Cut Up Your Kitchen Waste

I spent about 6 days watering and turning my compost pile (which was slowly looking more like compost and less like dry grass) before I decided it was time to start adding some kitchen waste.

My boyfriend is one of those people who won't eat/drink food that is the day BEFORE the turning date. We had a bag of little white potatoes that were starting to get soft and starting to grow arms and legs... A lot of them would probably have been salvageable, but he insisted he wouldn't eat them. So i decided they would be a good addition to my compost.

Even though they were small potatoes, I cut them up into chunks about the size of a bottle cap. Cutting up your kitchen greens can help speed up the decomposition process. You CAN throw in a whole potato and still have the same end result, but cutting them up is a way to help the microbes break down the food and thus speed it up.

When you add your kitchen waste to your pile, cover it with some browns (dried leaves or grass cuttings) or even just bury it within the pile itself. This will keep it from rotting on top, smelling, and attracting insects and wildlife.