What do you know about Composting?

[svetz]

Saw the new California law about kitchen waste needing separate recycling and got side-tracked to something interesting: the Lomi Composter. Then immediately saw the busted video, which claimed they used power and were overall bad for the environment. Of course, that guy is always big on ridicule and low on facts. So, is this bad or good for the environment? On the one hand, it takes about a kWh of power on the longest setting (depending on how wet it is). But, if you're solar that's not a big deal.

You can DIY your own zero-energy composter. I've tried this before but never really had good success. It also takes a few months.

So, why is California (and other locations) passing laws on treating food waste rather than sending it to landfills? If I understand it correctly, in a landfill it creates methane which is a 25x more powerful greenhouse than gas than CO₂, and of course, eventually breaks down into CO₂ anyway. But if properly composted it creates mainly CO₂ and less of it, that is more carbon stays fixed in the soil.

Composting gives off minimal methane compared with landfills – 22 times less... The process produces carbon dioxide... and has many benefits... fosters plant growth – which, in turn, takes CO2 out of the air. ref

In reading around, most of the kitchen units that work in under 5 hours aren't really creating compost, it's "compost ready", but they are still bypassing the methane issue.

Anyway, curious if any of you have any direct experience/knowledge about this.

 

[WYtreasure]

Another shirty subject which should have been posted in the humor section. ?

 

[MurphyGuy]

With the exception of meat products, our family composts 100% of our kitchen waste.. and even the cleaned bones from the meat if the dog doesn't eat them. No meat though, it starts to stink and attracts flies.

We have two 80 gallon composters. They're sort of like 55 gallon drums turned sideways on A frame stands so you can rotate them to "tumble" the compost inside.

No power is used, no power is needed. We keep an empty coffee can on the kitchen counter, when it gets full of kitchen scraps, we dump it into the composter.. which is almost every day or two. Once a week or so, I add some browns to the composter in the form of either saw dust, wood ash, or sticks and twigs.. we even use cut up pieces of brown cardboard sometimes.

When we plant the garden, we dig a hole and add a handful of compost, then put the plant in and cover with dirt.

When we water plants, we take a bucket of compost, fill it with water and let it soak for a few hours, then use the black muddy water around the plants.

We've been doing it this way for 10 years. If we end up with too much compost, we simply dump it around the fruit trees.

 

[svetz]

I had a two composters when I lived near Denver, one I built and one that was an A-frame, sort of like the two to the right. But I never got either to work, it was mainly grass-clippings and I suspect it was too dry. At least the drum was easy to turn, the other was a real pain. Haven't tried red-worms. Stuff rots fairly fast here so I want to give it another shot. Not sure about kitchen waste, not sure how the wildlife (e.g., crocodiles, iguanas, termites, mosquitoes, neighbors) will feel about any smells.

 

[MurphyGuy]

I had a two composters when I lived near Denver, one I built and one that was an A-frame, sort of like the two to the right. But I never got either to work, it was mainly grass-clippings and I suspect it was too dry. At least the drum was easy to turn, the other was a real pain. Haven't tried red-worms. Stuff rots fairly fast here so I want to give it another shot. Not sure about kitchen waste, not sure how the wildlife (e.g., crocodiles, iguanas, termites, mosquitoes, neighbors) will feel about any smells.

Grass clippings are all greens and won't compost correctly.. Some clippings are fine, but you need an equal amount of carbon (browns) or the process doesn't work.

Greens are easy to find.. food, grass, etc. its the damn browns that are difficult. Sawdust is the best.. wood ash works good.. throw in some sticks and twigs to help break apart clumps. You need a 50/50 mix or it doesn't work and can start to stink.

Greens are waste products.. but you have to work to find the browns.. My table saw has a box below it that collects the saw dust.. I save that stuff when cutting clean lumber that isn't pressure treated.

News papers make great browns too.. just make sure its the dull paper type, not the shiny wax coated advertisements.

To much brown and nothing happens (not so bad), but too much green and it turns to mush and smells horrible.

A composter that is properly balanced, or even roughly close to being properly balanced, won't smell.. The problem is people think they can just throw in the food and it will break down into rich soil.. but the reality is that it will just stink like a garbage can.

If you find too much moisture, add cardboard or leave the top open so it evaporates on a hot day.. if you have too many browns, you can pee in a bucket and dump it in.. Urine is loaded with nitrogen.. or just dump in some grass clippings if you want to avoid the yuk factor.

Make sure to rotate once a week.. a good two or three turns to spread around oxygen. If you don't, it can go anaerobic and stink.

 

[svetz]

That explains a lot... was just reading this based on your feedback to learn more. Here are some excerpts:

Anecdotes

It seems impossible. How do you mess up composting? It’s just putting garbage in a pile and leaving it to sit — there’s nothing that you actually do that could go wrong!

I’d let it keep going, hoping that, like a rebellious teen, this was just a phase that my compost was going through.

It turns out that I was making some pretty big mistakes.

It turns out that, just like any living creature, compost needs the right balance of materials fed to it in order to thrive. And I’d been feeding my compost heap the wrong stuff.

The formulae

At the most basic level, compost needs to be fed two main elements: carbon and nitrogen. Both of these are vital for microbial life — and it’s the microbes that do the work

everything that you’d think to add to a compost heap — kitchen scraps, weeds, vegetable matter, grass clippings, etc. — is full of nitrogen. That’s great, but compost heaps need carbon, too! In fact, they need much more carbon than nitrogen, usually a ratio of 30 parts carbon to every 1 part nitrogen.

the ideal ratio is 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen. However, this should not define the actual amount of materials that you put in! Otherwise, you’ll have a giant cardboard pile with one lonely little leaf on top.

Instead, you want a ratio of 2:1 — but the direction depends on what you’re putting in.

Putting in loose, lightweight dead leaves or twigs to get your brown material?
You’ll want twice as much brown, by volume, as green in your compost heap.

Putting in dense brown material, like cardboard or pre-shredded, densely packed dead leaves?
You’ll want twice as much green, by volume, as brown in your compost heap.

Diagnosing your Reactor

If the pile is smelly, it’s crying out for carbon, that brown material. If it goes cold and dry, it needs more green, nitrogen-rich material.

What's Brown & Green?

Green	Brown	Ugly (don't put in!)
Many table scraps Fruits, veggies, and leftovers Fresh grass clippings Coffee grounds Algae/pond-scum	Cardboard (nothing waxy) Sawdust Wood chips (nothing treated) Straw/hay, Dried grass clippings Woody plant material Pine needles Oats, grains, and feedstock Autumn leaves Oak leaves Uncooked pasta Shredded paper (not glossy) used coffee filters Cotton balls Hair old clothes (cotton, silk, wool) Corn stalks Dryer lint (not polyesters!)	Coal, or charcoal (like from a grill). There’s a lot of carbon, yes, but also way too much sulfur. You can add wood ash, like from a campfire, but only in small amounts. Milk products (attracts scavengers) Cooking oil and/or meat (attracts scavengers) Glossy paper, like from magazines. soap Cat or dog feces. It’s got too many bacteria and parasites, that you don’t want to introduce to your plants. Plants that died from bacterial or fungal infections. Weeds with seeds.

If any of this wrong or there's stuff that should be added please post! I'm not an expert, just parroting what I see on the internet (but who'd like about compost?).

 

[svetz]

 

[svetz]

The end of the video (13:20) is interesting regarding "local compost recycler". Could there be a business opportunity in collecting kitchen waste and selling compost?

 

[MurphyGuy]

That explains a lot... was just reading this based on your feedback to learn more. Here are some excerpts:

Anecdotes








The formulae












Diagnosing your Reactor


What's Brown & Green?

Green	Brown	Ugly (don't put in!)
Many table scraps Fruits, veggies, and leftovers Fresh grass clippings Coffee grounds	Dried grass clippings Woody plant material Pine needles Oats, grains, and feedstock Autumn leaves Oak leaves Sawdust Wood chips Straw and hay Uncooked pasta Shredded paper (such as printer paper and newspaper, not magazines) used coffee filters Cotton balls Hair old clothes (cotton, silk, wool) Corn stalks Dryer lint	Coal, or charcoal (like from a grill). There’s a lot of carbon, yes, but also way too much sulfur. You can add wood ash, like from a campfire, but only in small amounts. Milk products (attracts scavengers) Cooking oil and/or meat (attracts scavengers) Glossy paper, like from magazines. soap Cat or dog feces. It’s got too many bacteria and parasites, that you don’t want to introduce to your plants. Plants that died from bacterial or fungal infections. Weeds with seeds.

If any of this wrong or there's stuff that should be added please post! I'm not an expert, just parroting what I see on the internet (but who'd like about compost?).

Yup, all good information.

You'll get used to how much carbon you need as you get some experience. Throw in a bunch of food and you'll think, "I need this much more brown crap, now where the hell am I going to find it this time?"

By far the best browns is saw dust.. nothing else even seems to comes close. The rest is all good too, but that saw dust acts the fastest.

If you cut firewood, scoop up those wood chips, you're going to need them.

 

[svetz]

By far the best browns is saw dust.. nothing else even seems to comes close. The rest is all good too, but that saw dust acts the fastest.

Pity. Lint, cat hair and cardboard never seem to be in short supply. I'm suspect everything I vacuum up is "brown".

I'm starting to like the idea of vermiculture; but would like to hear from someone with experience regarding how well the worms do for salt-water fishing bait.

 

[WYtreasure]

Nice follow ups. My pile SURROUNDING is made of pallets. The compost pile froze in December but should thaw within a week and can be played with again. Our climate is totally opposite from yours. My understanding is that ANYTHING can be composted. Mother Earth has been doing it for a real long time with great success, until we showed up.

Boss Lady won't allow citrus or onions in our compost. She's got a lot of rules.

My rules are simple. If I don't want to eat it, I don't put it in the compost.
Dryer lint has synthetics in very small pieces, kind of like the plastic trash particles in the oceans.
Old clothes typically have synthetic thread. Cut the hems & seams away and it's good to go.
White coffee filters are typically bleached, no worries ya drank that already.
Sawdust ONLY FROM LUMBER. Plywood or any other manufactured or treated wood will kill the little workers (microbes).
Pine needles are pretty potent.
Cardboard is like plywood or treated lumber.

The subject matter goes on for weeks. Everyone has an opinion.
The goal of the individual should control what goes in and what stays out of the pile.

 

[WYtreasure]

Pity. Lint, cat hair and cardboard never seem to be in short supply. I'm suspect everything I vacuum up is "brown".

I'm starting to like the idea of vermiculture; but would like to hear from someone with experience regarding how well the worms do for salt-water fishing bait.

Worms are one of the finest baits, salt or no salt.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Pity. Lint, cat hair and cardboard never seem to be in short supply. I'm suspect everything I vacuum up is "brown".

I'm starting to like the idea of vermiculture; but would like to hear from someone with experience regarding how well the worms do for salt-water fishing bait.

We did the worms for a few years. I found a couple of broken chest style deep freezers, outfitted them with a heater (michigan winters), and bought 1000 red worms online.

By the third year, both chest freezers were full, we probably had close to 250,000 worms, and they would make fast work out of anything you threw in there.. They were like Piranha's . Throw something in, and within a couple days, the area under it would be solid worms.

I found the compost to be easier to deal with to be honest, and there was no noticeable difference in the nutrient effects between the worm poop and just compost, at least not as far as my vegetables were concerned.

Problem is, the worm bins required me to run a small fan to keep them cool in the summer and an anti-freeze pipe heater cable to keep them warm in the winter.

You also can't throw banana peels into worms.. they're coated with a pesticide that can wipe them out, and we eat a lot of bananas here. Bananas probably make up 1/4 of our compost volume with coffee grounds/filtes making up another 1/4 and egg shells another 1/4.. The rest is made of of the ends of cucumbers, apple cores, and stuff like that.

The biggest advantage to worms was that we didn't have to cut anything up.. if you found a rotten apple or pear, you could just throw it in whole.. But with composting, you need to slice them up or they take forever to compost.

I can't speak for fish, but I can tell you our chickens would not eat them.. that was the biggest disappointment about the worms. That might have been just our own defective chickens though as I've heard others say their chickens will eat them. Our chickens are sort of a special kind of stupid.

The chest freezer works best for worms.. Install a fake-bottom floor in the freezer made of a grid of something, then cover it with landscape fabric.. as the "juices" filter down, you can drain them out the bottom because chest freezers have drain plugs. You have to be able to remove the water or they will drown. The "juice" is pretty gross, but makes good fertilizer.. I didn't know about it until I noticed the grass in the area I was pouring it out in was darker green and three times taller than the rest.

 

[svetz]

The Bokashi method looks pretty interesting too. I figure I can get the spent beer grains by making beer. So worms for fishing or beer for drinking. I might need one of each.

Mother Earth has been doing it for a real long time with great success, until we showed up.

And she can't take out the polyester in my lint? dag nab it! I updated the list above...cotton only lint I guess. Same for treated wood/sawdust.
Good thing the cat isn't synthetic.

Old clothes typically have synthetic thread. Cut the hems & seams away and it's good to go.

Good to know!

Pine needles are pretty potent.

Potent how?

Cardboard is like plywood or treated lumber.

How so? I thought cardboard (non-waxy) was okay? What's wrong with plywood? The glue?

The subject matter goes on for weeks. Everyone has an opinion.

Looking forward to it. So far the bait and beer are sounding pretty good. I had no idea composting could be so beneficial.

 

[svetz]

... they would make fast work out of anything you threw in there... They were like Piranha's...

Lovely!

Problem is, the worm bins required me to run a small fan to keep them cool in the summer

How hot is hot? I ask as my summers are about 10 months long but I do have shade and humidity.

You also can't throw banana peels into worms..

Possibly rinsing the skins works? Cause... these guys didn't get the memo... [don't watch this video if you're squeamish about worms!]

I can't speak for fish, but I can tell you our chickens would not eat them.. that was the biggest disappointment about the worms. That might have been just our own defective chickens though as I've heard others say their chickens will eat them. Our chickens are sort of a special kind of stupid.

Darn! When you were mentioning the worm population above I was starting to think in addition to bait and beer there might be fried chicken...

 

[WYtreasure]

I keep meaning to talk crap about those "instant compost machines". Thar ain't no such thing, it's all BS, Hype and twisted truths. Worms are the fastest transformers that I know of, and that information seems to be surfacing as the posts accumulate.

Some types of pine trees & other evergreens, especially in a forest prevent much undergrowth. Quantity and type can affect the quality of your mix. Some is fine, just like most other natural products that go into the mix. A little of this, a little of that. Try some Pine Needle Tea. Native Americans have used needles for many things, including a foot bath. Remember Euell Gibbons? "Many parts are edible".

What flavor glue do they use in other parts of the planet when they make cardboard? It's up to you but like I said, if I don't want to eat it...

Plywood and anything else that's glued together or treated is a NO for me.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Lovely!


How hot is hot? I ask as my summers are about 10 months long but I do have shade and humidity.

If it gets above 80°F, they start to slow down.. above 90 and real problems happen, and at 100 degrees they start to die off in mass quantities.

My fan failed one time and I lost half the population.. it was in the 90's outside. They seem to generate their own heat, as well as any compost action taking place.

If you are in a hot climate, you're almost going to have to run some water tubes through the container to keep them cool.. Or you could find a working freezer, install an inkbird temperature controller for $35 and have it turn the freezer on and off to keep it in the optimal 60 degree range.

Possibly rinsing the skins works? Cause... these guys didn't get the memo... [don't watch this video if you're squeamish about worms!]

I'm pretty sure that washing the banana's would remove the pesticides.. but who would want to take the time to do that?? I want things to be easy.
Worms are cool.. watching them work is kind of neat.. but compost is better, simpler, and far less of a hassle.

Darn! When you were mentioning the worm population above I was starting to think in addition to bait and beer there might be fried chicken...

There might be.. my only experience is with my own chickens and they were probably a bit lower on the IQ scale than most.

With most animals, when they get hurt doing something, they don't do it again.. Not my chickens. those idiots kept hitting the electric fence wire and tasering themselves with 15,000 volts.. over and over.

My latest batch are a bit smarter..

 

[WYtreasure]

Hey svets, I suggest you chat with locals about composting and worms. You may be in a pretty special place.

 

[svetz]

Bokashi​

Bokashi seems idea for kitchen waste, no green/balancing and it can take meat/bones.

I wasn't all that impressed with the end product after watching the Bokashi video above. Possibly the guy in the video just didn't let go long enough, cut the bits up fine enough, or I'm just squeamish about the chunkiness of what was seen in the soil thinking rodents would dig it up.

But I did wonder about the GHGs produced when breaking food down without oxygen (e.g., anaerobic). Can't make CO₂ or N₂O without oxygen after all. So how does it compare to regular composting?

Bokashi (acidic anaerobic) fermentation is the simplest, least costly, and fastest way of recycling organic waste. It is an anaerobic process with specialized microbes and requires only 10 days to reach its end point. The bio-pulp obtained has a high market value.

Unlike the composting process and AD technologies which contribute significantly to greenhouse gas production, Bokashi fermenting eliminates greenhouse gases related to green waste recycling. Carbon is not oxidized as occurs in composting and virtually all of the carbon returns to the soil where it is sequestered.

As I research this I kinda think I know what's going on. Bokashi seems to be a fermenting pre-treatment for greens. It's not actual composting by itself, that's what takes place after you bury it. The advantages of the anaerobic process seem to be that you get the initial food breakdown quickly and with few GHGs. Bokashi Q&As

So, seems like Bokashi would be the best from the GHG perspective and if you only wanted to deal with kitchen waste.
Except...what happens afterward when it is exposed to oxygen and does compost?

I'm hunting around for a paper that scientifically measures the outputs of the different techniques. I did see something that said vermiculture might produce excessive NO₂ if the worm count got high. I'll post it if I find anything.

I was also impressed with the guy making his own lactobacillus, impressed by how much work it was that is. But at over $6/lb I can see why. He used brand flakes, but apparently you can also use shredded paper.

Hopefully one of you all can comment on the costs and time to bird dog the method(s) you'e used.

 

[WYtreasure]

How I learned.
My grandfather had a tiny garden in his backyard, maybe 1100sf, that provided fresh vegies year round and awesome fruits for months at a time. He produced enough to feed 5-10 people, grafted fruit trees, made his own compost/fertilizer and wine.
My grandparents used a clothes line to dry clothes and never owned a clothes dryer. That's another topic but very green.
High school and Kollege provided me with the opportunity to book learn what was known back then. Traveling to 49 states, Mexico, Canada and China gave me the opportunity to see how different cultures were affected by the food they produced and consumed. Watching a few generations grow up sickly while eating processed foods grown/raised on chemical fertilizers, steroids and antibiotics, taught me to appreciate how Mother Earth has been doing just fine without high tech BS.
Now Boss Lady does internet research and we combine our knowledge while adapting to the the climate and dirt where we live. Native grasslands do not make for great gardening, without turning the dirt into soil. Once you have soil and a greenhouse, you can grow almost anything anywhere.

Everyone is trying to sell their "QUICK FIX" to make a buck or become famous. Screw them, find some local folks who have been doing what you want to do and learn from them. Sit down and really look at what you have to work with, preferably with a cold beer and warm breeze. Think it through and work your way into a balance between your needs/wants and mother earth's well established ways.

Theory of Life & Land by me.
The End.