Which is the best compost bin? Bioverter vs other composters

In nature, nutrients and organic matter return to the soil via decaying leaf litter. This leaf litter cycling is limited in gardens, so without replenishment, the level of nutrients and organic matter decline with time - it is hard to grow healthy plants in depleted soil.

By making compost for your garden, you can both mimic and speed up the return of nutrients and organic matter to your soil. Let’s take a look at various compost systems; what they do, how to use them, and what each one is best suited to.

Home compost systems in 2024

We can sort home compost systems into two broad categories - garden and kitchen - in line with how we gather our waste for reuse.

Many standard compost systems are capable of turning garden waste into compost. The wastes are kept moist, and regularly mixed by hand to provide oxygen. We call them garden compost systems.

Nutritious wastes from the kitchen have a higher constant demand for oxygen when breaking down - they can rot and stink when oxygen runs out. It is best to reuse them in a kitchen compost system.

Garden waste

Gardeners generate varying amounts of garden waste. Unsurprisingly, garden compost systems come in a variety of sizes and shapes, including open-ended bins, tumblers and homemade variants.

Open-ended compost bin

These bins mimic nature in that the wastes inside are in contact with the soil below, much like a pile of leaf litter would. The difference is that you can make the natural cycle of nutrients and organic matter go a lot faster!

Open-ended bins work well with moderate amounts of garden waste. Frequent mixing is a requirement and mixing large quantities in a big bin might be too taxing.

Balanced nutrition is important - use waste composites comprising two lots of carbon-rich or brown waste and one of nitrogen-rich or green waste. Add water, if required to keep the wastes moist.

The breakdown process to unlock nutrients typically takes place at temperatures close to the air outside. With diligence, you could produce warmer conditions to hasten the process. One way is to include selected (nitrogen-rich) kitchen waste as a minor component of your waste composite, and mix very often.

A hot temperature of 55-60°C is unnecessary to pasteurise your wastes if you exclude items (e.g. diseased plants and seeded weeds) that cause unwanted outcomes.

Tumbler

Tumblers try to make things a bit easier; in essence, they are bins that you rotate to mix wastes. You can avoid contact with wastes, which can occur when mixing with a spiral aerator or garden fork.

There is a pitfall, however - mixing by tumbling only occurs when there is space in the bin for wastes to tumble into. Since you mustn’t fully fill a tumbler, its working volume is smaller than the bin size. It can be difficult to tumble a heavy pile of wastes in a large unit.

Tumblers have hatches for you to add balanced waste composites. These hatches can hinder removal of contents when you want to empty your tumbler.

They are also typically suspended in the air, without any contact with soil. Unlike their ground-based counterpart, they miss out on a connection to beneficial soil organisms.

Kitchen waste

Kitchen waste is generated routinely. It contains a wider range of nutrients, and in larger amounts than garden waste, so you can make rich compost from a waste composite with kitchen scraps as the main component. With a kitchen compost system, you break down the scraps quickly into a form that doesn’t attract pests nor pets.

Bioverter

Bioverter is an innovative, scientifically engineered system. Its ventilation setup eliminates taxing mixing as a process requirement. It is insulated, enabling you to make compost from everyday kitchen scraps in less time at elevated temperatures.

Bioverter is also a continuous system. Add kitchen scraps two or more times a week, and simply let them turn into nutrient-dense compost as they descend, pulled down by gravity. Harvesting is made easy with pull-out collectors.

Worm farming

Worm farms are fed a mix of wastes, with less than half from the kitchen. Microbes pre-digest the wastes for worms to swallow. Although the microbes are co-workers, these farms are set up to care for worms. Feeding is controlled to avoid a buildup of uneaten waste.

Farm wrigglers are a specific breed, typically red and tiger worms. They are fussy eaters, so exclude food they’ll avoid. They are also needy, requiring constant mild temperatures and moist, aerated conditions. You also have to provide a layer of bedding materials to rear the next generation of replacement worms.

Worms are farmed to produce castings as a fertiliser. Worm castings are of course good for your garden, but they don’t fertilise and condition your soil the way well-made compost can.

Companion systems for making compost

As a final note on compatible systems, the best setup that works for you may involve different systems to reuse the diverse wastes you have.

Bioverter and an open-ended bin work well as companion systems, for example. Bioverter is better for making nutrient-dense compost from kitchen scraps (which can stink in poorly aerated systems), and an open-ended compost bin suits wastes that naturally break down slowly, e.g. corncobs, avocado skins and garden waste.

This companion setup would be well equipped to handle everyday organic wastes and produce great compost to enhance soil health for plants and garden to flourish.