Composting on a small scale

[NY65912]

Composting residential food waste will be taking effect in October in NYC.

I would like to compost to add to my veggie plants. I do not have the room for anything of size.

Anyone using a "small composter? I have seen countertop and indoor units but somehow don't like the idea.

TIA

[Zeke]

If you don't do it on a larger scale, it's not very effective. And there are stages so once your composter is full, regardless of size, you need to start another batch. There are ways around that but it involves sorting or sifting.
Internal temperature is the key so a small batch might need to be heated naturally or otherwise.

[GH85Carrera]

I can't imagine an indoor compost. The process if the rotting and breaking down of the organic material, and it is gonna stink.



This is one the City of Oklahoma City sold at a big event, we just showed up and got it for cheap. It is a barrel that rotates on a central rod. That makes it easy to spin it upside down and stir the contents. It stinks like a compost. We then dump it on the ground in a pile and mix in leaves for my wife's flower gardens.




This is a small compost. Maybe I am just dead wrong, but any indoor compost is going to reek. And to compost something on a countertop just makes me really skeptical that it will be of any use beside making stinky rotted stuff.

Please let us know how it works out.

[911 Rod]

My wife has 40 gallon one outside and it stinks and attracts flies.
If you are okay with that ......

[aschen]

I have been using one of the rotating drum types from amazon (about 80$) for around 6 months now.

Seems to work ok but hadnt rotated it in a while. Its amazing how much stuff I have put in there, but struggle to have enough brown/dry stuff in the summer.

[Seahawk]

My wife is a Master Gardner.

I have conservatively twenty tons of compost in various degrees of goodness around the farm, especially with horses, big garden detritus and, this is key, I let the tree trimming folks drop off their mulch and we mix it all it.

I can take pictures.

That said, for household, residential food, she loves this thing:



Our daughter bought for her for Christmas two years ago and it has been in constant use. Bit of an energy sump, but the results for residential food waste are perfect.

I am, however, just the passenger in much of my life

[drew1]

Thanks for the thread. It reminded me to get rid of coffeee grounds and peelings.

This is what we have been using for a little over a year.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/compost-wizard-dueling-tumbler-7-cu-ft

Looks mighty high priced now.

double sided so one side can continue as you fill the others side. It is nasty to scoop out and put in a bucket to get to leaf compost bed.

[stealthn]

I do, countertop composter, works excellent, my only complaint is it takes hours, like 24.

Been great for the vegetable garden, and doesn’t stink but you need the subscription for the charcoal pellets.

https://lomi.com/products/lomi?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand&nbt=nb%3Aadwords%3Ag%3A16592870122%3A151339127228% 3A630911847281&nb_adtype=&nb_kwd=get%20lomi&nb_ti=kwd-906094389083&nb_mi=&nb_pc=&nb_pi=&nb_ppi=&nb_placement=&nb_li_ms=&nb_lp_ms=&nb_fii=&nb_ap=&nb_mt=e&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3uTVwq3dgAMVyCmtBh09Ww1_EAAYASAA EgK2zPD_BwE&campaignid=16592870122&adgroupid=151339127228&targetid=kwd-906094389083&creative=630911847281&network=g&device=c&utm_source=google

[Seahawk]

Believe it or not, I have a system!



I turn every few weeks and then move to the "spreadable" pile that gets used in the fields and in my wife's garden.

Mixture of just about everything. The row on the left is 80 feet long.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

You'll probably need two of these. If you just keep throwing stuff in one you'll end up with a some finished compost and some fresh garbage all mixed together. You put stuff in one, until it's half to 3/4 full and let it cook. Switch to filling the other one. Hopefully the first one will be done by the time the 2nd one is ready to cook.
Check moisture levels and turn once a week to make it cook faster.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Believe it or not, I have a system!



I turn every few weeks and then move to the "spreadable" pile that gets used in the fields and in my wife's garden.

Mixture of just about everything. The row on the left is 80 feet long.

Now that's a compost pile!
Mine starts out about the size of 4 pickup trucks in November. By this time of year it has cooked down to a pile that would fill one pickup bed.

[gtc]

Anyone here tried worm bins? I've seen a few videos that make it look pretty easy, but don't know anyone that has actually tried it.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

You'll probably need two of these. If you just keep throwing stuff in one you'll end up with a some finished compost and some fresh garbage all mixed together. You put stuff in one, until it's half to 3/4 full and let it cook. Switch to filling the other one. Hopefully the first one will be done by the time the 2nd one is ready to cook.
Check moisture levels and turn once a week to make it cook faster.

Our "second one" is the pile on the ground behind the barrel. When the barrel gets a good supply of compost, it gets dumped on the ground, and leaves are mixed in. The angle of the brick wall and the stockade fence with the bushes is a perfect free, no labor leaf trap. We rake up the leaves deposited by the wind and put them in the back trash can in the background. The bottom of that barrel is cut out, so it just hold the leaves, and starts them composting, to be mixed in with the pile on the ground. Like Seahawk, my wife is also a Master Gardener, and it is all her system. She does not grow human food, just flowers for the bees, and butterflies. It gets freaky with all the butterflies fluttering around. Knowing 100% butterflies are totally harmless, having a few dozen of them flying around you head is unnerving. She had one bush literally buzzing with hundreds of honey bees on it. It sounded like an overloaded transformer buzzing away.

I am just the unpaid labor source for the compost and yard work. I can pretty much keep up with the law clippings in the barrel.

It is a rich source of earthworms. When our dachshund killed a young bunny rabbit, I just shallow buried it on the compost pile. A few weeks later there was no trace of it, and no dead animal stink at the time. Just earthworm poop.

[Kraftwerk]

Hey Mike~ Welcome to urban composting. It make so much sense to compost and if you get a good system down it reduces your trash-bag use and bad odors indoors. A Doctor I knew from the Upper East Side has that Vitamix indoor gadget, which (freeze?) dries the compost and makes a non-smelly dry dirt-like-lumps which she tosses under a local rose bush when she walks her dog. I don't like to spend money on things and it seems like it uses a lot of energy, so my compostables go in a sealed barrel in the back-lot which eventually mix with old plants or soil, then it composts further into BLACK GOLD ! I put it on the three-wells out front of the building. City trees don't get a lot of love, our trees are thriving, to think, this place used to be a ghetto. You can also carry your compost to the nearest green-market there is usually a compost collector on site.



ps. don't compost bones ( for some reason?) and pistachio shells take years (!)
Corks have rubber in them, so don't reduce at all are nOT compostable. Strange right?
Avacado pits take a bit of time but they go pretty good. The soil you get will be amazing.

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by gtc

Anyone here tried worm bins? I've seen a few videos that make it look pretty easy, but don't know anyone that has actually tried it.

I've bought a bunch of worms from an online guy and dumped them into my compost bin. So, not a worm bin but it worked out well for me.

[Jay Auskin]

Originally Posted by gtc

Anyone here tried worm bins? I've seen a few videos that make it look pretty easy, but don't know anyone that has actually tried it.

I have the urban worm bin in my basement. Works well, no odor if you do it right.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Our "second one" is the pile on the ground behind the barrel. When the barrel gets a good supply of compost, it gets dumped on the ground, and leaves are mixed in.

I guess there are lots of ways to skin a cat. In our garden finished compost with dry leaves mixed in would be "mulch," green leaves would make it "unfinished compost."
What I find amazing is the amount of plastic stuff (pot markers etc) that we find in the finished compost. I never see it until the compost cooks down, then it's everywhere.

[NY65912]

Well, that's a lot to ponder. Thanks for all the ideas. My neighbor has a composter on a stand but it is rather large. Every inch of my backyard is taken up. We use the backyard a lot in the nice weather, pool, etc, and I am very leary of anything that might smell.

I like the countertop Vitamix machine, will look into that.

The city suggests freezing food waste then placing it in the brown food waste bin on the pick up day. I like the idea but implementing such a program will probably have a 50% participation rate, I just see it difficult to do effectively in such a dense urban environment. I do hope it works.

I would rather not buy compost to use in the garden so I will give it a go.

Cheers

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Jay Auskin

I have the urban worm bin in my basement. Works well, no odor if you do it right.

My grandfather had two raised worm beds. They looked a bit like two coffins, just rectangles no coffin shape. Alll food waste went in there. Corn shucks, corn cobs, carrot tops, potato peals, meat scraps. Pretty much everything organic from the kitchen. The worms grew large, and voracious. They made just about anything vanish and turned it into worm castings.

That stuff was rich! Grandpa would plant his garden and use that worm dirt around the plant or seeds, and you had to jump back as it was starting to grow!

In the winter, he would "set them free" and just turn the worm beds over onto the compost so bury themselves deep enough to overwinter.

He had a full acre of just his vegetable garden, growing "corn as high as an elephant eye" and he gave away tons of free food.