I’ve been wanting to take our gardening to the next level by making our own compost for quite some time now, but I’ve been hesitant due the size of compost bins, the necessary proximity to our house and our neighbour’s house and the cost of the bins. I’ve also been a bit wary of stink and vermin.

I’ve since learnt that if you manage your compost bin well by maintaining an optimum moisture level, aerating it and avoid adding meats and dairy, then it shouldn’t stink. A well sealed compost bin will also help keep out the critters.

I have also discovered an easy and inexpensive way to make your own compost bin by adapting a regular, plastic garbage bin. This is not a new concept: Google ‘homemade compost garbage bin’ and you’ll find lots of info and tutorials. The following is our take on the garbage bin compost.

What you need

• A bin. If you have the room, a regular plastic garbage bin is ideal. We opted for a smaller container both because it was cheaper and because ideally we want at least two – one in use and one for ‘cooking’. You can get 20L bins like the one pictured above from bakers or caterers or you can buy them at the hardware store. Any bin with a lid will do nicely; the advantage of having a round bin over a square one is that it is easier to aerate (more below).
• A drill. Or a hammer and a nail. Or a knife for cutting holes in the plastic. But a drill makes adding holes for aeration quick and easy work.
• Wet and dry (carbon and nitrogen) ingredients to add to you compost bin. Your wet ingredients will be your kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, prunings, manure, coffee grounds, egg shells etc. Dry ingredients might include straw, egg cartons, dry autumn leaves, or shredded, non-glossy paper. As a rough guide, you’re looking for a ratio of around 30:1 carbon ingredients to nitrogen ones, although you don’t have to get mathematical; looking, smelling and feeling will be your best guide (more info here).
• Optional extra: a bungee strap or other means of locking the lid. If you are using a regular garbage bin that doesn’t have a lid that locks in place, you may want to consider locking the lid down to keep out pets, pests or curious kids.

Preparing your bin

To prepare your compost bin, simply drill some holes in the base, lid and sides (or get your other half to do it), and you’re done.

Don’t be stingy with the holes, air is important for helping the compost break down and for keeping it stink free. We put about 8 rows of 4 holes in the sides of our bin, about 8 in the bottom and 6 in the top.

For the next bin, I was thinking of getting a little poly pipe that can run up the centre of the bin, and drilling holes in it to help aerate the compost from the centre out. I thought this was ingenious until I read this very hint on another website. My original idea wasn’t so original, although not a bad idea it seems.

Maintaining your compost bin

Here’s why having a round compost bin is easier than a square one: once or twice a week, knock the bin over, roll it around on the ground a bit then stand it up again. Shaking things up will help aerate your compost with relatively little work. And another bonus to having a small bin – it’s easier to roll around.

Check the moisture levels when you do this (or when you add scraps) to make sure it’s not too wet (it will smell) and not too dry (it won’t decompose any time this century). A good rule of thumb, so I’ve read, is that a handful of compost should be damp, you should be able to squeeze a few drops of moisture out of it, but no more.

If your compost is too dry, add a little water or vegetable scraps. If your compost is too wet, add some dry matter like shredded paper or straw mulch and give it a good tumble.

some practicalities

I was thinking of getting a container with a tight fitting lid to keep scraps in during the day for the bin, but I’ve opted for a recycled ice cream container under the sink for now. The up side to having a smaller container is that it will force me to empty it more often!

To speed up decomposition, it’s best to finely shred your kitchen scraps or run them through the blender (which is what we plan to do – more on our experiences, successes and failures with this as we do it). You can also speed up the composting by adding a little manure to your compost.

Apart from air and water, the other main ingredient for decomposition is heat. The potential down side of having a small bin is that larger piles tend to generate more heat. What’s more, a white bin isn’t going to absorb the sun’s heat like a black one would, and that may affect the decomposition rate of the compost. If I find that to be the case, we will paint the bin black.

On the plus side, bins can get too hot and I’ve read that compost bins should be placed in the shade in hot climates. Having a white bin will possibly reduce our need to shade the bin during summer. Time and experience will tell. It’s one reason we are starting out with a single bin.

One final practicality for us is that we have some leftover cane mulch from the garden – this will make up some of our dry matter for the bin.

After putting it off for so long, I’ve finally found a way to make our own compost without taking up very much room at all. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be making compost, sad as that sounds (better, I guess, than being excited about making fertiliser).

The above picture is taken from the corner of our courtyard closest to the house – there’s not much more to the yard than what you see. The compost bin is quite small, in fact it could work well on a balcony. We could easily add another bin or two in the space I’ve set aside for the compost. And if I ever felt the need to pretty things up, a few flowers painted onto the bin should give it more eye candy appeal.

Have you read these articles?:

1. A Novel Alternative To Plastic Shopping Bags As Bin Liners
2. Waste And Recycling – Beyond The Bin
3. food for thought thursday – space to garden

We’re on a muffin fest lately. Maybe it’s pregnancy and the cooler weather, but muffins, muffins and more muffins are coming out of our oven and into our stomachs at an alarming rate. But I’m enjoying coming up with my own creations and the little fella enjoys licking the bowl helping me bake.

These are one of my latest creations – they do include sugar because I didn’t have time to work out substitutions. I also didn’t have choc-chips but I did have a block of white chocolate left over from Christmas (I do have some self-control, see) that was just asking to be cooked with, so this was the result.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a 12 x cup muffin tin.
2. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until lump free and slightly fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing with each addition.
3. Sift in the flour and baking powder, adding the husks to the mix. Add the oats and stir to combine.
4. Add the milk and yoghurt and mix until combined. Gently fold in the raspberries and choc chips.
5. Spoon into muffin tins and bake for 25 – 35 minutes or until cooked through and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

Have you read these articles?:

1. sugar free banana, raspberry and yoghurt muffins
2. orange and poppy seed mini muffins
3. choc oat biscuit slice

The chicken shop where I used to live sold 3 whole chickens for $12 That’s not a bad price and is much cheaper than buying individually portioned pieces.

Out of these three chooks I can portion and freeze:

• six chicken breasts
• 6 drumsticks and
• 6 thigh fillets or
• 6 Maryland pieces
• 6 wings
• backbones for about 9 litres of chicken stock.

Depending on what I cook, that’s about 10 chicken meals for the two of us plus stock at around $1.20 per meal for two.

If I were to buy just the six chicken breasts alone that would cost over $12. Also if I buy the stock in the tetra packs rather than cook it myself, for 9 litres it would also cost well over $12.

Besides saving money, you also have control over your cuts of meat. It is often hard to get chicken breast with the skin on, or thigh fillets with the bone still in as these cuts have become less popular. If a recipe calls for these cuts, then you can portion them yourself.

If you’ve never cut up a chicken before, it can be a little awkward at first and messy. Using kitchen scissors or shears makes the job much easier. It takes about 10 minutes to portion a chicken or less once you’ve got the hang of it.

The video below shows you how to portion a chicken. If you want to remove the bone from the thigh or breast meat, have a look at these links to show you how.  Also, if you want skin free thigh and breast pieces, the skin pulls off quite easily.

Have you read these articles?:

1. slow cooker roast chicken and slow cooker chicken stock
2. chicken and asparagus risotto
3. Moroccan inspired chicken and couscous