Composting Vegetable Wastes in a Planter

Composting requires some form of container. For this method of small scale vegetable composting you will need a the following materials:

One large planter

One bag of potting mix, or soil

Hand garden spade or large spoon

Vegetable waste

If you don’t have a spare large planter around for composting vegetable waste, you can use a medium one or an extra large one. I happened to have a spare green planter. It’s a fairly inexpensive plastic type with the attached bottom. It has 15 to 16 inch diameter and its about 15 inches high. For me, it makes a perfect composting planter.

Fill the planter about half way up with the potting mix. Add waste vegetables to the composting planter. Use the hand garden spade to mix the soil and vegetables. Mix thoroughly so that the soil covers all the vegetable waste.

Continue to add waste vegetables to the soil in the composting planter. Each time you add material, mix it into the soil. Over time bacteria in the soil will break down the vegetable waste and eggshells, and incorporate them into the soil.

Also keep an eye on the moisture level of the compost mixture. You don’t want it to dry out, so add water as needed to keep it moist. Don’t add too much water, just enough to keep the soil moist but so it still crumbles as you turn it.

To make the composting process proceed faster, chop the vegetables into small pieces. You can use a knife, a “chopper”, or the blender. Most times, we only have a small amount of vegetable waste to dispose of, so we will use a knife to dice the material into small pieces. If there is a lot, we will use the blender to chop it up.

You can also add eggshells to the compost mixture. Let the eggshells dry completely, then crumble them into tiny pieces and mix them into the compost.