Growing your own food seems to be the golden egg of self-sufficiency. After all, once you have sourced clean water, finding food (and shelter) is the next priority in a survival situation. Therefore, it makes sense that composting are Jack’s magic beans: the base from which everything else follows.
Despite how simple composting sounds, I am still struggling to get it right! My mum’s method when I was a child was to just chuck everything in a heap and it would sort itself out. There was no turning the compost or considering of the different ingredients of the mix. After several years, I think she did eventually get some pretty delicious and nutritious compost. I contributed in my own way, throwing apples out of my bedroom window onto the vegetable bed; sometimes they reached the bed, sometimes they missed, but always my mum expressed her annoyance when she came across varying shades of brown apple cores whilst gardening.
From this limited experience, I decided to start composting about a year ago. We had bought our first home and found that the local council did not have a food waste collection. It was gutting to throw away so many kitchen scraps and peelings that could so easily be recycled. So, composting I thought. How hard can it be I thought …?
Turns out, if I am not told the consequences of doing something wrong and the effort of doing things right is more than the effort of doing it wrong, I will do it wrong.
The 3 laws of composting
I did look into the basics and science of composting, but this didn’t mean I listened to them. Let’s start with those before going onto the mistakes.
The ingredients
A healthy compost pile needs a mix of brown and green material. Brown material is carbon rich, dry, and brown, and green material is moist, flexible, and … well … green. Apart from manure which looks brown (in colour) but it actually green in purpose. Very confusing I know. Different sources give a different ideal ratio of green to brown material, but in general, 1 part green and 1 part brown seems to be what to strive for. This blog perhaps best explains why these ratios differ as it’s more about the carbon-nitrogen balance does not necessarily marry up perfectly with a 1:1 green to brown ingredient ratio.
The chefs
A healthy compost pile also needs workers: decomposers. Some are big, some small, but all play their part in the kitchen. Most of the material we put into the compost bin, green and brown, is already teeming with the smallest of the microorganisms. The larger decomposers, like worms, ants, and centipedes, gain access through the earth and through holes in the compost bin. If you want a more detailed understanding of the merits of those who are working for you, go to this link. I for one haven’t focused much on this detail. I just accepted that there were two groups: big and little.
The kitchen
Additionally, a composting pile that is a good working environment for your chefs requires air, specifically oxygen. This is usually added by turning the compost pile. I have seen mixed recommendations (again!) as to how often this should be. Some say it should be every couple of months. Recommendations for compost tumblers specifically say you should turn it every couple of days. I still don’t really know how often this should be, but it does seem to depend on the specific type of compost bin you have, so do your own research here.
In summary, for a compost pile to compost, there need to be lots of little chefs to process the ingredients. They need the right balance of ingredients, and a good workplace environment with adequate airflow, not the stuffy warm offices we are all used to. The green material provides the moisture and the nutrients, whilst the brown material provides the air flow by absorbing additional moisture and providing structure that allows for the flourishing of lots of different air pockets. This prevents the pile from compacting which would reduce the air available. Compost should be turned to encourage air pockets, but your guess is as good as mine when it comes to how often that should be.
My current set up
After researching the different kinds of composting and compost bins, I settled on a compost tumbler. The reasoning for this was two-fold:
First, it took up less space than the large pallet constructed compost bins at my mum’s house. Although easy to make, they do take up a lot of space and most instructions for construction highlight the need for an earthy base to allow for drainage and ease. They are typically designed as a U-shape where there is no top of base. The old owners of our house seemed to have a thing for concrete, gravel, and paving stones, so the earthy space in our garden was not as plentiful as I would have liked. I also wanted to try and keep as much earth as possible to grow (or attempt to grow) my vegetables.
Secondly, there is a nest of rats living under our shed and I worried that we would become further infested if I gave them an open food source and warm shelter for the winter months. I think they were getting pretty fattened up from stealing our neighbour’s leftover chicken feed at the end of each day, but I didn’t want to encourage them further. I didn’t think a plastic bin would suffice as rats are crafty little buggers that seem to be able to chew through almost anything! The starkest realisation of this was when we left some bird seed in our shed. The rats chewed through the wooden floor to indulge in a feeding frenzy. Composting tumblers stand off the ground and rotate around an axis making those tasty kitchen scraps much harder to access.
This is my current set up. The composting tumbler stands next to an old open bottom compost bin which the previous owners of the house left behind. I filled it with leaves in the autumn and am using this as a majority of my brown material. I have a little compost bucket on the kitchen counter to dispose of my scraps when cooking. I typically take this out once or twice a week when I also spin the tumbler to get the air flow started.
3 consequences of ignoring the 3 laws
So, what actually are the consequences of failing to follow the composting laws you ask? Well, the micro-organisms will unionize and go on strike, protesting the poor working conditions and poor pay. Poor resources create a poor workplace culture, so this needs to be addressed if you want them to be happy to do their jobs and provide you with a quality product.
Note: I’m not against unionizing but the thought of bugs doing so made me chuckle.
Mistake number 1: providing poor ingredients
The balance of greens and browns in compost is the first rule of composting, and ultimately the mistake I was bound to make given my mum’s attitude. Composting will just happen given enough time, but there are things that we can do to speed up the process and make it more pleasant.
As mentioned in the previous section, your compost heap should have a roughly 1:1 ratio of green and brown material. Avoiding putting kitchen scraps in the landfill was the main driver for me beginning my composting ‘journey’. Despite reading the ratio of brown material to green material, I just thought meh, it’ll be fine. That is my usual reaction to trying new things and ignoring advice – I would say this strategy works 50% of the time in other endeavours.
Therefore, the problem I had was that green material is much easier to come by, and brown material seemed elusive. I wasn’t exactly going to buy brown material, like woodchips, when part of the purpose was to recycle the waste that I was already creating. I’m also an adopted northerner so deeply object to spending money on something that I could get for free that required an often unreasonable level of effort.
Counting my pennies, I looked into some other free or surplus resources that I could use for my composting. I get Who gives a crap toilet paper which wraps each roll in pretty paper. I assumed this paper could be composted but thought I should check. The result: it is not advised. Why would life be that simple?
Further research reassures me that most of the time, it is fine to put most cardboard in your compost bin as long as it is dull with no shiny overlays and limited ink. You would think ensuring the cardboard has no shiny overlays is obvious, but not to me! I chucked in several tofu boxes to later on find sheets of plastic that could obviously not be broken down. These were all nestled amongst the deliciously stinky and compacting clumps that I was managing to create.
Whilst I can’t compost the paper wrapping the toilet roll, I can compost the box that it comes in, so that is a win. It’s also almost certainly a better use for them than accidentally leaving the box on display behind me in my home office for people to phone me to comment on after important meetings…
So, what actually happens when you use too much green material?
First of all, the compost process is slow because there isn’t enough air flow. The workers can’t get enough oxygen and the anaerobic microbes prosper. This also leads to a rather smelly bin and a smelly harvest. Despite the compost being composed primarily of kitchen waste, internet sources reassure me that it really should not smell bad. It should smell like dirt as that is essentially what we are trying to make.
This bad smell, often likened to rotting eggs, can happen for a variety of reasons according to Lomi, creators of the kitchen countertop composter. One of those reasons is the balance of ingredients. Too much green material means excess nitrogen. This nitrogen then reacts with the hydrogen in the air to create ammonia. Our secondary school chemistry teacher introducing us to the nappy like scent of ammonia remains burnt into my nostrils.
Secondly, too much moisture-rich green material will create balls of mud or sloppy compost. In a composting tumbler, the drum is spun around an axis in order to generate the air flow and mix the material. When there is too much wet material, the movement means the compost clumps together as it is forced to run around a big hamster wheel. This makes balls of compost. In turn, this means that the compost is less spreadable, and you have to work the balls between your hands when spreading it across the soil. This is quite a gross and sticky job, so just avoid and put enough brown in. Excess moisture will also compact the pile reducing air flow, another cause of that eye-watering smell.
Mistake number 2: not enough space and serving half-cooked dishes
This is one of those upsetting mistakes that I don’t think is really fair. Whilst I thought my composting tumbler would be plentiful for the waste that our 2-person household would create, I was wrong. My husband did suggest this when we first got the tumbler, but I naturally dismissed him saying meh, it’ll be fine as per my usual reaction. It really does pain me to admit that he was right …
Although the tumbler has 2 chambers so that one can decompose whilst the other is filled, I found that the second chamber filled long before the first had even had a chance to be broken down. I love cooking and eat a lot of vegetables, so I have always created a lot of kitchen scraps. The space issue became even more of a problem when I actually started putting some browns in my compost. I felt forced into emptying the chambers early before all of the material had a chance to be properly broken down. Whilst this isn’t the end of the world as organic matter can continue breaking down within the soil, it’s not ideal.
Fortunately, I came up with what I thought was an ingenious, cheap, and environmentally friendly solution to this problem. We have an old metal coal bunker in our garden which was left behind by the previous owners of the house. We use wood for our stove rather than coal, so had no use for it once we’d used up the coal that they left behind. With the bin being a good size and in a usable condition, I felt bad getting rid of it. My unwillingness to throw things away eventually paid off as I have now converted it into a compost bin. The sliding door at the bottom is ideal for taking out the old compost whilst the bin can still be filled from the top.
The reason I feel this mistake is unfair is because not everyone has this option of buying another bin. In fact, I am well aware that to have the ability to compost in this country in the first place is a privilege that not many everyone has. I have the luxury of space unlike the many people in large blocks of inner-city flats, or small council homes with barely enough space and money to feed their own family. Perhaps self-sufficiency is actually a somewhat middle-class activity in this day and age because it requires the luxury of green space, something that is becoming harder to come by in the UK … I won’t dwell on this now, but I’m sure it is something that I will explore and consider as a part of my quarter life crisis.
Mistake number 3: a poor workplace environment
The general guidance seems to be to turn your compost every couple of days for a tumbler and every couple of weeks for a bin/pile. I did not do this. Let’s be honest, I work full time and I tend to prioritise feeding myself and then lying on the sofa each evening in front of the TV. Most of the time I couldn’t be bothered to go and do the outside chores. In the summer it was a different story as it was nice to go out in the garden and enjoy the setting sun. But in the winter, when the temperature is below zero and it is dark when I go to work and when I come home from a stressful day at work, going out to spin my tumbler was the last thing on my mind. I’m sure the little chefs have put in many complaints to HR about me as a boss.
Turning the compost pile is important to promote air flow by ensuring the pile gets enough oxygen for the decomposers to do their magic. When there isn’t enough oxygen, the decomposers have to work anaerobically (the fancy scientific way of saying ‘without oxygen’) which is another cause of that delightful smell my compost was emitting.
Conclusion
No matter how simple the blogs make composting sound, it’s not! It is actually quite an interesting process and understanding the science behind it will allow you to have a much more fruitful relationship with your workers as the boss of your pile of garden waste: we all have to start somewhere in our managerial experience. Given the right ingredients and the right environment, your workers will develop some delicious compost for you to put back into the soil to feed the next generation of plants. Even if you take some time to get this balance right, composting will still happen given enough time. Making mistakes won’t be a disaster but you should still try to learn from them.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my failings at what every gardener says is the simplest and easiest gardening task. Hopefully this will prevent others from making similar mistakes.