The Fruit Skin You Should Start Adding To Compost

Compost is known for its ability to improve soil structure and drainage, not to mention adding fertility. Buying compost can quickly become expensive, though, so creating your own lets you save money and responsibly dispose of food waste. Some of the best food scraps to toss into your compost bin are avocado skins.

While a compost bin made of just avocado skins (or any single material) would be a mess, when combined with yard waste and other food scraps, the skins from your homemade guacamole make a great compost addition. Avocado skins act as a "brown" material in compost, meaning they provide carbon to the pile. "Greens", on the other hand, tend to be materials like lawn clippings and help to provide nitrogen to it. For a healthy compost pile, you should generally have about twice as many browns as greens by volume. 

Interestingly, avocado skins have more than just carbon to offer to your pile; they also provide protein, potassium, and a variety of vitamins and minerals.  If you have only a small tumbler-style compost bin or are composting in a 5-gallon bucket, these may struggle to heat up enough to break the skins down well. Without some preparation on your part, avocado skins could easily take six months to break down in a cold composting system. Luckily, it's easy to speed up the process by breaking up the skins into smaller pieces.

As we mentioned, avocado skins can be on the slow side when it comes to breaking down, regardless of your compost bin's size. This is due to their fat content and waxy texture. While the skins will break down on their own eventually, they're slower to do so than banana peels. They are also known for being a bit stinky in the compost bin. So it's best to start by chopping them into small pieces before adding them. You can do this quickly while chopping your avocado flesh for your toast or other meal. This makes the skins mix in more easily with your other ingredients and break down more quickly. Adding in plenty of yard debris will also help prevent any potential smells. 

The skin isn't the only part of the avocado waste that can go into the compost bin. You can even put avocado pits in. If you grind the pits up, they should break down well after a bit of time. You can also leave them whole, which will help with aeration and tumbling in your compost. Factors, including how well the pile is managed and how large it is, will help decide how long it takes for your compost to be ready. Once it's finished, you could use your avocado skin-heavy compost to help grow your own avocado tree, continuing the cycle.