One of the details of composting is to actually accumulate your kitchen composting materials before adding to your compost recipe.  Whether it’s a big family or just one or two of you, having a handy compost pail to put all those peels, vegetable scraps, and other organic kitchen waste into, keeps your kitchen clean and sanitary.

As composting has becomes more popular, the market has produced many different styles and types of compost pails. Your kitchen compost pail can be a stainless steel compost pail, or a ceramic compost pail normally called a compost crock, to a bamboo compost pail or plastic compost bucket. They come in different sizes from a small countertop compost pail usually less than a gallon size to a large plastic compost pail of two or three gallons. I recommend that your compost pail have a good lid with carbon odor filters to keep the odors in the pail. Who needs smells and pests in their kitchen? I actually have two, a little countertop compost crock by my cutting board shaped like a penguin (looks like a big cookie jar) and a big plastic compost pail next to the kitchen garbage can that I fill with larger kitchen waste and from the penguin pail.

Remember this is for your convenience to recycle organic  (meaning vegetable and fruit scraps,tea bags and coffee grounds) kitchen waste. Kitchen compost materials added to garden waste following  the basic composting recipe of carbon/nitrogen  and you will have the best finished compost.

In an apartment or townhouse where space is limited and yard waste is minimal use a plain old plastic bucket with a lid to collect the waste.  There are grass clippings and leaves and plant cuttings that will be useful for your composting.

Your compost pails are getting full so it’s time to empty them all into your compost bin. I wash out the plastic compost pails with the hose and dry them in the sun. My little penguin compost crock gets the dishwasher treatment.  My kitchen keeps clean, smelling good, and no bugs.

Compost pails are a great convenience in efforts to keep composting a routine activity in any household and the benefits of great composting will show in your gardens and in your pocketbook.

Let’s Recycle Organic Waste-Kitchen Compost and Garden Compost Together in a Composting Bin

The composting bin you decide on can be simple and cheap, to high-end style and not so cheap. It really depends on your preferences, your space requirements, and your budget. You are putting your compost pile, that ragged pile that takes a long time to decompose, into a compost container so it is not so ragged and long term in decomposition. You are helping nature along by closing in your compost and you don’t have to wait as long for your nutritious compost soil.

When aerated, kept moist, and covered, your compost is breaking down (decomposing) at about 140°-160° Fahrenheit. You have to turn it or stir it up every one or two weeks. Outside of that, there is really nothing to do. In 60- 90 days you have nutritious compost to add to your flower beds and gardens, or potted plants, or new plantings, or…….

Homemade Compost Bins

Four 5′ metal stakes, some snow fencing, and some heavy wire for attachment and with a tarp cover, you have a compost bin. Looks like crap but it certainly will get the job done.

I go down to the mower place when they get a shipment of riding lawnmowers on pallets. The guy gives me as many as I can carry away. Here I build a compost bin using 8 foot metal stakes and build the walls, top, and bottom out of the pallets. Looks neat and with good aeration, and keeping it moist, it works very well.

Now, some folks will tell you not to use untreated wood because it will also decompose. I figure “So What!”, I’ll just go down to the mower place and get another one. Isn’t that what recycling is all about? “Dust to Dust”……. and all that.

Composting Barrels

In that same recycling theme, you can use metal or plastic barrels. I particularly like those blue surplus 55 gal. plastic barrels that I get from the city and last year I got the surplus(read ugly) trash barrels from the beach authority. Cleaned up with a bunch of drilled holes and a secure lid and bingo we’ve got a compost bin.

I turn my compost weekly by simply rolling the barrel to another location in the yard. You can build a compost tumbler if you stick a steel rod through the barrel and put the ends on some sort of stanchion to create your own compost tumbler making it easier to rotate the barrel and turn your working compost. Not as much fun for the kids as rolling a barrel around the yard but if you are the only one participating in the deal a crank will be easier and quicker.

Worm Bins

When you first discover worm composting it may put you off a bit but really, get over it. They have tried softening the name to vermicomposting but “vermi” is simply latin for worm. We are not just talking any worm here but “red wiggler” worms. These redworms   (Eisenia foetida) are not soil dwellers but organic waste pile residents. They make the best compost for your gardens flat out.

Since this whole exercise is to keep my new pets happy I’ll make a worm farm or at least something similar. I go to the local wine shop and liberate some of their multi-bottle wooden boxes. They are usually not finished or treated wood which is good for my worms. I find a couple that are 8 inches high and about 16×16 inches length and width. I now drill lots of 3/16th inch holes in the bottom and the lid. I’ve found some side vented plastic trays at  a local nursery that have a 16×16 inch nesting ridge leaving the bottom of my box 4 inches from the bottom. This is for some really wonderful compost tea.

Add your moist bedding, a little soil or fine sand, chopped up kitchen compost materials, and your redworms and you are good to go. 

There you go, all types of inexpensive composting containers you can use to build a compost system for your home. More composting ideas to help you go green and benefit.