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Compost Your Kitchen Waste

Composting your kitchen waste has never been easier; these days there are composters designed to handle each specific task.

You can use your kitchen waste to produce compost either indoors or outdoors. Indoor composting us carried out with Bokashi and outdoor composting can take place either with worms or in the traditional way using wooden or plastic composters.

To find out more about conventional composting have a look at our Composting Garden Waste article.

Bokashi

Bokashi is a Japanese term that means “fermented organic matter”. It is a bran-based material that has been fermented with Effective Micro-organisms liquid concentrate and then dried.

To start you simply sprinkle the Bokashi into your container and begin adding your kitchen waste. For every 30mm or so of scraps add a handful of the bran until the bin is full. Be sure to replace the lid each time you add to it to keep in smells and to help the fermenting process. Once the bin is full seal and put it away for a 10-14 days. Whilst it is sealed the Bokashi ferments the organic matter into a form that breaks down really quickly.

Once complete the “pickled” waste can be added to a conventional compost heap or used in the garden to improve the soil. If used directly on the garden, bury it beneath a layer of soil and leave for about two weeks before planting in that area.

Liquid is also produced from the buckets which should be drained off and used as a probiotic plant feed.

Because the unit is sealed it does not produce any odour and does not attract vermin. It is best to have two bins; one you are filling and one which is fermenting.

Items that can be “pickled” include fresh fruit and vegetables, prepared foods and leftover ready meals, cooked and uncooked meat and fish, cheese, eggs and coffee grounds.

Wormeries

Wormeries are used outdoors to compost your kitchen waste. They are neat and unobtrusive and all you have to do it add the worms and let them do all the hard work. Throughout the composting process the wormery will also produce a steady supply of liquid plant feed.

Unlike conventional composters Wormeries allow you to compost cooked vegetable leftovers, dog hair, apple peel, cardboard etc as well as the usual raw kitchen scraps.

The best composting worms are reds and dendras and you should use a combination of the two. The more worms you have the faster the compost will convert, on average you should aim to have a kilogram of worms to each cubic metre of waste. The worms can eat half their body weight in waste each day and they neutralise odours as they work. Every couple of weeks or so they can produce a dozen baby worms so you should not have to buy any once your system has stabilised.