Do it yourself: Organic fertilizer from kitchen scraps and verticulture during work from home

During the Covid19 Pandemic almost everyone was asked to study, work and worship from home. An increase in household waste during the pandemic can occur due to activities at home, especially cooking. It's not just a matter of disposable plastic, but unwittingly the volume of kitchen waste is also increasing, such as food and leftovers.

In addition to cooking activities, currently there are also many trending activities to fill the time during WFH. Sports activities, reorganizing the house, or gardening activities. One of the most important factors in gardening is how to prepare fertilizer for plants. On the one hand, fertilizer is also quite expensive, if we buy continuously, on the other hand we can actually make organic fertilizer from the rest of the household activities.

Well, if for example there are leftovers from the cooking process left over, or leftovers, what can be done with that? Some things can be done to the remaining ingredients and food at home, such as making snacks from leftover rice, as animal feed, making organic fertilizer or replanting leftover ingredients. From all of these things what we want to peel is how to make organic fertilizer from the rest of the cooking ingredients, as well as as a place to grow household scale production plants by means of verticulture.

Firt of all, materials and tools should be prepared. If it is possibel, used materials which are ease to find or recycle materials. List of materials and tools are as listed below:

A. Tools

1. Pipe heater

2. Small drilling machine

3. Measure tape

4. Cutter

5. Bottle Glass, i.e wine bottle

6. Grinding machine

B. Materials

1. Used plastic drum

2. Used paint bucket (cap. 5 kg)

3. Mica plastic

4. Fertile Soil

After the tools and materials are available continue with the manufacturing process as follow

      1.   Clean the used plastic drum and used bucket 

2.     After cleaning, remove the bottom lid of the paint bucket so that the paint bucket can be arranged without the bulkhead between the buckets. This pile of buckets will later be used as an input space for organic waste from the rest of the ingredients and food.

3.     Create an organic waste mat and a fertile soil mat on the inside of a used drum using mica plastic. The trick is to make measuring the inside diameter of a used drum ±20 cm from the bottom of the drum. After that the hole diameter of 5 mm in mica using a drilling machine as much as ± 20 holes. The purpose of this hole is as a drainage hole for liquid fertilizer from the process of decomposition of organic waste and water left over from watering plants, which will be accommodated in a liquid storage chamber in the drum.

4.     Make planting holes around the outer surface of the drum using a heating pipe, the distance between the holes is 20 cm vertical and 20 cm horizontal. This distance will make room for plants to grow and develop.

5.     Make a hole in the bottom of the pipe, which later serves to remove liquid fertilizer from the liquid reservoir in the drum. This hole must be given a lid that can be opened and closed, either by using pipes or other materials.

6.     Arrange the paint bucket in the middle position on the inside of the used drum as many as four rows, so that the top part of the arrangement appears above the surface of the used drum.

7.     The next step is to insert fertile soil into the drum. This fertile soil is poured into the space between the pile of used buckets and the inside of the used drum. This fertile land will function as a planting medium.

8.     After all done planting the desired plant seeds in the hole that has been made in the wall of the used drum.

9.     Cover the top of the pile of used buckets with a close lid so that insects or other animals cannot get into it.