full pieces, it takes longer to break down. This is especially true when you have an indoor composting set up because it’s so small.

Don’t throw all of your food scraps in the blender. Just put things in there that are soft. Stay away from pits, seeds and anything that might get stuck in the blender.

Once the scraps are blended, throw it on the compost pile, top with shredded newspaper and old potting soil.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6el9MFNYnqI

It’s been two days since I attempted to get rid of the smell of the indoor compost pile.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsxvgPNor-w

There is no more leakage out of the bottom and the smell gone. The takeaway from this is not to take it easy on the food scraps.

Now I can take that and use it when building and maintaining my home composting bins at my parents and grandmothers. They’d be less willing to deal with the smell than my roommate.

On Tuesday when I turned the compost all was well and there was no smell. Two days later not so much. It stank and it stank bad.

The batteries on my video camera died, so there is no video, but that has nothing to do with the smell. I had a feeling that the last pile of composting greens were too much. Just got too over zealous.

Instead of scrapping the bin all together, I am attempting to remedy the situation. The bin was leaking through the holes in the bottom and the smell was awful.

My plan was to remove a lot of what was in the bin and replace it with browns to soak up the moisture and get rid of the smell. I shoveled the existing compost into two of the buckets and mixed them around. It was packed pretty tight in there and took about 20 minutes to get all of the stank compost out.

Once I got it all out and separated into three buckets, I mixed them around much like would be done in an outdoor composting bin. A fresh bed of newspaper shreds and soil was layered on the bottom, topped with a small layer of the existing compost.

Did this for about three or four layers. I wound up taking about two full three gallon garbage bags out of my compost bin and brought it to my local composting garden.

I’ll give this a few days to see if that awful smell subsides. Another lesson learned, don’t put too much food into the compost bin. Especially when that bin is in your kitchen. Have I mentioned the smell?

It’s been a about a week since the last layer of food scraps were added to my < a href="/category/composting/indoor/">indoor compost bin, so I figured it was time to give it a turn.

To turn it I use a broomstick to poke around and loosen everything up, then I take a small shovel to mix it. It’s been taking me about 10 minutes each time I turn it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwyFFpE-yYg

It’s pretty full at this point. The last batch that I put on was a lot on top of what was already there, but no smell and nothing seems to be going wrong. It just takes a while to turn it because there isn’t much space and everything is packed in there pretty tightly. It’s a lot of poking, then turning, poking and turning – a bit of work, but didn’t get me out of breath like cutting the pipe.

I’ve been turning it about once week. This week no new food was added because it was a bit damp. After it was turned a new layer of browns (newspaper and potting mix) were added.

Hoping it’s going to be ready soon because I plan on getting things growing soon.

It’s about a week since the compost pile was first turned. When I first opened up the can the lid was sweating. That is supposedly a good thing because the compost is supposed to heat up, so it can do it’s thing.

I took the broomstick and shovel to it again to get the air circulating and to mix up the browns and greens.

It seems to progressing nicely, so I threw a big heaping pile of fresh food scraps onto the pile and layered the browns on that. My guess is that I should have compost to use pretty soon.

The following instructions on how to make a compost bin can be scaled up or down based on the space that you have. Since I was dealing with the small space of my kitchen, I used a smaller 10 gallon garbage can. If you have more space, you can use a bigger can. The same concepts apply.

Making your own compost is a great way to cut into your out of pocket costs when starting a vegetable garden.

The tools and materials to build an indoor compost bin:

Tools
• Drill with 1/4″ bit

Materials
• 10 gallon metal garbage can
• Black and white newspaper
• Rubber mat
• Organic potting mix
• Composted organic manure
• Old furniture legs
• Food scraps

Building the bin went down like this
• Drilled holes in the bottom of the garbage can. Supposedly this allows for aeration and to help the compost do it’s thing.
• Shredded the newspapers by hand.
• Set up mat and rested garbage can on the furniture legs.
• Put in first layer of newspapers and some of the potting mix.
• Added a layer of the food scraps (Totally forgot to take a picture of this part).
• Sprinkled some of the composted manure.
• Covered with layer of newspaper and potting mix.
• Food layer. Then another layer of newspaper and soil.
• Closed up and done.