A beginner's guide to compost

I've been composting my whole life. My parents had built a big compost bin in our garden and it yielded such rich hummus that when spread on the garden made it grow so great.
Now that I'm living on my own, even though I don't have a garden or even much of a backyard (we live in a basement suite) I still felt it necessary to build a compost bin. You never realize how much food waste is generated every day until you start composting. We are able to divert probably a third of our household waste by composting. When this is combined with avid recycling, we probably only throw away 25% of our waste in the trash. The rest is reused and kept out of the landfills.
It is my personal opinion that we as a city should compost, not only on the large scale but also at the indivdual scale. Making a compost bin is not very hard, and it helps divert a sizeable percentage of daily waste. If everyone in Canada composted, we would divert enough waste to cover San Fran Sisco in two feet of compost! Obscure statistics aside, we could really divert a lot of waste, prolonging the life of our landfills by decades while producing nutrient rich plant food that's more effective than chemical fertilizers.

So! This bring me to the point of this entry. I'll run over the main components of a successful compost heap and an easy how-to, so that maybe you can try it out!
The science behind compost is that there are three main types of micro-bacteria already found on our food which will break down the organic materials at different times. Psycrophiles works in colder temperatures and will be the first settlers of your lovely pile of peels, coffee grounds and egg shells. They will start eating the food and getting carbon and nitrogen out of it. This fuels their army, and the decomposing speeds up, and the pile will gradually heat up. Once it gets too warm, another bacteria group takes over, the mesophiles. They continue in a similar fashion, accelerating the process, until it's so hot that the thermophiles finally conquer the compost and really get things steamy and soily. The centre of a large compost pile can reach temperatures of 80 degrees Celsius! Once the bacteria have had their way with her, the micro-organisms come in. That's the worms, bugs and beetles who will very speedily break down the remaining tougher material, yielding garden ready compost!

So now you know the bla-bla technical, I'll make it a bit more relate-able.Food scraps from your kitchen that can compost are:

• All fruit and veggie scraps. seeds peels, egg shells etc. 
• Coffee grounds and tea bags, but take off the tags because that doesn't compost so well.
• Paper towel and tissues, but if you do try and buy unbleached so they don't release harmful chemicals to your pile.
• Plant scraps, dead leaves, twigs (but in small pieces), pine cones.

• I wouldn't recommend putting meat or dairy in there as it can get rancid and gross and wont break down.

I keep a bucket under the sink for compost, with a paper bag in it as a liner. But if you can get a receptacle with a lid, that'll help keep the smell out, and you don't need to use bags.

So now you know what to collect, but where to put it? There are many ways to go about a compost bin. If you're really handy you can install one on a spit which rotates it for you. But for the more thumby people, a simpler design exists. My parents have a beautiful large box with removable slats on each side and a mixing area in front. Mine is a lot less fancy but it still gets the job done.
So here's my step by step guide to building a compost bin out of a storage container!

1. Use the largest plastic storage container you can find. I went to Walmart and bought a 175L one made of eco-friendly plastic. 
2. With a power drill, drill .5-1 inch holes in the sides and the bottom and the lid. Don't compromise the structural integrity of the bin, but make enough so that air can pass through quite evenly. 
3. Place the bin outside where you want it. next to the fence is good, out of the way is better because it can start to smell. Cover the bottom of the bin with dry woody materials. This will be the starting carbon source that the first batch. You can use leaves, small branches, and even newspaper or brown paper, even egg cartons.
4. Start composting! Once your bucket is full, pour it evenly over top of the dry material and add some water. Cover the lid and let it work! Water carbon and nitrogen is all that the bacteria need to start working. If you're impatient or want to give your pile a kick start, you can add some sugar to the mix. That pure energy will foster a healthy micro-organism population
5. You should layer the compost with alternating wet green material and dry brown material to allow air passage and an even mix of nutrients. If it gets too wet or doesn't get enough air anaerobic decomposition takes place which results in fermented rancid goo. So make sure air can get in!

The compost wont need turning for a while, because you don't want to disrupt the warm core temperature of the pile until it's really warm and can take it. This usually takes a few months. But after a while you should mix the pile to distribute material and resupply air to the entire pile. I haven't gotten this far, but I would say about once or twice a month would be good. 

And voila, you've controlled the decomposition process, and now have a nutrient rich dark soily product called humus, which can be spread onto the topsoil or can be watered down to produce a nutrient juice you can water your plants with. Expect big leafy lush plants!

See, isn't diverting food waste, breaking it  down and using the end product to start the process over, super cool? I think so.

It's the circle of life!

Andrea