If you’re concerned about how to compost vegetable peelings, composting is a simple solution to alleviate the stress of not being able to consume all of the goods you eagerly selected last week.
Vegetable peels are among the biodegradable kitchen waste. When collected in significant numbers, food and yard waste take up one-third of the country’s landfill space and contribute to ozone-depleting methane gas.
Composting vegetable peels help to reduce waste production while also providing free plant fertilizer. To obtain the proper mix that turns your vegetable peels into a nice compost for your garden, combine them with high-carbon components, such as shredded leaves.
Even discarded carrots and pumpkin peels can be given a new lease on life. Composting doesn’t require a green thumb, and it’s much easier than caring for a houseplant. Here’s how to compost vegetable peelings and preserve the environment.
First things first
What is Composting?
Composting is converting organic materials (including non-organic-certified food leftovers) into nutrient-rich soil helpful to grow additional food.
Before learning how to compost vegetable peelings, knowing their benefits is crucial.
Importance of Composting Vegetable Peelings
Many people seek to learn how to compost vegetable peelings for environmental and personal health reasons.
Composting aids in the reduction of trash in landfills. Composting is an alternative to tossing certain foods or yard waste in the garbage.
This allows it to return to the ground naturally, reducing the quantity of the garbage that ends up in landfills. Composting may also aid in the reduction of garbage collection costs.
People who compost, humus, or mulch vegetable peelings in their gardens improve the soil’s nutrient level.
Composting with vegetable peelings, according to the EPA:
- It reduces methane, a greenhouse gas produced by landfills.
- Minimizes the use of Chemical fertilizers.
- Farmers should expect increased agricultural yields as composting with vegetable peelings or other biodegradable wastes.
- Composting improves poor soil quality, which aids in restoring forests, wetlands, and ecosystems.
- Aids in the recovery of contaminated soil by hazardous material.
- Composting reduces watering by allowing the soil to retain moisture levels.
- Finally, composting reduces harmful carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
Now let’s examine steps on how to compost vegetable peelings.
A Guide on How to Compost Vegetable Peelings
Composting with vegetable peelings is often misunderstood as being too difficult, smelling unpleasant, and messy. These sentiments may be true if you compost incorrectly. However, composting properly is extremely simple. Follow these simple steps to learn how to compost vegetable peelings.
1. Get Your Kitchen Scraps Ready.
The first step in learning how to compost vegetable peelings is getting your kitchen waste ready.
Thoroughly wash your vegetables and save the peels in a small pail for cooking. Such as kale leaves, potatoes, peels from carrot, edible stems, and vegetable seeds are the best because they can compose.
Lettuce leaves, broccoli crowns, and soft-fleshed vegetables such as eggplant are renowned for rotting before being used. In the same way, seek damaged garlic, onions, or potatoes in the pantry.
When making meals, you will need to collect vegetable waste in a small bucket. If you are looking for those that are compostable, you can give them a try: potatoes, carrot peels, corn husks, maize cobs, cabbage, and kale leaves, rotting or browning bits of usable products, and inedible vegetable stems and seeds.
2. Chop Large Vegetables.
Shred or chop them before adding huge chunks of vegetable waste to your compost pile. Corn cobs and husks should be cut with a sturdy knife, while the softer lime squash shells should be chopped or ground in a food processor.
Remove old vegetable plants from the garden at the end of each growing season. Instead of using the peels from damaged vegetable plants, burn or discard them. Gather all of the vegetable peels and transport them to your composting area outside. Lay a 6-inch layer of wood chips or twigs on the ground.
3. Taking Care of Your Compost Area
Taking care of your compost site is another vital step when knowing how to compost vegetable peelings.
To make a 3-inch layer, mix your vegetable peels with other high-nitrogen materials. Grass cuttings are an example. Cover your vegetable peels and other nitrogen-containing materials with a 6-inch layer of carbon-rich materials like sawdust, hay, or shredded leaves.
Allow this mixture to be watered until it is wet but not drenched. Additional nitrogen and carbon layers, as well as water, should be added every few layers. Finish when the heap has grown to a height and width between 3 and 5 feet.
You should also make sure you turn your compost pile regularly. Till your compost into your garden once it has decomposed into black, soil-like humus. Instead of using store-bought fertilizers, you can mix your compost with potting soil for container plants and then spread it over the garden soil during the growing season.
4. Other Tips
Another tip on how to compost vegetable peelings is using one bucket of vegetable peels for every three buckets of carbon-rich materials. This includes materials like hay and leaves if you’re making your compost gradually rather than in layers.
Dig holes in an existing pile and bury the peels/scraps at a depth of at least 6 inches. This reduces the possibility of rodents, flies, and other pests infesting your lot. It also lowered the number of foul odors emanating from the mound.
Vermicomposting is a new method of composting vegetable peelings. Indoors, you can use these worm bins to dispose of shredded papers and kitchen trash. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 1 pound of worms can handle 1/2 pound of home garbage every day.
You can use repurposed plastic containers to make worm bins. Specialty vermicomposters can be found in garden centers and on the internet.
You can have your vegetable peels buried directly into a garden, but you can disturb the roots of existing plants as you dig.
Also, keep in mind that as vegetable peels and other wastes decompose, they produce excess nitrogen, which can burn the roots of neighboring plants.
Conclusion
Follow the above steps if you want to learn how to compost vegetable peelings. Composting vegetable peelings is a simple and environmentally friendly process. It’s also beneficial to your garden. You can have the happiest garden possible with just a few kitchen vegetable scraps and a little patience.
