Compost Bins

 Healthy Ingredients in the Compost 

Healthy Food for the Vegetable Garden

Healthy Food on Our Plates

Bin 1 Cooking What to add? NOTHING!!!!   Except maybe coffee grounds without filters. What’s happening? Bin 1 has been layered with dirt, green waste and brown waste.  Throughout the season, it will get poked to keep the air flowing and watered to feed the critters transforming our yard waste into compost. The activity in the decomposing process will actually make the composter hot!  On a cool morning, you may even see steam rising from it.  This is why it is labeled “cooking”.

Bin 2 Green Waste Nitrogen rich waste What to add? Leafy Garden Waste Flexible Stems and Roots Grass Coffee grounds and tea without filters NOT COOKED Vegetables and Fruit Waste Corn leaves and silk What’s happening? Just filling up so we will have green waste we can layer when bin 1 gets emptied in the fall. Some decomposition will happen. If Bin 2 gets stinky, it is suffocating and needs air.  Just turn it with the pitch fork.

Bin 3 Brown Waste Carbon rich waste What to add? Anything woody, hollow stalks or really thick garden waste. Sunflower stalks Corn cobs that don’t have butter or salt on them! What is happening? Just filling up so we will have brown waste we can layer when bin 1 gets emptied in the fall. Brown waste takes MUCH longer to break down than green waste. Bin 3 won’t see much action during the summer, but come fall clean up, it will fill up quickly!

Do Not Add the Following to the Composter or We Will Get Sick!!!!

No cooked food;  it doesn't matter if it is vegan, vegetarian or meat.  If it is cooked, it will contaminate the composter, which will contaminate the plants that will end up on our plates!

Also Absolutely NO

Oil         Animal Waste    Eggshells   Bread(because it is cooked)

Plants that are diseased or have flowered because 

our composter won't get hot enough to kill them;  we don't want them travelling through compost to our gardens.

Animal Poop and Kitty Litter and Animal Bedding (rabbits, hamsters...)

Meat, cooked or uncooked!  Meat in compost has led to e-coli outbreaks!

Any kind of oil

Peanut butter or any kind of bread

Butter because it is an oil and an animal product!

All of the above, except pet waste, can go in the city composter because the city compost gets a lot hotter than ours will when it is cooking.