Easy home composting

When I began composting two years ago, I would follow all the instructions that are commonly found about composting: turning it, adding an accelerator/inoculant, and also sieveing the compost.

As days passed, I began to simplify things. Now, I don’t do any of those three steps. It wasn’t because my beginner’s enthusiasm had dwindled — I still feel composting is poetry — but because I began to understand the composting process better. Everything that has ever lived will eventually rot and become one with the soil. Composting is only a human-aided approach to this process. And, we aid or facilitate this process because we have our reasons to do so: we need good manure for our plants, we want a way to dispose of our kitchen waste apart from sending it to the landfill, we are simply composting nuts, etc.

So, as organic matter doesn't really need us to degrade and if composting is only something we do to suit our purposes, why not simplify the process and only do as much is strictly necessary for us to close the loop of resource recycling?

Also, home composting is actually quite easy and quick compared to biomass composting or community composting. The quantity of kitchen waste of a family of four in a country like India averages between 250 gm to 500 gm a day, which is quite easy to handle at the domestic level.

These formed my line of reasoning for reducing the composting process to its bare basics.

Here is my recipe for home composting. It’s a method which I have found to be the least interventional and highly convenient for those short on time or intimidated by the very idea of composting. Please note that I compost in containers —earthen pots— that are well aerated. If you are composting in a pile on the ground or in plastic buckets, you will have to adjust for moisture loss or not enough air circulation, as the case may be.  

I have four sets of terracotta pots: two of them big and two small. Don’t ask me how I landed up with so many, I just did. But we are more than the average-sized family (four adults and two kids), so we are well served by this capacity.

In each set, the top two pots have a hole at the bottom, apart from little holes drilled along the sides. The hole in the bottom is for any excess liquid to drain off. The bottom pot has holes only on the sides.

Now for the process.

What I do:
1. Start by spreading a layer of sawdust or dried leaves or coco peat at the bottom of the pot. These are carbon-rich materials and are called “browns” in composting lingo. I use sawdust as that’s the cheapest option for me — I get it at Rs 2 per kg. 

2. Add kitchen waste. This is called “greens” — it is rich in nitrogen content. 

3. Add a layer of saw dust on top of the kitchen waste. 

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until Pot 1 fills. Make sure you don’t fill the pot to the brim but leave about 1-2 inches space on top.

Follow the same steps for the subsequent pots. Finally, after you have harvested the compost, which is about 45 days from when you started adding to the first pot, cure it (let the compost rest in separate containers) for about a month or two, after which it will be ready for your garden. If you don’t have the time or space to cure the compost, you can still spread it on the soil anywhere and your job will be done. You will have completed the loop by restoring the food waste back to the soil.

If you do cure the compost, take care to see that it doesn’t dry up. Once compost is dry, it’s dead. Every week or so, pour some water into the compost to keep it moist.

What I don’t do:
1. Turning or stirring the compost. In home composting, this is not a necessary step, but may be relevant in municipal composting where huge volumes of waste need to be processed. The arguments for stirring the pile are that (a) it helps aeration and (b) and speeds up the process, thanks to aeration. After I stopped stirring my pots, I noticed no significant change in the time required to compost. As for aeration, I compost in earthen pots. This is naturally porous and allows air circulation. Plus, I have drilled holes in the pots. That’s enough air for the compost pile. One argument against turning the pile is that since this is not batch composting, but continuous composting, that is you are adding continuously to the pot until it fills, there can be different stages of composting happening in a single pile. If you mix the pile, you could be messing up with these stages.

2. Adding inoculants or accelerators. It’s simply not necessary in home composting. Whether they are needed in more large scale composting efforts, I really can’t say. Our daily kitchen waste averages about 200-500 gm and rarely exceeds that. I have been able to handle this volume successfully with no additional microbes. Why I say additional is that microbes are everywhere — on our hands, within us, within the food we eat. They are just waiting for the opportune moment to start their work. So, we don’t need to “add” them. As I became more and more acquainted with the process of composting, I have grown more appreciative of the microbial world and bow to them in all humility. Without them, we’d cease to exist. We only seem to think of microbes as something that ceases our existence, but our life is really enabled by them.

3. No sieving. For long, I thought this too was a mandatory step. It’s true that sieved compost is easily absorbed into the soil and hence there is no harm in sieving. But if you don’t feel so inclined, no harm done either. Of course, with unsieved compost, there is the occasional surprise now and then when papaya seedlings sprout out of a ladyfinger seed bed, but it’s all good for me. Hence, I don’t sieve. Unsieved compost when added to the soil helps in creating air pockets. Also, by not sieving, I get more compost for my garden more quickly. Because, when I used to sieve, I would put back the bigger, undegraded parts back into the pot and wait for them to turn into powdery compost.  

So, that’s it. It couldn’t possibly get simpler than this. Please try it and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, I’ll be interested in knowing why not.