Small Space Composting

There are lots of good reasons to compost.
Save money, save resources, improve your soil and reduce your impact on the environment. Regardless of your reasons, composting is a win/win scenario. Good for you and good for the environment.

Adding compost to your apartment or balcony garden will not only fertilise, it actually feeds your soil with a diversity of nutrients and microorganisms that will improve plant growth.
Chemical fertilisers, on the other hand, provide a quick burst of a limited number of nutrients that can wash away into our rivers and streams. Compost also increases soil stability, improves drainage and helps retain moisture.

Apartment and Small Space Composting Saves Money

• No need to buy chemical fertilisers. Compost is free!
• Compost helps to retain soil moisture so you water less.
• The nutrients from compost are not washed away by rainfall. No waste!

Save Resources With Your Composting Efforts

• Keeps a valuable resource out of the landfill.
• Waste less water 
• Reduce costs for waste collection and thereby reduce fuel use.
• Extend the life of landfills. Remember residential waste is 40% compostable materials.

Improve Your Container Garden Soil

• Compost returns valuable nutrients to the soil to help maintain soil quality and fertility.
• Compost is a mild, slow-release, natural fertiliser that won’t burn plants like chemical fertilisers.
• It also improves texture and air circulation in soils and helps to increase the water retention of sandy soils.
• Provides organic matter and nutrients which will improve plant growth and lead to better yields.
• Compost supports diverse life in the soil bacteria, fungi, insects and worms which in turn imporive soil health and plant growth.

Small Space and Apartment Composting Reduces Your Impact

• Reduce Green House Gases 
• Reduce Carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles used to transport waste. Organics in landfills break down anaerobically (without oxygen) to produce methane gas, a greenhouse gas 21 times more harmful than CO2.
• Reduce the impact of chemical fertilisers that run off into our rivers, lakes and streams.
• Buried organics can react with metals in the landfill to produce toxic leachate, a potential source of groundwater pollution.

By composting you complete the cycle by returning what you grow back to the soil to help you grow!

How do you compost if you live in an apartment?

Up on The Rooftop is an urban Balcony farm and composting our waste is an easy daily activity. While composting is a great way to add soil to your backyard plants, many of us live in an apartment or townhouse where a yard or access to additional space is limited. For those in an apartments, townhouses and other small space homes, follow these simple steps to successfully compost your food and plant waste.

Composting can be achieved through Worm Bins, Compost bins and Bokashi Kitchen bins.

Urban Worm Bins

There are many ready-to-use compost worm farm systems available on the market which require little preparation. They are fabulous for processing your kitchen waste. Just Google "Compost Worm Farms" or make your own. 

1. Repurpose a plastic container. In order to allow ventilation and drainage, create holes in both the top and bottom of your container. Be sure to place a deep tray under this system to catch the "leachate" (worm wee). Place it on some pot feet or small blocks to all drainage from the bottom.
2. Add strips of paper soaked in water and place on the bottom of the container. Layer about ⅓ of the container with the paper strips. This will be the start of your compost pile. Be sure to place a deep tray under this system to catch the "leachate" (worm wee)
3. Then add worms, followed by your food scraps. Find a home for your compost bin! Preferably somewhere with not too much sunlight, such as the corner of a balcony or entryway.

Continue this process making sure to scoop out compost once there is more soil than scraps into a smaller plastic container for distribution and start again! You can also stack containers on top of one another, as long as you create the holes on both the top and bottom. You can give this soil as a gift, use it for small indoor plants or sprinkle it on your lawn.

Don't let living in a small space deter you from making your own compost through your own household waste. Neighbours are often only too happy to donate their scraps to you too if you don't generate enough in your household! You can create your own sharewaste schemee within your community.

Your spent potting mix can be mixed into your composting bin too which will refresh it over time. 

Apartment Compost Bins

There are many different types available on the market of varying sizes. You will need to select the type and size that is manageable in your situation and budget. From plastic tumblers and upright cylinders with lids too high end steel bins , there will be one to suit every budget. Compost tumblers generally work faster due to the movement of oyxgen through the compost when tumbling. IIf using a stationary tumbler, a compost twizzler stick will help get oyxgen into the pile, but we do recommend a tumbler bin in small spaces. 

Compost bins do best when located in dappled sun or shade. 

You can easily construct your own compost bin using a 100L garbage bin drilled with holes. If you are processing kitchen scraps as well as prunings from your garden and flalen leaves, ensure it has a welll fitting lid. 

Whichever bin you decide on, it will need to be fed a combination of carbon elements known as "browns" such as dried leaves, shredded paper or cardboard coffee husks or saw dust. the "green" elements are vegetation prunings, spent plants cut into small pieces, kitchen scraps. The traditional ratio is 1 part GREEN to 3 parts BROWN and a splash of water to keeep it moist.

Bokashi Kitchen Bins

The Bokashi Bin is a Japanese system that pickles your waste (bokashi means fermentation) and is perfectly suited to small spaces. You need the bin which is a lidded bucket (they can be kept indoors) and special bran inoculated with bacteria. Items can be bought from garden centres and the hardware or online. In goes all your cooked and uncooked kitchen waste and a sprinkle of the magic bran.

Do note that after the final stage of the Bokashi method, it is necessary to still add the mix to compost or soil for it to further break down - it is too rich in that state to use as compost.

Grow Bag Composting

One of the simplest methods of composting is to use a bag! Composting in a porous fabric sack or bag is a fabulous way to save space and still be able to compost.  One of the large Root Pouch grow bags such as one of the small garden beds, can be used for this purpose.

Aeration is essential to aerobic composting and the bags being porous provides a sufficient supply of air to support aerobic micro-organisms. Some folk advocate composting in plastic bags which is more like anaerobic composting due to the lack of breathability.

I would not recommend it the main composting method where a significant amount of garden or food waste is produced.  save this method for prunings annd leaves as the bag cannot be sealed. The mix of the material being composted is the normal ratio of “brown” material to “green”.

Your spent potting mix can be mixed into your composting bin. Collect up fallen leaves and leave them to break down over the intervening months. 

To learn more about the Root Pouch grow bags click here.  I find the 78 and 95 litre bags perfect for small space composting of leeaves and cuttings!

 

Want To Make Potting Mix With Your Compost?

More Apartment Composting from up On The Rooftop Balcony Garden on Instagram:-

Compost Worms slow down their eating

Feeding time on the balcony

Compost worms living in plant containers

Grow bag composting