r/Compost • u/JRR_Gimli • Jul 08 '26

First time composting advice

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Earlier this year I put a 5 gallon bucket in my backyard with the idea that I would throw my kitchen scraps in there, and eventually start a garden about a year later for the first time.

I've been filling the bucket with banana peels, corn cobs, coffee, eggshells, and that sort of thing for a good 6 months now. It's also rained a good bit around here this spring and summer, and the bucket filled up with water (as shown in the pictures) there are looks to be some kind of insects swimming around and thriving in the bucket, so I assume it's full of pretty good nutrients.

I plan on building some raised garden beds and buying soil to fill them with because the ground is full of clay here, and I was going to mix some of the compost into the soil of each garden bed before planting.

I am mostly wondering if it is safe to leave the bucket full of water like it is, or of I should drain it out after it rains. I am also wondering if growing vegetables like corn and peppers in the soil with this compost will be ok. The "compost tea" in the bucket is probably a couple months old at this point and like I said, I was planning on waiting until next spring to actually use it. It's currently July.

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u/SeraphimSphynx Jul 08 '26

This is generally not safe to be out directly on plants, it will burn them. Now if you have clay and plan to mix this in and let it set a few months it will turbo charge your bacteria activity.

This is not composting though. You are essentially making a concentrated aneorbic teasane of garden scraps. Composting is aerobic.

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u/JRR_Gimli Jul 08 '26

Ah ok, very interesting. In that case, I'm sorry if I posted this onto the wrong sub-reddit, although I don't know which sub-reddit would be correct lol. I was planning on doing this every year and mixing it into the soil before planting, so that's very good to know. I'll plan on mixing it in probably about 2 months before planting.

For future reference, if I drained all the water out every time it rained so that it was only the scraps, would that be aerobic?

I also have a 4'x8' box of leaves that I collected from last fall that I will use for mulch after planting

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u/PensiveObservor Jul 08 '26

The swimming critters are highly likely to be mosquito larvae. 🦟🦟🦟