You are fond of eating fruits. And you are fond of gardening. How about making your own garden compost from the fruit leftovers? Cores of apples, rinds of melons, pineapples, and papayas, peels of bananas, oranges, and chikoos – you should not throw them away. Collect them. They can serve as wonderful compost for your beloved kitchen garden.
Time to give your fruit scraps a new and useful life.
How to compost
Backyard compost features two main layers:
1. Green layer: fruits and vegetables
2. Brown layer: dry leaves, wood scraps, and others
When you use fruits for composting, it is good to use an open-air container or simply choose a corner of your garden for compost making.
Remember:
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You can use raw fruits, cooked fruits, and fruit pulp to make compost.
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Chop bigger pieces or hard, bulky leftovers like cores, peels, and rinds into small pieces before adding. Big pieces take longer to decompose. They also prevent the compost to reach an optimal temperature that helps to destroy plant diseases and weeds.
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When using fruits for compost, alternate them with a carbon-rich layer containing dead leaves, grass, straw, shredded paper, and other such materials.
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In case your compost is already soggy after rainfall and you have added fruit scraps to it, add more dry materials like grass and leaves.
What you can take for compost
You can take peels, pulp, cooked fruit, cores, rinds, stems of grapes, leftovers from jelly, jam, or juice making, and other uneaten portions of fruits.
Benefits of using fruits for compost
Fruit waste is regarded as a balanced material for composting. They are in the high-nitrogen category and contain 35:1 nitrogen-carbon ratio. This is considered ideal.
Fruit waste is usually soggy. This helps to make compost containing sawdust and leaves moist and creates an optimum level of moisture for fast compost making. This is as per “Rodale’s Ultimate Guide to Organic Gardening. “
So, the next time you eat a fruit, do not throw away its peel or pit. Save it for the compost.
Now, before you start saving almost all ingredients of the kitchen to make a compost, please know that certain things are not for adding in your compost bin.
The following ingredients are not for composting
1. Meat and dairy
These are perfectly decomposable, yet it’s not advisable to add them to your compost bin. This may attract rodents and unwanted bugs.
2. Bakery products
You think baked products are soft and will serve as great compost material, however, they are not a smart choice for composting. They may attract stray animals and rodents. You don’t want uninvited guests in your backyard, do you?
3. Treated wood
Spare this ingredient. Treated wood, which is converted into sawdust is not the right compost material. It contains chemicals used in the treatment that can ruin the quality of your compost. You can use untreated sawdust or wood scraps, certainly.
4. Citrus and other acidic foods
Got loads of citrus peels, tomatoes leftovers, and pickled foods? Forget them. They serve no compost materials. They are highly acidic and will kill the compost-making bacteria.
5. Oily food
Thinking of throwing away that leftover “pakodas” or “samosas” in your compost bin? Don’t! Oil or grease present in such food can disturb the balance of moisture in your compost. You must never add oily ingredients to the compost.
6. Human and animal waste
Yes, human and animal wastes are organic, but they stink. Besides, they can create a health risk by making your compost unhygienic, useless, and, of course, smelly.
7. Weeds:
Every garden has weeds. You might get a thought of adding these weeds to the compost. They are of no use anyway, why not decompose them, right? Wrong! Never add weeds to your compost bin. You will regret it! Weeds can grow roots in compost and harm the quality of your “black gold” (compost).
Caution:
Please do not add:
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Decorative leaves of fruits or fruits from floral shops.
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Fruits treated with pesticides. Organic is best.
Compost making may sound a herculean task, but is not. An added benefit is that it will help you increase daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. Eat, collect, and make compost!
