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DIY Balcony Composter - Updates & Progress

June 16, 2016


How-to guide on turning your food & kitchen waste into compost, using it to grow your own food, and living more sustainably. 




[If you don't know what a composter is or why I'm telling you to make one, go here. If you want to make your own DIY Balcony Composter, go here.]


***  I'll be adding updates as I continue with this experiment - come back here to find out! ***


One-Month Update:


At the time of writing this, I’ve had my composter for over a month – and contrary to my earlier expectation of taking half-a-year to fill a crate up, the first one is already almost full! (Guess we eat a lot more than we thought…) 


It smells a little funny when I don’t cover my food waste properly and have it exposed on the pile, with the added bonus of flies buzzing around. Solution: Add more dried material or compost maker until the food waste is buried underneath. I also put a sheet of newspaper on top as added protection.


Otherwise, it has been smooth-sailing. The setup sits behind a giant pot of lily plants on the balcony and is hidden from view, so other people hardly notice it.


The only other challenge I’ve faced is getting others in the household to stop chucking organic waste into the trash can.

I have set up a strainer-bowl right by the kitchen sink to catch all the food waste when we do our dishes. I also drew out a list of compostable things that should go into that strainer bowl and put it where it can’t help but be seen:


Feel free to use it yourself - download it here



Two-Month Update:


Recently, I found small maggots crawling in the compost and was aghast, thinking I had failed. There was no smell, just a lot of small creepy crawlies. I did my research and found out that maggots are GOOD, they help to eat and break down the food faster. So I shrugged and left them alone - but I still made sure not to look too closely the next time I poured food down.


Consistent with the previous trend, I have managed to fill up the second bin in a month's time. To continue composting, I either had to empty the first bin that has been sitting pretty (with occasional mixing and turning on my part), or I had to go buy a third bin.


Decided to go with the first option (emptying the first bin). I was afraid it was a bit too early to be 'harvesting' since it's only been a month since I finished filling this particular bin up - reports say it can take up to a year... I was delighted to find out that for the most part, all the food I've stuffed in the bin has decomposed! 


There were big chunks of dried leaves, dried okra, rocks, chicken bones and eggshells that evidently found a month too short to finish decomposing. The chicken bones, I expected, but eggshells and leaves? Why are they taking so long to break down? I suspect my compost is too dry, which slows the process down. Will be sprinkling water in the future to ensure a nice moist pile that will help speed things up.


In the meantime, I simply filtered them out and put them back into the composter so they can continue doing their thing.