Organic fertilizer is important for home gardening. It is easy to turn food waste into fertilizer and comes with several benefits:
- The home-made fertilizer is safe from chemicals and harmful substances.
- It is environmental friendly and reduces landfill waste.
- Food waste does not cost extra money.
Nearly all food waste can be turned into fertilizer but the process for meat is not suitable to make at home. This article focused on turning greenery waste into fertilizer.
If you cook at home, the vegetable waste can be used to convert to fertilizer. If you don’t cook, you can turn the fruit waste, such as fruit skin, seeds, pulp, into fertilizer. Fruit waste contains more nutritional materials, such as minerals, and is better than greenery waste from vegetable. I would suggest a mixture of both vegetable and fruit waste.
For the waste, if it is bulky, like the stem, you should chop it into small pieces as bacteria works faster on small pieces.
You should prepare a container to hold the waste. Glass or plastic containers are preferred. Metal containers are not suitable as acidic materials may be formed as by-products. Mix the waste with some soil from your garden. Put the mixture in the container and leave the lid slightly open so that air can go in and out. Soil contains environmental bacteria and the bacteria decomposes the waste into fertilizer. The process takes about 2 months at room temperature. You can stir the mixture once a while to speed up the process. In general, higher temperature increases the decomposing rate.
During the process, the bacteria produces bad smell gas as by-product on decomposing waste into fertilizer. I would recommend to leave the container outdoor, like balcony. If you have to keep it indoor, you may open the lid to let the smell out once a few days.
After 2 months, the fertilizer is ready. They are organic and is safe for growing edible vegetable at home.
