The Question Behind the Question

Every composting method does the same job, and they differ in three practical ways: how much space they need, how much garden waste they can absorb, and whether they can take cooked food.

Work out where you sit on those three axes and the choice largely makes itself.

The Open Heap

A pile on bare soil, ideally in a three-sided timber or pallet enclosure roughly a metre cubed.

This is the best method if you have the space, and the reason is thermal mass. A cubic metre of material insulates itself, so the interior can reach 50 to 65 degrees, which breaks material down in months rather than years and kills a fair number of weed seeds. Smaller volumes shed heat too fast to do this.

It takes unlimited garden waste, it is nearly free, and turning it is straightforward with a fork.

The costs: it looks like a heap, it needs about 1.5 metres square, and it should not take cooked food or anything that attracts vermin.

A metre cubed is close to a hard minimum for a hot heap. Below that you get a cold heap, which still works, just slowly.

The Closed Plastic Bin

The cone-shaped bin most councils sell cheaply. Open-bottomed, sits directly on soil, has a lid and a hatch at the base.

This is the default for an ordinary garden, and it is a sensible default. It is tidy, it keeps rain out and moisture in, the lid deters most animals, and it takes both kitchen scraps and moderate quantities of garden waste.

The two real weaknesses are that it is hard to turn - you essentially have to empty it - and it is usually too small to get properly hot, so expect six to twelve months rather than three.

It must sit on soil, not on paving, so that worms and other organisms can get in from below and excess water can drain out. A bin on a hard surface becomes a bucket of anaerobic slurry.

The Tumbler

A sealed drum on a frame that rotates.

Aerating is trivial, which is the whole selling point, and it is fully rodent-proof and quick - a well-managed tumbler can produce compost in six to ten weeks.

But it is small, expensive, and it works in batches. You fill it, and then you must stop adding while that batch finishes, which means either a second container for ongoing waste or a period of nowhere to put your peelings. People buy tumblers expecting to add scraps continuously and are then disappointed.

Good for a small tidy garden and someone who likes a system. Poor value for a large garden.

The Wormery

A stacked set of trays with a population of composting worms - tiger worms or brandlings, not ordinary earthworms - and a tap at the bottom.

This is the method for a flat, a balcony, or a yard with no soil at all. It handles kitchen waste only, in modest daily amounts, and produces two things: a very rich worm cast and a liquid drained from the tap that dilutes into an excellent plant feed.

It is genuinely low-effort but it is livestock. The worms will die if the bin freezes, cooks in direct summer sun, dries out, floods, or is overfed to the point where the food rots faster than they can eat it. Keep it in shade in summer and somewhere sheltered in winter - a shed, a porch, under a bench.

Feed sparingly at first. The single most common wormery failure is overfeeding a young population.

No onion, no citrus in quantity, no meat, no dairy.

Bokashi

A sealed bucket in which food waste is fermented with an inoculated bran rather than composted.

Bokashi is the only home method that takes cooked food, meat, dairy, and bones, which is what makes it interesting to people in flats.

The important thing to understand is that it does not produce compost. It produces pickled food waste - preserved, acidic, and largely intact. That output must then be buried in soil or added to a conventional heap, where it breaks down quickly. Without somewhere to put it, bokashi solves nothing.

It needs bought bran on an ongoing basis, and the bucket smells sharply sour, though not rotten, when opened.

Choosing

Garden with room: open heap, or two side by side so one matures while the other fills.

Ordinary garden, tidy: council-style plastic bin on soil.

Small garden, wants speed and neatness: tumbler, plus somewhere to hold waste between batches.

No garden at all: wormery, or bokashi paired with a friend’s heap, a council food collection, or a large planter to bury it in.

Lots of cooked food waste: bokashi first, then bury the output.

Siting

Wherever it goes, three things matter.

On soil, so organisms and drainage work.

Partial shade. Full sun dries a heap out; deep shade under conifers keeps it cold and wet.

Close enough to the kitchen that you will actually walk there in the rain in February. A bin at the end of a long garden gets used in summer and abandoned in winter, and this is a much better predictor of success than any amount of technique.