Composting Kitchen Scraps for Beginners

Why bother?

You throw away one-third of every grocery bag. That waste rots in a landfill and makes methane. Or you can rot it on purpose in a corner of your yard and end up with the best free soil amendment on Earth. Same rotting, better outcome.

Composting is not complicated. Most guides make it sound complicated because they are written by people who love composting. This guide is written for someone who just wants a working bin by the end of the weekend.

What actually goes in

There are only two categories to remember: greens (wet, nitrogen-rich) and browns (dry, carbon-rich). You want roughly 3 parts browns to 1 part greens by volume. If your pile smells or looks slimy, you need more browns. If nothing is breaking down, you need more greens (and probably more water).

Greens

• Fruit and vegetable scraps


• Coffee grounds (with the paper filter)


• Fresh grass clippings


• Tea bags (staple-free)


• Eggshells (crushed)


• Plant trimmings and dead-headed flowers

Browns

• Dry leaves (the single best brown; hoard them in fall)


• Cardboard boxes torn into fist-sized pieces


• Newspaper (no glossy inserts)


• Paper towel and toilet paper rolls


• Straw or hay


• Sawdust from untreated wood


• Wood chips

What stays out

• Meat, fish, dairy, or fatty foods. Attracts rats, raccoons, and neighbors with pitchforks.
• Pet waste from dogs or cats. Different bacteria. Not safe for edible-crop compost.
• Diseased plant material. You will just spread the disease around.
• Weeds that have gone to seed. Home piles usually do not get hot enough to kill weed seeds.
• Glossy paper, coated cardboard, or anything with a shiny surface. Full of chemicals.
• Citrus and onions in worm bins. Fine in a regular pile, but they upset worms.

The three-bin decision in 30 seconds

Pick whichever fits your life. All three work.

Open pile. Free. You just stack it in a corner. Slower, uglier, and animals can get in. Fine if you have space and no neighbors close.

Enclosed bin. A plastic barrel with a lid and air holes, around $80 or a used food-grade drum from Craigslist for $20. Keeps critters out, looks tidy, works well. Best choice for most yards.

Tumbler. A bin on an axle you spin every few days. Around $150. Much faster (compost in 6-8 weeks instead of 4-6 months) but you can only add material in batches, not continuously. Great if you produce a lot of scraps at once.

The layer-and-forget method

1. Put down a 6-inch layer of browns first. Twigs on the very bottom for airflow.
2. Add a 2-inch layer of greens.
3. Sprinkle a shovel of finished compost or garden soil on top. This inoculates the pile with the microbes that do the actual work.
4. Water it until it feels like a wrung-out sponge — damp, not soggy.
5. Cover with more browns.
6. Every time you dump kitchen scraps in, cover them with a handful of browns from a nearby stash.

Turn the pile once a week if you can, once a month if you cannot. A pitchfork works. So does dumping one bin into another.

When is it done?

Finished compost is dark brown, crumbly, and smells like a forest floor. You should not be able to identify what any of it used to be. If you still see eggshells and cardboard, it is not done.

Sift it through a piece of hardware cloth stretched over a frame if you want a fine texture for seed starting. Otherwise just dump it on your beds. Two inches spread on top and lightly scratched in is enough. Do this every spring and fall.

Troubleshooting the four things that go wrong

It stinks like ammonia or rotten eggs. Too many greens, not enough browns, and probably too wet. Turn it, add a huge helping of browns, and stop watering.

Fruit flies everywhere. Kitchen scraps sitting on top uncovered. Bury them under a layer of browns every single time you add scraps. Problem solved in a week.

Nothing is breaking down. Too dry, too cold, or the pile is too small. A pile needs to be at least 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet to hold heat. Add water. Add greens. Give it warmth.

Rodents. Enclose the bin. Stop adding meat, dairy, or oily food (which you were not supposed to be doing anyway).

Bonus: the coffee-shop hack

Most independent coffee shops will give you their used grounds for free if you bring a bucket. Same for produce departments at co-ops — many have a bin of trimmings they hate throwing away. Free, high-quality greens, delivered to you by strangers who are relieved you asked.

Your first move

Put a lidded container on your kitchen counter this week. A pitcher, a coffee can, anything with a lid. Every scrap that would have gone in the trash goes in there instead. When it fills up, dump it wherever your future bin will go. Even a pile on bare dirt starts working within a month.

You do not have to be good at this to get compost. You just have to start.