Experiments in sub/urban composting

Part of our goal for this season is to make our own compost, so we can keep our food scraps out of the landfill and make nutritious soil to fill our plant containers. Our yard is small, so we looked for a way to avoid having a giant compost heap out back of our house. We have a lot of 5 gallon buckets around our house, so we decided to try composting in those.

The idea is to turn them into mini compost bins by drilling holes in the top, bottom and sides. Then you just layer up your food scraps with leaf and grass debris from your yard and... wait. Usually it takes about a year to go from food scraps and yard waste to compost. That's in a traditional compost heap. Our research has lead us to believe that we may cut that time in half with our small scale compost buckets. Back in January, we started our first bucket compost bin. After drilling all the holes, we put in a layer of leaves and dirt a few inches deep. Then we alternated layers of food scraps with layers of leaves and dirt. We dug up a handful of earth worms from the yard and tossed them on top before we put on the lid. The idea for adding the worms came from learning about worm bin composters for small sub/urban spaces. The worms eat the biodegradable stuff and leave their "worm castings" behind to enrich the soil. We made sure to put the bucket in a cool, shady space in the yard so the worms wouldn't get baked in there!

So, fast forward about two months... when we opened up the first bucket to stir it up and see how things were going, we found that most of the produce scraps had broken down completely! There were a few big things still in there, like egg shells and pistachio shells, but mostly everything was... turned into dirt! Oh, and it was packed with ants! And would you believe, some worms are still living in there! So far, the buckets seem to be doing the job! We built two more compost buckets today. Right now, one 5 gallon bucket is good for about a month of our food scraps. Look for another update on the bins in a couple months...