@Ryan Fisher: sell it! Trust me, you'll find buyers.

Possbert

The reason I haven't started composting already is because I can't figure out what to do with all this great soil. I rent, so I can't do anything to the yard, so I'm going to be making all this great dirt, and then what put that in the landfill? Anyone got some suggestions of what to do with all the compost that is created.

Ryan Fisher

We are simple composters (we don't fuss with exact ratios of green to brown.) The resulting mixture and a wonderful enrichment to our garden soil. (In other words, it works - it takes a while, but it works.)

computermom

The easiest way to comppost is to bury your kitchen scraps about 8 inches into the ground (in your garden area that you have resting for the season) and leave it alone for a few weeks. No smells to worry about, no turning of a pile to aerate, no hassle at all. I put fruit rinds, egg shells, vegetable peels, leftover bagged salad (withOUT dressing) into a hole, chop it with my spade and then dump dirt back on top of it. Water it once or twice a week- not too much water - and you have terrific soil in about 3 weeks! I do this year-round except in winter and the soil produces exceptional results in my garden.

sjvmi87

Here in Nova Scotia compostables are thrown into a small green bin under the sink, when it's full we dump it into a big green bin on wheels outside, every 2 weeks we roll this to the curb and it is picked up with the garbage, paper, and plastic/metal bags.

Myles

Glad to hear there are those out there willing to compost 'casually'. As long as it's out of the landfill, I find it hard to see how it can go wrong (as long as scavengers are properly repelled, naturally).

What surprises me is the lack of resources for those like myself in an apartment. I'd love to compost, but there doesn't seem to be a way for me to have a compost in my apartment without the place smelling like mould (I don't have a balcony).

kaythetall

I keep it simple...basically I'm just trying to keep my yard and kitchen waste out of the landfill and when I get some good soil to add to my garden, it's a bonus.

I built a square fence out of chicken wire then filled it will all our yard leaves (we have a lot). Then, I dig a hole in the middle of those leaves and put a bag of the "yellow" cow manure in there. (Don't worry, if you buy the good stuff, it just smells like dirt!) On top of that, my veggie scraps from the kitchen, some egg shells, those compostable floor wipes from Method, whatever). On top of all that, more dry leaves. I pretty much leave it be unless I'm adding more kitchen scraps, in which case, I stir it up really good with a pitchfork and then dig another hole in the middle for whatever I'm adding, and then cover it all up with the stuff that was already there.

I think I've cut my kitchen garbage to about a quarter of what it was since the only stuff I have to toss now is whatever has meat involved or I couldn't compost or recycle! :D

redwarrior

Most of the local municipalities around here (SF Peninsula) offer free composting classes and as righteye mentioned, they will sell discounted composting bins.

And if you can't compost (apartment and condo dwellers), some places offer free compost.

Deprong Mori

San Francisco makes it incredibly easy to compost. First, go to the hardware store and grab biodegradable bags. Second, fill that bag up with all your scraps. Third, take a walk around your neighborhood and find a green composting bin that someone else has left out to be picked up. Fourth, dump it and start over : )

lindsayt

@reflous: Actually, composting is pretty supid- proof. don't throw anything meat related in, and you'll be fine. I can compost stufff by just throwing it into a pile at the back of my property. grass clippings, weeds, vegetable and fruit scraps, egg shells, coffee grinds, newspaper. toss it in a pile, and mis it at about a month, wait two more months and you're good to go. no need for any of those tumblers or anything. Been doing it for years and have had no smells or pests. worms will naturally migrate towards your piles since they are food-rich.

@Internet-TV: yep, toss them in a composter, bag, tag and all, even the cardboard box the tea came in will compost down. basically if it grew from a plant in any way, it'll compost. add egg shells to that list, and you've got your composting items. plant material composts.

you can also compost animal waste (dog poo) but the compost material cannot be used on food plants, or you'll get sick eating those plants. just decorative plants only. and its a good idea to compost that stuff inside a buried garbage container with holes at the bottom, as it WILL smell (google dog poo compost - it gets a little technical).

gover57

hey lifehacker writers, while we're on about recycling do you have any idea what I can do with old/used teabags? It seems a waste to throw them out - I'm just wondering whether the used tea can be used as soil - it would be rich in nitrogen, just wondering of what use they could be. A shame to throw them out.

Internet-TV

Worms make composting better.

ICEBreaker

Most local councils in the UK will sell you a plastic compost bin for about £10, which is a huge discount on the normal garden centre price. The logic is simple - it costs a fortune for the council to collect rubbish of any kind, so it's in their interests to encourage us all to produce less waste in the first place. My small garden and allotment easily consumes kitchen waste from a family of four, and the amount of rubbish I put out for collection is greatly reduced. Everybody is happy, and I like to think it keeps my taxes low as well.

On that subject, there's a lot of talk over here about charging people for the WEIGHT of the rubbish they have collection, so composting will probably end up with a worthwhile financial incentive attached to it as well.

righteye

I just started this spring...because my town stopped collecting yard waste.

Now I have a 6' long X 6' wide X 5' high pile of leaves and clippings that I have to figure out how to compost it as fast as possible.

This should help :)

Boter

I've got just a tall kitchen trash can on our back balcony and a fire poker to mix it. At least for now. I figure I'll eventually have to get another container, but it's been at least two months, and it's always been about half full. We toss mostly vegetable scraps in there, and don't follow ratios, or anything. We put a bunch of wood ash in there at one point, and that helped a lot with the smell, though it's never been really smelly. We'd get more usable soil faster if we followed all the advice, I'm sure. But our compost is rotting away in there with minimal effort on our part. Our trash put out at the curb has decreased by about 2/3rds. Yay compost!

skyesong

That Wiki is so-so - non-composters are going to see that wood frame with the wires and click over to check sports scores. You can get perfectly good composter set-ups, usually made out of recycled materials, that are plastic and so very easy to set up. I think Gaiam sells a couple of different models.

Condalmo

we have two compost bins out in our back yard. Plus we have a worm bin.
It's not rocket science. Just put half green and half brown materials. Keep them damp and rotate regularly.

ironchef

Wow, I am seriously impressed with how many lh'ers compost. :) Me, I'm about to get a worm farm. I find that worm farms are a bit easier to look after (and besides, who else has 10,000+ pets?).

cbiggins

I agree, many do try to make composting overly complicated. If you want the exact perfect soil then yes, it can be complicated. If all you want to do is reduce your weekly garbage haul, then a well ventilated space is all you need to toss your kitchen scraps on be it a garbage pail with holes, a home made container of wood and chicken wire (what we have) or just a pile in the back corner of your yard. We don't have a large yard so ours doesn't get inundated with grass clippings but we've just been tossing our scraps on for about 6 years now and it's reduced our weekly garbage by about 50% I'd guess.

tomanjeri

"Recycling" your junk mail by putting it into your compost is in incredibly bad idea. All of the chemicals used to produce the paper (usually bleached) and the chemicals in the inks will be part of the compost and will end up in your soil. From the soil it will leach into the water table. This is true of newspapers, paper towels, and all other paper products.

IvoryPaetus

Composting "CAN" be very simple, many people tend to make it overly complicated. I read three books and did a lot of websearch before I went and bought one of those storage totes from walmart, drilled some holes in the bottom, put a couple of bricks on the ground, the tote on the bricks, stuff in the tote, and leave it alone. We add food scraps, garden leftovers etc and a little dirt every now and then, turn it every now and then, easy.

infromsea

Ahhh, compost. Feed the soil and the plants will look after themselves.

I have an allotment - compost (and massive amounts of horse manure) plays a vital part in keeping everything good, healthy and fertile.

Everything goes on the compost heap...or rather, onto the 'heaps' - we run at least three different heaps with varying degrees of decomposition at any one time. Anything goes on - cuttings, weeds, leaves, kitchen peelings, those half eaten apples that the kids don't finish having watched Lazytown...

I've never been particularly scientific about composting. We just chuck it all on, mix it up and leave it until it's all rotted down, but we have the space and time to do that. Sometimes, it takes a couple of years to get some of the really woody stuff ready to go back on the plot. Every now and then, I feel heroic, and take a fork to it, turning everything around, which is extremely satisfying. Occasionally, I take off my take off my t-shirt for extra effect, but this step is optional and I have to admit it has little effect on my wife.

righteye

we've chosen a more direct option for disposing of our food and plant scraps: we leave a container in the small side of our sink and when it is full (daily) with scraps, we feed it to our two chickens. they will eat almost anything including coffee grounds. in return, they give us 2-3 eggs (total) daily. it is a symbiotic relationship. a word of caution: while you can feed chickens chicken, you cannot feed them egg shells or they will eat their own.

soups

I wish that it was legal over here in Montana. Apparently composting attracts bears, and is "an extremely hazardous practice." I sincerely apologize for my slightly bloated carbon footprint.

anekam1

Mmmmm ... composting ... good.

BlackFlag55

I don't find composting difficult at all, provided you don't overload a pile with way too much garbage and food waste. After you do it for a while it's pretty easy to tell when a compost heap needs more carbon (paper, sawdust, ash, etc.) or nitrogen (usually food scraps in our case). Basically, if it smells you need to add more carbon!

It's important to keep rodents and other varmints out, so some chicken wire can be very helpful. Plus you need to aerate the mix well, which you can do by turning (or tumbling) it, and also by adding some bigger carbon sources like sticks. Chopping up your food scraps into smaller pieces before you throw them in the compost heal also speeds up the process enormously (it's like chewing your food before you swallow).

We always keep a sack of sawdust handy to cover up any wet food scraps that look like they need some carbon, and in general if you do a quick check-in and mixing every time you throw a bucket of food scraps into the pile it usually works out (given variations in climate, of course; not much composting happens in Minnesota in the dead of winter).

We also use earthworms, but usually after the compost has biodigested a bit (we make a second pile). A great way to generate all the carbon you need to mix with your food scraps is to use a composting toilet that separates solids and liquids. You won't be contaminating the water supply, and you'll have an abundant garden to show for it.

zoomZAP

My goal in composting was to reduce my contribution to the landfill. I'm not as concerned with how quickly or efficiently I produce usable compost. I started with a commercially available composting bin (to keep the homeowner's association happy), and a compost starter to get myself off to a running start. It's easy to keep the "three parts brown to one part green" ratio with nothing fancier than a bowl. For each bowl of green that goes in the bin, three bowls of brown are added. A bowl of water on top of that keeps the moisture level up. Finally, I don't "turn" the pile, but I do aerate with a tool I purchased along with the bin (the bin and aerator tool were a nominal investment and will last forever).

I'm producing some lovely and earthy compost with minimal effort. I highly recommend making the move to composting.

seismic007

This how-to is hideously over simplified. If you don't get the right mixture of water/nitrogen/carbon/air nothing happens. That combo is actually fairly precise with requisite ratios of each.

Also it talks about a tumbler, but I think if you compost without one, you are devoting yourself to some seriously hard labor. Right now my parents compost, they throw all their compostable trash together over the course of a month or two, then dump it all out in their backyard patio, mix it, add nitrogen and water, and then put it in the compost bin.

Too much work for me, I vermicompost.

reflous

My wife and I lived in an Ecovillage for a few months and they had a community composting system. It was great fun, and meshed well with the community gardens. In my current smallish urban yard, I unfortunately cannot see composting as being feasible.

onesix18

I went with a ComposTumbler (back porch size) from [www.compostumbler.com]

dragynphyre