Creating Compost For Your Container Garden In The City

composting basics for city dwellers

Compost is crucial for replenishing nutrients, and returning nutrients to the system. It can be used for top-dressing or mulching between plants placed in your container garden. If you choose to take a DIY route when filling pots and planters for your tropical container garden, creating compost should be a top priority. Compost can be mixed with coir, woody material or other materials to make your own soil-less growing medium. It can also be mixed with soil if you want to make a soil based potting mix for your garden.

COMPOSTING: THE BASICS

Composting is simply the name we give to the natural process by which organic material breaks down. Composting is not complicated — it is something which happens naturally on a forest floor, or elsewhere in the wild. When we create compost at home, we are basically just finding ways to shortcut this natural process and use it to our advantage.

In home composting systems, we are usually trying to create some kind of aerobic composting system where materials break down in the presence of oxygen. A good compost bin should be lidded (to keep creatures out), have enough holes to allow for good aeration, and a tap or someway for liquid to drain out.

Aerobic composting involves:

• oxygen
• the right temperatures
• sufficient water — enough to keep things moist
• the right balance of carbon rich (‘brown’) and nitrogen rich (‘green’) materials. (Brown materials are things like dry leaves, cardboard and straw, green materials are things like fruit and vegetable scraps, grass clippings, and green leaves)

As long as these conditions are met, it is very easy to create a quality compost at home.

What Can Be Composted

• Green pile (produces a lot of moisture)= Kitchen scraps such as vegetables trimmings, fruit peels, bread, egg shells, leaf clippings from pruning your garden, coffee grounds, tea leaves
• Brown pile (soaks up the wet stuff produced by green pile) = dry pile, cardboard, toilet roles, shredded newspaper

Chop them up into smaller pieces, or blend them if you prefer. The smaller they are, the faster they decompose. Add them in layers — 1 layer of green to 3 layers of browns. Keep the greens well covered with the browns to prevent pesky fruit flies from getting to them.

What Cannot Be Composted

Avoid adding any of these to an urban composting pile so you can keep your compost bin odour free and pest free:

• Meat & bones (will take to long to break down and may attract pests)
• Animal manure (as they may carry disease)
• Dairy products
• Oils
• Cooked food
• Metals of any kind
• Plastics of any kind
• Paper plates/cups (will not break down in a home composting system)

Will It Smell Bad?

Trust your nose when composting. Composting will give off some odour, but it will never be unpleasant or too strong if done right. Over time (nearing the 3 month mark), it will actually take on a pleasant, earthy smell when it is done. If your compost starts to smell bad, it is likely because it is too wet — simple add more brown materials, turn it well and add a thin layer of garden soil or potting mix to it.

Do I have To Drain My Compost?

As the food scraps breakdown, they will produce some liquid that should drain away from your compost bin. Have a tap attached to the bottom of the bin so you can drain it conveniently, or place a tray below to collect drips.

Types of Composting

Before you start composting at home, it is a good idea to decide which type of composting to go for. You can:

• Compost in place (in your containers and planters).
• Set up a cold composting system (in which materials break down slowly in a heap or bin).
• Speed things up with a higher temperature hot composting system (which also allows you to compost a wider range of materials).
• Vermicomposting — improve efficiency and speed by enlisting the help of special composting worms
• Use a compost tumbler — you can also speed things up with a compost tumbler, or by fermenting organic material in a bokashi system first before composting.

No matter which type of composting you opt for, remember the basics above and you cannot go too far wrong. You can always refine your composting system over time, but the key thing is to make sure you are not wasting organic material from your garden and/or your home.

Composting is one key way to make sure that your gardening is as self-sufficient and sustainable as possible. It can improve your yield, and reduce waste. So making your own compost, however you choose to do it, is a win-win all round.

Thankfully, there’s a really great initiative called Project Black Gold in Singapore, a testbed for ideas in community food scrap composting. They collaborate with 3 neighbourhoods in Singapore to make good compost using household food scraps, and along the way, build a stronger sense of community. See if you can connect with a community near you to start food scrap composting, it’ll be heaps of fun!