Composting in the city or the little garden

All your green kitchen waste and greens from a balcony, the backyard, or the garden can easily be composted and provide new nourishment to your soil. No matter how little space you have, you can start your own small compost. So, read on to learn how to make your own small compost so you can use your kitchen and plant waste instead of disposing of it.

What you will need

You can easily get started with the following:

• 2-6 waterproof storage boxes with lids (20-60 liters) – size and quantity depending on your ambitions.
• Structural material, such as egg cartons, kitchen roll, cardboard, straw, twigs, or leaves.
• A good kitchen scissors to shred your green kitchen waste.
• Small hand shovel or something else to regularly mix the compost.
• Optionally, a drill and table to make holes in the container.
• Optionally, a larger container for further maturation.
• Optionally, compost worms and a bit of old compost for faster decomposition.

 

 

Guide - how to make your own mini-compost

It's actually so simple that you just need to get two plastic containers and drill holes in one of them. Stack the containers on top of each other. You can now compost your own kitchen waste. We'll guide you more elaborately on how to do it below.

1. Drill drainage holes in the bottom of one of your containers, and place it on top of your other container without holes. This will allow the liquid from the wet kitchen compost to drain away into the lower container, preventing your compost from getting too wet. By having a closed bottom (and a lid on top), your compost will also be rodent-proof. Also, consider drilling a few holes in the lid for oxygen to enter the compost.

 

2. Place vegetable scraps and some structural materials at the bottom of the top container with drainage holes. Optionally add some old compost and compost worms to speed up the composting process. But this is not a necessity.

 

3. Continuously add green food and plant waste to your compost. Add more structural materials if your compost becomes too wet. It is important that your compost is not too wet as it will rot and smell. Conversely, if your compost is too dry, the composting process will stop. On the balcony or in the small garden, the challenge is often that the compost becomes too wet because more kitchen waste is added than structural material.
4. Lift the lid occasionally and mix the compost.
5. When your box is full, just wait patiently until you have your very own local compost on hand. Remember that compost is very nutrient-rich, so experiment with the mixture ratios. Typically, the mixture ratio with old soil will be 1/3.
6. If you have space, you can also further compost in a large container, and you can now start a new composting process in your smaller compost containers.

 

The compost is now almost decomposed and can refresh our plant boxes, providing them with new nutrients for the upcoming season. Remember to cut branches into very small pieces, as you can see in the picture above, that it takes much longer to compost than kitchen waste, leaves, etc.

We optimize space by storing our compost containers in our plant boxes. There is indeed room for them under the bench, as seen in the picture below.

 

Hvis du har store kompostambitioner

If you have a lot of food and garden waste and have space for a larger compost container in your backyard, garden, or terrace like here, then you can easily scale up. Here you see one of our larger compost containers, located at a school in Nørrebro, so the kitchen staff can daily dispose of their kitchen waste for local composting, which is later used in their kitchen garden. This one is designed with two compartments, ventilation holes, and a small "window" so you can monitor the composting process.

Happy composting!

Team TagTomat