Make Your Own Homemade Compost: The Pit-less, Hassle-free Way

Three years ago, when I read about the Kambha in the newspaper, I got curious.  Here was a solution that promised to get rid of most of our garbage without any hassle. It seemed too good to be true. But like the high-frequency mosquito repellent gadget, which doesn’t even work for a day, was the Kambha another fraudulent device? Luckily, curiosity got the better of me. My husband and I went to meet the Kambha distributor at her home in Nungambakkam. What really convinced us in favour of the device was the distributor’s own Kambha. She was kind enough to let us right into her kitchen balcony and show us how her Kambha worked. We were amazed to find that despite holding bucket loads of garbage, it didn’t stink or attract any pests. 

Kambha: For Pit-less Composting

Today, with 3 years of composting experience, I can vouch for the magic of  the Kambha. It's the easiest way to convert truck loads of kitchen and garden waste into precious  compost. We could complain about all the piles of stinky garbage lying around in the city or we could choose to use the Kambha. I assure you I haven’t been paid to write this post. I am endorsing it only because in all earnestness, I find it the neatest composter around.

The traditional way to composting is the compost pit. But the pit could attract rodents and other pests. You also need enough space for a pit.  The Kambha, on the other hand, requires very little space and is rodent-proof.  The fact that it has been designed by a designer of the internationally acclaimed National Institute of Design, shows in many ways. Seemingly simple, the design is  functional, sustainable, affordable and aesthetic, just as Poonam Bir Kasturi, the designer had envisaged.

The Kambha is a 3-tiered terracotta structure. You fill the top-most pot with wet kitchen waste and dry garden leaves and twigs. (If you don’t have a garden, just add shredded newspaper, sawdust or cardboard pieces.) Once 3/4^th full, it is swapped with the middle unit.  After some time when the stuff in the middle unit has further reduced and partially composted, swap it  with the bottom-most unit, where it will mature further. Continue this cycle of filling and swapping for a few months, before you can harvest fully done compost. Doesn’t it sound simple? IT IS SIMPLE. All you need to do is spend a couple of minutes each day putting your waste in the Kambha. On weekends, you could devote a little more time, to make sure that nothing’s amiss.

 What's Inside the Kambha

There are many myths to composting.

Composting is believed to be:

1.      Stinky and messy

2.      Time consuming

3.      Difficult

4.      Needing Space

5.      Attracting Rodents and Pests 

I can assure you that with the Kambha, composting is easy as A,B,C. I’ll leave it to the Daily Dump guys to convince you why the myths are all false. They’ve also a very good section on how to troubleshoot. You could run into trouble, if you don’t have the right mix of wet and dry stuff. The only trouble we ever had was in the Kambha’s first year, when we hardly added any dry garden waste. With only wet kitchen waste, the composter had more moisture than necessary and attracted some maggots. But the maggot infestation wasn’t troublesome and was easily dealt with. 

Final Sieved Compost: Fine as Tea dust

Armed with a little experience and plenty of fine compost, my husband recently convinced his colleagues to go in for a composter, the Manthan, to deal with all the canteen waste at his workplace.

Many of our urban garbage bins are such smelly eyesores. Composting is one easy, yet concrete way for each of us to actually contribute in cleaning up all the mess around us. I hope this post of mine will encourage you to begin composting.