Composting In A Small Space

Composting in a small space sounds a bit like wishful thinking, doesn’t it? When you picture a compost heap, it’s likely to be one of those big ones, at least 3 feet tall, deep, and wide. And there are some good reasons to make compost on that scale, if you have the space. But what about if, like me, you simply don’t have room for a jumbo compost heap? Is composting on a small scale possible, or even worthwhile? I think so! Composting in a small space is still an efficient way to manage green waste from growing produce and ornamental plants. And returning as much plant matter to the soil as possible means you don’t have to spend as much money on bagged compost and chemical fertilizers.

• Why space shouldn’t put you off composting
• Composters with a small footprint
• Composting in a small vegetable garden without a composter at all

Why space shouldn’t put you off composting

Composting in a small space is not without challenges.

• The first is finding somewhere to collect your composting material. Some small yards and gardens just don’t lend themselves to easily positioning a composting container.
• Finding space to turn your heap. Turning garden waste into compost isn’t as simple as piling all your pruned materials and weeds in a heap, and waiting. You’ll be surprised how little it changes at all, if you just ignore it. The material needs to be turned over to introduce oxygen, and that means tipping it all out in one spot, and re-heaping it in another, roughly once a week.
• Small heaps might not get hot enough. Traditional compost heaps rely on having enough mass to achieve internal temperatures of up to 110 – 150°F. This both speeds up decomposition, and kills seed and weed fragments. It’s tricky to achieve these temperatures on a small scale, because the heat dissipates too quickly.
• Small spaces usually produce less green waste than large yards. Obviously the grass cuttings, pruned materials, and finished annual vegetables and flowers you do get can be supplemented with food waste, shredded paper and pet bedding. But there’s still potential for not having enough volume of materials for traditional composting techniques.

Advantages of composting in a small space

But I’ve been composting in a small space for 5 years, and whilst it hasn’t always been plain sailing, I’m convinced that all these problems are conquerable! And the benefits of having a go are definitely worth the effort.

• If you don’t compost your waste, you’ll need to dispose of it some other way. Which means you’re going to have to move it further. Composting, in this sense, is really the lazy way out!
• All the cuttings and plant matter from your small garden that go into your compost grew from nutrients in your soil. Send them away with the rest of your household waste, and they’ll take those nutrients with them. Which means you’ll need to buy bagged compost and chemical fertilizers to replenish the soil. Don’t let it happen! Take back those nutrients!
• There is something deeply satisfying about achieving a self contained cycle of growing, composting, and growing again, in any size of space.

Composters with a small footprint

Your first option in a small space is to invest in a small composter. Pippa looks at the many types of composting container available to gardeners in this article. Plastic bins and tumbling composters are the most popular choices for small spaces. As are hotbin composters – small, thermal-insulated composters designed to turn even small volumes of garden waste into compost in as little as 30 days. All of these have an obvious advantage in terms of space – they take up very little of it. But they’re not without drawbacks:

• The contents of composting bins still need tipping out and turning every week, which requires space.
• Tumbling composters can be turned by a handle without emptying them, but low quality models are prone to collapsing under the weight of their contents.
• Hotbins don’t need turning at all, but they’re not quite as basic to operate as a traditional compost heap. They usually need material adding in quite specific volumes, and supplementing with specially sold bacteria and bulking material.

If one of these solutions sounds like it could work for you, that’s great! All of them are the perfect solution for some gardeners. My personal observation of static slimline plastic composting bins is that they are the most likely end up sad and abandoned. So I recommend either a sturdy tumbling composter (for low-tech gardeners) or a hotbin composter (if you’re feeling adventurous). Either of these collects, processes, and stores home made compost in the smallest space possible. And they look pretty discreet in a tidy corner too. But I also have one more suggestion to make, and it’s the solution that eventually worked for me.

Composting in a small vegetable garden without a composter at all

I have a plot in a community garden, which is just 20’ by 20’. We do have some communal traditional compost heaps, but when I arrived they had fallen into disrepair, and most plot holders had started making compost within their own space. They’re also at the opposite end of the site to my plot, so trekking back and forth to them is time consuming.

At first I tried keeping a small composting bin, but finding space to tip it out and fork it over quickly became a problem. So after reading lots of fellow gardener’s accounts of how they compost within a small vegetable garden, I tried adopting the following approach. It was originally made popular by gardeners growing vegetables in raised beds, but it can be adapted to all kinds of spaces.

Step 1

In spring, choose a bed for collecting your compostable materials. If you have enough space to leave that bed fallow for a year, you can just pile material directly onto it. I try to gather everything in a corner – either by heaping it up, or collecting it in an old laundry basket, which you can see just above the center of this picture:

Step 2

When the growing season is over, spread the material evenly over the bed. I also add the straw mulch I use around the base of my fruit plants in summer. This is valuable brown matter, since most of what I collected in the laundry basket is green matter.

Step 3

Cover the bed with old cardboard boxes or plastic membrane, and let the worms drag all your waste material down into the soil for you. They’re unlikely to finish the job by next year, so grow pumpkins, squashes and zucchini through holes in the membrane or cardboard next summer. That’s what you can see happening on the right of the photo above. Cucurbits don’t seem to mind the activity going on around them!

Meanwhile, choose a new bed to collect the next season of compostable materials on.

Step 4

When my squash and zucchini are finished, the plastic membrane (if you’re using it) can be used to cover the next composting bed. At this point, I usually buy some bagged compost and spread it 2” – 3” thick over the bed where the squash and zucchini were growing. This is for two reasons:

1. Pumpkins, squash and zucchini are greedy as heck, and even with the decomposing material from the previous year, it’s likely to be depleted in nutrients.
2. It smothers any seeds from annual weeds that made it into my compost pile.

So, it’s not entirely self contained – I’m still buying in some bagged compost. But it is satisfying knowing that I’m not throwing garden waste (and all the goodness it contains) away. And it has been an effective, low stress, physically-easy way of managing garden waste without a compost heap!

This year the laundry basket has perished, so I simply cut both ends off a heavy duty plastic bag some bark chippings came in. Then I used three bamboo canes to hold it open. It’s not glamorous, but it gives me space to plant other crops around it until fall:

And emptying it will be as easy as lifting it up! Next year I’m going to try making a bottomless chicken wire cage instead.

Summary

Every gardener faces challenges which force them to get creative. Composting in a small space is just one such example. There are several solutions you can try out, including slimline compost bins, tumbling composters, hotbins, and covering compostable materials in plastic membrane or cardboard, and waiting for worms to drag them down into the soil. Experimenting with what works for you, in your space, is all part of the journey! Let us know what works in your small space using the comments box down below.