Compost at home

Step-by-step guide to composting

Learn how to compost with Brisbane City Council and keep our city clean and green by reducing the amount of organic waste ending up in landfill.

This video will take you through the process of selecting a compost bin, choosing a location, getting started, maintaining your compost and using your finished compost.

Step 1: Selecting a compost bin

The first step is selecting your compost bin. There are many different types of compost bins, but the ones that often work best are the plastic enclosed compost bins.

Step 2: Choosing a location

Set your compost bin up in a flat, well-drained, sunny position. It's a good idea to attach some aviary wire underneath the bottom of the bins to avoid the possibility of attracting rodents. Cut the aviary wire slightly larger than the bottom of the bin and attach to the bin using bulldog clips. Clips can be easily removed when you want to use your finished compost.

Step 3: Getting started

Composting is actually not that different to cooking. You start off with some key ingredients known as nitrogen-rich or green products and carbon-rich or brown products to help create a final product. It's a good idea to place a heap of these brown materials beside your compost bin to throw on top of your nitrogen-rich food scraps.

Nitrogen-rich or green products include fruit and veggie scraps, green prunings, grass clippings, tea leaves and coffee grounds, and chicken/cow/horse manure.

Carbon rich or brown products include dried leaves, dried grass, small twigs and shredded paper. 

The other 2 critical ingredients are air and water. 

Things to avoid are meat scraps, dog and cat droppings, dairy products and plastic.

When you first set up your compost bin, fill it up so that it is at least a third to a half full, starting with a 5-10 cm layer of small twigs for aeration and drainage. On top of this, add a layer of soil or finished compost to add microorganisms and speed up the process of decomposition.  

Other activating materials include comfrey leaves, cow/horse/chicken manure, coffee grounds, mature compost, garden soil or worm juice.

Next, add alternating layers of brown and green materials. Each layer should be about 5-10 cm thick. Sprinkle layers with water to keep the heap moist. The more diverse the materials, the quicker your compost will break down.

Within a day or 2, you will be able to feel the heat within the bin from the decomposition process.

Step 4: Maintaining your compost

Continue to add materials on a regular basis, making sure that there is a good balance of greens and browns throughout the bin. 

Add air into your compost bin by turning the materials regularly using a compost screw, garden fork, or even by sticking a stake in your compost and giving it a wriggle.

The more you aerate the compost, the faster your compost will break down. If at any stage your compost becomes smelly, add some carbon rich material and aerate the heat by turning. If it is dry and slow to break down, add water, activating ingredients such as comfrey leaves or manure and turn more regularly.

Step 5: Using your finished compost

Compost is ready when it looks like a dark, rich soil. You can use it as potting mix, soil enhancer or simply as mulch for your garden.

Step-by-step guide to worm farming

Learn how to set up and look after a worm farm at home and keep Brisbane clean and green by reducing the amount of food scraps ending up in landfill.

This video will take you through the process of setting up a worm farm, maintaining your worm farm, harvesting worm castings and using worm castings in your garden.

Setting up your worm farm

Worm farming is an easy way to recycle fruit and vegetable scraps that don't require a lot of space, can be done indoors and children will love helping to feed the worms.

Worm farms are easy to set up and maintain. Your worm farm should be set up in a cool, shady area, with no direct sunlight.  

To get started, you will need newspaper or cardboard, bedding material and compost worms. Firstly, line the tray with a few sheets of damp paper or cardboard and then add in your bedding material such as shredded paper or cardboard or coconut fibre, which needs to be soaked in water until it looks like sawdust. This bedding material is then placed on top of the newspaper. Remember to soak these materials in water before adding to the top tray on top of the newspaper.

It's time to add the worms. Compost worms are special worms that breed rapidly, love a moist, dark environment and eat copious amounts of food. These worms can be bought online or from large hardware stores, or obtained from an existing worm farm. You need about 2,000 worms to get started.

Place all the worms in a tray and cover with a piece of damp sacking, cardboard or newspaper to keep the worm farm moist and dark - just the way worms like it.

Maintaining your worm farm

Looking after your worm farm is easy. Your worms eat and sleep in the same area, so put food straight into the tray under the top cover. Feed your worms every one or 2 days and cover it with some shredded paper, cardboard or dry leaves. Worms like all fruit and vegetable scraps with the exception of citrus fruit, onions, chilli and garlic.

If the worm farm becomes smelly, you may have too much food or not enough dry material, such as shredded paper or cardboard. Check that there are plenty of worms in the worm farm and add more if required. Remove some of the food if required. Occasionally aerate the worm farm by stirring and adding a small amount of garden lime. If you produce a lot of food waste, you could always start a second worm farm.

Once the top tray is full, it is time to place an empty tray on top. Line the top tray with wet newspaper in the same way that you did originally and place sacking or a similar cover over the top to keep it moist and cool. Place the food in the top tray under the cover and worms will naturally start to move up to this tray.

Worm castings is the soil-like material that is produced when the food is broken down by the worms. This is the 'black gold' for your garden!

Using the worm castings

After a couple of months most of the worms will have moved to the top tray and castings may be removed from the original tray. Castings can be mixed with garden soil to be used as potting mix or used as a top dressing on your lawn.

Bokashi, fermentation systems and indoor composters

Bokashi bins are also sometimes called 'indoor composters' or 'fermentation systems'. They are a good option for recycling food scraps because they have the added advantage of being able to process things like meat, dairy and rice, unlike most other compost systems.  

Bokashi bins are usually stored indoors, like under your kitchen sink, where you can access it easily when cooking.

Features of the bokashi system

The bokashi bucket has a tight-fitted lid, a false floor with holes in it, and a tap at the bottom to drain liquid. You can even make your own bokashi system if it has these features. As well as the bokashi bucket, you will need something to squash the material down, and bokashi mix, which is a special mixture of microbes.

Bokashi mix

Bokashi mix is sometimes called 'compost accelerator' and either comes as a spray or in flakes. It contains special natural microorganisms that ferment the waste in the bokashi bin and prevent the food from rotting, which helps to avoid bad smells. The flakes are a mixture of wheat bran, rice husks and sawdust that have been sprayed with special microorganisms, whereas the spray is a liquid version of those microbes.

Using a Bokashi system

All food waste including meat, fish, pasta, bread, rice and dairy products can be added to the bokashi because the bokashi microbes ferment the material which stops it from rotting. Once you've added your food scraps to the bucket, squash it down to squeeze out air pockets, then add some bokashi mix or spray on top. It is really important to try and reduce the amount of air getting into the bucket, so make sure you replace the lid firmly.  

After a few days you'll be able to drain off some liquid that comes out of the bucket. Drain it off regularly to avoid bad smells developing. This is full of beneficial microbes and is also highly acidic. You can dilute this one part to 100 parts of water and use it as fertiliser for your plants. Or use it undiluted as a safe and natural drain cleaner and pour it straight into the sink to help keep your drains clear.  

Once the bucket is full, leave it for 2 weeks without adding any new material. You may wish to freeze your scraps during that time or get a second bucket. After the bucket has sat for 2 weeks, you can either bury the fermented waste straight in the ground or place it in a compost bin. The waste will break down very quickly because it's been fermented.

Troubleshooting

Your bokashi bin should have a yeasty smell, but it should not smell bad. If it starts to get smelly, it usually means either you have not added enough bokashi mix or air has gotten inside. To fix the problem, add a generous amount of bokashi mix and cover it with a piece of cardboard to squash it down and reduce air exposure. Also, make sure you always close the lid tightly.

There’s a range of composting methods for you to choose from to find the one that’s best for you. There are indoor and outdoor systems to suit your home and lifestyle and handy videos with tips on each one.