Composting How To’s

Once you get use to the idea of composting various fruits and vegetable scraps, yard waste and so on, if you’re like most people you start loving how easy it is and how much it reduces your household trash output. So you begin to wonder what else can be composted.

Now the general rule of thumb is that anything organic can be composted, so many people wonder if they can compost cooked foods too. Maybe you have too many leftovers from supper and you don’t like to eat left overs, or maybe things have been sitting for too long in the fridge and it’s no longer edible.

So can you actually compost these types of foods? Yes you can, but you may or may not want to.

If you look around online you’ll find most people say you cannot compost cooked foods, but this is technically wrong. Because food is organic whether it has already been cooked or not, it can be composted. The reason most sites will say it can’t however, is because composting cooked foods will create horrible smells in your compost bin.

If you primarily compost in a small kitchen container or bucket, adding cooked food to that bin will make your kitchen smell very badly after a day or two when the food goes bad. Spoiled food smells. Horribly sometimes.

You can easily neutralize compost bin odors but the worse the smell is, the more neutralizing materials you’ll need. So in some cases the job will be too big for your current composting system to handle.

If you live in an apartment or house with no yard space for example, then your composting is limited to indoors. Usually kitchen composting is about the best you can do because you’re very limited for space. In this limited situation it’s a very bad idea to try composting cooked foods, because you won’t be able to add enough odor neutralizing compost materials and your home will stink very badly.

If however you do have yard space or even a large home which can accommodate larger composting bins, then yes you probably can compost cooked foods. Just be sure to add plenty of dry leaves, grass clippings, hay, sawdust and newspaper each time you add cooked foods.

If your compost bin is outside in a yard you can even put a shovel or two of dirt on top of the cooked foods, and that will make a big difference in keeping the smells down too.

Keep in mind that the closer your neighbors are the more important it becomes to keep your compost bin odors to a minimum. Because if the compost pile puts out too much of a bad smell the neighbors may complain to the local health department or city ordinance officers.

Link To This: Can You Compost Cooked Foods?