How To Make Compost At Home For Beginners

Looking to lighten your impact on the environment? Rather than buying plastic bags of compost, why not try making your own peat-free compost? It’s really easy – here’s everything you could ever want to know on how to make compost at home.

Did you know that in the UK alone we collectively throw an estimated 4.5 million tonnes of food and drink in the bin each year?

This is a huge problem as when food is sent to landfill, as it decomposes without any oxygen. This might not sound like a big deal, but when food decomposes without any oxygen (in a process known as anaerobic digestion) it releases a greenhouse gas called methane.

Methane has a 28 times greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide, driving climate change at a much faster rate. It’s therefore vitally important to avoid sending food to landfill as much as possible.

Undoubtedly the best way to reduce food waste is to plan your food shopping carefully and freeze leftovers. However, composting also has a vital role in reducing the amount of food sent to landfill.

Here’s everything you need to know to get started:

How To Get Started

Composting kitchen waste isn’t hard to do. And, contrary to popular opinion, isn’t a smelly job if done correctly. So I thought I’d show you how to make compost at home, odour-free! And if you don’t have a garden, check out this handy guide on how to compost in a flat.

Start In The Kitchen

It can be hard knowing where to start, but I think the easiest place is to start in the kitchen. Gathering the supplies you need, and getting your indoor setup together gives you good momentum for moving on to the next stage.

The Equipment You Need

You only need basic supplies in the kitchen. These are as follows:

• A kitchen caddy – essentially a small bin to hold your kitchen waste. I have a lidded caddy like this that I sit on my countertop. However, if you have a tiny kitchen then you can even get a caddy that hooks onto the wall or inside a cupboard.
• Compost bags or liners (optional)

Lining your caddy is completely optional. If you don’t want to line it, you’ll need to wash your caddy out every time you use it. If you don’t mind washing your caddy every time you empty it then go for it!

Some people like to line their caddy with a compostable caddy bag. It does an add additional cost, but it does mean you don’t have to wash your caddy every time you empty it.

A low-impact and low-cost alternative is to make bags out of old newspapers. Sounds complicated? It’s really not! Here’s a 30-second video showing you how to make a liner:

In the summer your kitchen caddy can get a bit whiffy – particularly if you live in a smaller household and don’t need to empty frequently. It doesn’t have to be that way though. Here are my top tips to help stop your kitchen compost caddy from smelling.

The Things You Can Put In Your Kitchen Caddy

You can place all sorts of kitchen scraps and waste in your kitchen caddy:

• fruit and vegetable peelings (although be aware that citrus skins don’t compost well)
• fruit and vegetable scraps
• salad leaves
• tea leaves and bags – not PLA-based teabags or teabags made from polypropylene. Confused? Check out my guide to plastic-free teabags to see if your preferred tea brand is compostable or not
• coffee grounds and filter papers
• crushed eggshells
• nutshells
• hair and pet fur

Onions should be added sparingly, as worms are not keen on onions.

What Shouldn’t Go In Your Kitchen Caddy

There are also a few things that you don’t want to put in your caddy. Avoiding the following items helps to stop odour problems and rodents:

• Meat
• Fish
• Eggs (crushed eggshells are ok)
• Poultry scraps
• Dairy products
• Fats, grease, lard, or oils

It’s also not a good idea to put some products labelled as compostable in your caddy, such as compostable cups. Read here for why you can’t compost compostable cups at home.

Need more help? See my full guide on what you can put in a home compost bin for what you can and can’t compost.

Consider Your Garden Setup

Now you’ve got your kitchen set up, it’s time to think about your garden setup.

Choosing A Compost Bin

A garden composter is invaluable. The cheapest option is to make your own. Here’s a handy guide on how to make your own bin from pallets, if you’d like to go down that route.

Alternatively, you can buy a compost bin. We have a standard plastic bin, which we find is a good cost-effective way at trapping heat and helping our food waste break down at a reasonable speed.

However, there are many different types of bins available. This includes the Hotbin (available at Crocus), which can create organic compost 32 times quicker than a standard bin. Or the Green Johanna, which also considerably speeds up the decomposition process. These are great options if you have quite a few people in your household and want to speed up the composting process.

My advice? Shop around and see which one best fits your need and budget.

Where to Site Your Bin

Once you’ve picked your bin, you need to consider where to put it.

The best place to site your bin is in a sunny spot on bare soil. The sun increases the temperature in your bin, making your waste break down faster. Meanwhile, bare soil allows for worms to enter your bin, which is essential for composting.

If you don’t have any bare soil and need to place your bin on slabs or tarmac then don’t worry. Just make sure that you place a layer of paper and twigs at the bottom of the bin before you start emptying your waste into the composter. This helps creatures such as worms to be able to colonise your composter.

How to Make Compost

Now you’re all set up you can start composting your kitchen and garden waste. Here’s all you need to know:

Composting Your Food Waste

For most of the year, you probably won’t have to empty the caddy every day – just when it gets full. In our household (of four) we find we empty our caddy into the composter every other day, and our kitchen is odour-free.

If you live by yourself you may want to empty it before it gets full to avoid odours, as you will likely be generating less waste.

In summer, fruit flies can be a problem, so I empty the caddy every day. See here for more tips on how to get rid of fruit flies naturally if you find that they become a problem.

Don’t Forget Your Garden Waste

When making compost, it’s vital to add a mix of different materials to your bin. Things you can add include:

• flowers
• spent plants from your garden
• nettles
• rhubarb leaves
• grass cuttings
• fallen leaves
• twigs
• garden trimmings
• hay and straw

I would avoid composting the following garden items:

• Diseased or insect-ridden plants as diseases or insects might spread
• Invasive plant species
• Anything from the garden treated with pesticides, as these may kill vital organisms

Other Things You Can Compost

When making compost, I would aim for a 50/50 balance between green waste – this is your kitchen scraps as well as your grass clippings and weeds – and brown waste. This brown waste includes dried leaves and twigs from your garden. However, your brown waste can also include:

• cardboard (torn up)
• egg boxes (torn up)
• scrunched up paper
• toilet roll tubes (torn up)

These types of material are slower to rot, add carbon (essential for providing energy for the worms and other creatures in your composter) and create air pockets. These pockets provide vital oxygen to your compost and help stop your composter from smelling. It’s particularly important to do this if you’ve added grass cuttings to help promote the flow of oxygen.

The Composting No-Nos

As well as the items already listed, there are a few more composting no-nos that you should never add to your bin:

• dog and cat poo
• nappies (even eco-friendly biodegradable nappies)
• receipts (see here why you can’t compost or recycle receipts)
• coal or charcoal ash

How Long Does It Take to Make Compost?

In your composter, your kitchen and garden waste can take anywhere between 3 and 12 months to produce garden-ready compost. It all depends on which type of compost bin you have.

However, it’s worth the wait. Your compost will be fantastically nutrient-rich. It will be great in borders, vegetable, and flower beds, for potting plants in, and for feeding shrubs and trees. And you’ll have been able to make it without the use of plastic or peat.

Your compost may have twiggy bits in it – you can sieve these out if you are particularly pernickety about your compost!

If you have any other questions on how to compost then do feel free to ask in the comments below!

And looking for more sustainable gardening advice? Try my top tips on plastic-free ways to start seeds. You’ll find heaps of ideas to help reduce plastic in your garden.