I came up with these 4 tips for the Vitamix Food Cycler. The Vitamix Food Cycler is a great kitchen composter that saves you all of the hassle of composting and is very easy to use.

The set up is very simple. The directions do a good job showing you what to do for that.

The usage is also very simple. You just collect food scraps (not meat or citrus). You place the bucket in the machine, lining up the arrows on the machine and the bucket. Then, you press the start button.

What you get is a great soil that will add nutrients back into the soil and get rid of all of your food scraps.

I had some issues at first, and I want to share those with you so that you don’t struggle.

1. Line up the arrows when putting in the bucket.

Problem: When I was first using the Vitamix Food Cycler, I had the hardest time putting the bucket into the machine.

There is a bucket that you can take out of the machine to collect the food scraps. After collecting the food scraps, you need to put it back in the machine.

If you don’t put it in the correct way, it doesn’t sit in the machine right.

Fix: Find the arrow on the machine at the back. Match that with the arrow on the bucket.

2. Line up the arrow on the lid with the unlocked symbol.

Problem: I also couldn’t put the lid on. It took me all day to finally get it on.

To start the machine, you have to put on the lid and lock it in place.

Now, I saw where it was supposed to lock on the machine, but I didn’t realize the lid also had an arrow.

Fix: Find the arrow on the lid and match it with the arrow on the unlocked symbol and then lock it in place.

3. Don’t use any hard stalky things.

I took some leaves off of a basil plant, and threw the stalks in the Food Cycler. The machine ran for hours and didn’t ever shut off.

It didn’t want to shut off until it had finished chopping up the stalks, but it never finished.

Finally, I had to shut it off. Because that was the first time I ran it, I just thought it took forever to go through a cycle.

A typical cycle will last about 3 hours. If the machine runs longer than that, you should stop it by unplugging it.

4. Add nitrogen to your compost.

In a typical composter, you have to add 50% dead leaves 50% organic material. The Food Cycler is how you break down the organic material, but your soil is lacking nitrogen.

To make the best compost, I would add some nitrogen in some way.