composting with food scraps

with a family of 3 nearly vegetarian adult males, i am trying to come up with the best method for using our food scraps. ive looked into vermicomposting with them, but a store down the road from me sells quality castings for a dollar a pound, so i was thinking i should try and make compost instead of castings, plus compost may be easier for a rookie. i wish i could hot compost but i dont have enough material.

i wanted to build a 3 section area with posts and wires. 1 section would be for fall leaves (would collect from neighborhood and municipality as well), 1 for a pile im currently adding to, and 1 pile im leaving alone.

so in 6 months time, id have a pile of leaves that are breaking down into mould, and also easy access to use a little for carbon (in part), 1 pile that is currently breaking down (i would also want to turn this once a month to speed it up and heat it up a bit) and 1 pile that im adding to.

then in 6 more months time, id hopefully have 1 pile of leaves semi broken down, 1 pile of finished compost, and 1 pile of material i am about to stop adding to. id remove the compost from one section, and then begin a new active pile. for the next 6 months id turn my stagnant pile once a month until its finished in hopefully 6 more months.

are there flaws to this design? is there an issue with combining a hot and cold method (i.e turning my cold pile once a month to help it along?)

thank you for your time and help

 

My personal feelings and from experience is that the best use of food scraps is as chicken food. You can always use the resultant manure in your compost.

After that I reckon using them for worm farming is the next best thing, but if you have a lot of scraps you need a decent sized worm farm or two and the best approach is to chop them up finely.

Using them in compost tends to attract more vermin.

 

so for 3 adult males i figure we'd had a maximum of .5 pounds veg scraps per day. so wouldnt 2 pounds of red wigglers be plenty? also, how quickly do they multiply, double every month? if so id have to supplement their food...

thank you so much for your help.

 

Brian the resident worm guru will be along soon no doubt.

I'm with Grahame - chooks are my preferred kitchen scrap disposal system. Worms would be number 2. They will control their growth rate to match the size of the container and the food supply you are able to provide. Once you get started you'll be amazed by what suddenly was 'waste' that is now worm food in your day to day life. (Like toilet roll centres....)

 

If you have the space, I'd go with composting. Wormfarming is good, but it's a bit passive for me, I like to have a compost going too. Cold composting is a beautiful art. I'd probably put the leaves in the main compost myself, unless you have excess, but I grew up with my dad doing exactly what you are proposing.

In the autumn, you could probably hot compost because the leaves all come at once. You can stockpile the food scraps. And yes you can turn your cold pile as often as you want to move it along. I used to do a mix of building a compost over time, or doing it all in one day, depending on what is around. You can also add partially digested compost to a build all in one day compost too.

I've never had a problem with vermin (other than a few mice, but that's what cats are for. Besides the mouse got into the worm bin anyway).

How big is your garden? What are you wanting to grow?

 

2lbs of Red Wrigglers is about 4,000 worms. They will eat quite a lot of food if you follow some simple rules. First off get your bedding right. Many people over there in the States use Peat, Coco Coir and paper as their bedding and all the ones I know have multiple problems with their worms. I just use straight horse manure, fresh or old doesn't really matter and have no problems. The bedding is what the worms live in so they need enough volume ( 9" to 1ft) so they can move around the bed where they are comfortable and avoid extremes of heat or cold. Make sure the bed is always damp , almost wet.

The next thing is get a good sized Rubbermaid tub, 60 litres (not sure of the gallons). Avoid the round 360 farms or other ones that have multiple layers. Just the Rubbermaid with no lid. They need air flow over the bed so some old carpet or similar as a cover mat. A tap is optional, I don't use them.

The last thing is don't feed fresh food as the worms wont eat it till it rots. Feeding fresh food results in pests and Black Soldier Fly can take over the bed as has happened to one chap in South Carolina. I am working with him to sort out the problem. He is an Aussie so I had to feel sorry for him lol. I recommend freezing all your veggie scraps in plastic bags for a day or two then allow them to thaw out for a couple of days before feeding to the worms. They will move into it within a few hours.

If you do buy worms then order them from here https://www.orderworms.com/main.sc Bruce Galle is in South Carolina. Bruce is an Expert in worms and will dispatch your worms asap. He also own the Worm Expert Forum giving out free advice. Many members on there have mentioned buying worms elsewhere prior to finding the Forum and were disappointed. Then there are the very many happy customers who tell how happy they are with Bruce's worms.

One last tip is when your worms arrive and you put them into their new home, put a desk lamp over the top for a couple of nights. By day they are fine but turn the light back on before dark and leave the cover off while the light is on. They soon settle in.
Good luck

 

If you are quite keen to compost the food scraps, then i say do it.

I have a worm farm and 3 compost bins (my wife says i'm compost obsessed - i'm ok with that)

My worms seem happy but not able to keep up with my supply to them. I'm no worm expert though. Hoping to one day have a much bigger bath tub worm farm.

One compost bin I have is a long-term cold compost. I put most food scraps in there and balance it with whatever 'brown materials' i have handy including leaves and shredded office paper. I mix it up to aerate it whenever i think to which can be once or twice a week or once a fortnight. I have done this for 2-3 years and it's never filled up. I use it as a long term bin and have only moved it to use the contents a few times.

Earth worms tend to naturally migrate to this bin. Most conventional advice will tell you to not add citrus or onions. I do, but only small amounts.

 

Have you considered a tumbler or a tube ?
Both easy and not back breaking.

 

you guys are awesome, thanks for your help.

i have 1 acre, and i am just starting up. i am trying to start with a smaller area, maybe something like 1000sqft to establish a kitchen garden, and then work my way outwards with fruit trees etc... i am importing some compost initially, and i am also getting a local tree cutting service to deliver 10 c. yards of chips for me later today. this is going to be my base mulch. it takes years, but from everything ive read and seen, wood chips are unparallelled in the long run.

i dont want a tumbler because you can see whats going on inside, and they arent very large. i feel like they are a waste of money for what im looking to accomplish long term.

i feel like just leaving the leaves to turn into mould is the best option for me (im going to gather a lot of leaves, a lot a lot) to use as supplemental mulch in the future. im also going to be buying a low end wood chipper that can handle my everyday small branches and woody material around my property. i can then add that with free chips monthly from my municipality.

brian thanks for you suggestions. i will order from bruce for sure. i do have a few questions for you though...when you say make sure the bed is damp...you mean the manure right? i know geoff lawton uses manure as his bedding as well, then adds veg scraps on the top 1/3 and then covers with a tarp. he also has a drain on the bottom, which i am certainly going to do to collect all the awesome juice (ill just drill a hole in the corner connected to a bucket, that should work fine i assume)

1. anyway, so if i use manure, that is good stuff to use as bedding, ya?

2. cant i just dice my veggie scraps each day, then add them in a bucket with a bit of carbon, leave it for a few days, and then feed the scraps with the carbon to the worms? or does carbon get in the way somehow?

or maybe freezing is tried tested and true and i should stick with that?

3. what do you think the easiest extraction method is? shining a light and then scooping top layers...or just adding their fav. juicy fruit to one corner and scooping up uninhabited area?

thanks everyone for your help, it is truly much appreciated

 

1. Yes - as long as it isn't fresh - as it will heat up and scare the worms...
2. Yes - it just might pong a bit so you'll need to not scare the rest of the family. I think freezing and thawing is a waste of fossil fuels and can't see the harm in having the food rot in the bin for a few days before the worms get interested. Each to their own.
3. Adding a new source of food and coming back the next day and scooping out the older castings seems to be the most used approach. I use a multilayered bin and find the bottom layer is almost devoid of worms anyway.

If you have an acre then you'll want to make compost as well. But you need at least 1 cubic metre to make the magic happen, and a handful of scraps each day isn't going to be the way to achieve that. Growing your own compost ingredients is the way to go. Unkind folk who visit my place call them weeds. I call them composting biomass....

 

Well initially I won't be planting an acre, not even close, so I'm hoping some castings, chips, imported compost and some work tea will do the trick, which I suspect it will. Ill be on the lookout for some aged manure for sure. I have quite a bit if vegetation going in perhaps I can scrounge up enough and Craigslist some manure to make a cubic yard of hot compost. That would be great if I could. To Bruce's worms I go, thanks

 

All green (and brown) waste - including food scraps but excluding 'diseased' material - from our site gets composted. We utilise the two-bay/cold compost method (ocassionally, usually when I'm really pissed at the world - which is rare - I go out there and 'turn' it). Side A gets progressively filled by alternating layers of nitrogenous (green) and carboniferous (brown) material at a respective ratio of about 1:30, and until the pile is about 2-metres cubed, then it gets covered with an old bit of carpet. Side B follows the same procedure until its full. By around this time (usually about 6-months in our part of the world), side A has reduced to a dark, crumbly, friable compost pile of about 1-metre cube that goes back onto the intensive, rational 4-beds as top-dressing (and under fresh pea straw).

Larger green and brown waste (e.g. branches thicker than 1") get burnt in our slow combustion heater. Anything smaller gets 'smashed' by an old lawn mower (we haven't bothered to 'grow' any lawn/grass for close to 8-years now) and put into the composting system. Bark from our woodlot piles stays where it falls in the process of 'blocking it' on our swingsaw, and is helping to cover the B-profile dirt we inherited in our Zone C.

Any green 'waste' that I can find locally, within reason - we try not to import any 'crap' - gets the same treatment. Occasionally, if I see a job getting done up or down the street where they are chipping large quantities of tree prunings, etc. (usually Euc. spp.) I get them to dump it in our Zone 3 where it 'matures' for a couple of years before progressively being added to the system. Same with the ash and charcoal that come out of the slow combustion heater. It gets piled up, and progressively added (in 'measured' doses - about 6 shovel fulls per pile).

I often joke to anyone who visits that if they stay inactive too long between our Zones 3 and 2 (the latter being where the 2-bays are situated), then I'll compost them, too!

 

Further to the above, JC-W of ABC TV's Gardening Australia explains the 'cold compost' method:

Click on the 'Tried and True' (22-06-13) link, available here.

 

Red Wrigglers are a manure worm so it is their natural environment.

You can just put it into a bucket or bag for a couple of weeks which is called Bokasi I believe. Freezing is just a quick option and Eco everyone has a freezer in use. It is better to have it full as it is then more efficient. Just milk bottles full of water to fill empty spaces will help the freezer to unless you fill the spaces with scraps lol.

The easiest way to extract the worms is by "Gully Baiting" and then Light Extraction if you just want the worms only for sale etc. If you want the castings then bait the bed with fresh manure. Dig out one end or the sides and add the manure. Wait a few days and remove it again . Put this aside, Bait the bed again and do the same thing. If your original bedding has been eaten out fully then there will be no worms left, just castings.
Empty out the worm farm and then return the worms and the cycle continues.

 

re-visiting this discussion now that i actually have received my worms and i am ready to begin...last question is...since i already have a large rubbermaid clear plastic container, can i just use this if i keep it in my work shed which will not receive any light? if not, could i just tape cardboard to the sides (with air holes) to reduce light...id rather use this container that i already have versus spending another $30. thanks guys!

 

Sorry I missed this one, been sick. The tub will be fine. How many lbs of worms did you buy? You don't need to worry about the light as it wont penetrate into the bedding. I use a large white tub for some worms and there is no problems. Just keep a mat or old carpet even burlap over the surface. This keeps the worms at the surface feeding if there is some light in the area. The cover will also help keep it damp and any cocoons safe from drying out. If the Rubbermaid tub comes with a lid please don't use it as it will reduce airflow over the bed.

You should be coming into Autumn over there which is one of the breeding seasons. You can set up your worms in manure for 4 weeks then remove all the mature worms. Set them up again in fresh bedding and allow another 4 weeks and do the same thing. All the bedding which the worms will be coming from will be filled with hundreds of cocoons which take 3 weeks to hatch so in a short space of time you can breed a large number of worms from your original stock. I use this system to breed all my worms. After a few cycles just leave them do their own thing.

If you get deep freezes over there you may need to heat the room or the bed. I believe they get pretty cold in S.C. so not sure about where you are. One day I might come over that way for a look lol.

 

Glad you're feeling better Brian! Thanks for all the tips, it's surely going to help. I actually posted you another question on a new thread because I actually haven't received my worms. I ordered from Bruce august 2 and the payment went through that day, still No worms. I've emailed him multiple times, and I've called nearly daily the past week and left messages but still no response. Not sure what's going on, I'm just trying to get an update on my worms but it seems I won't be receiving any from Bruce. Any idea what's going on?

 

I am very sorry if I put you on to Bruce. I am seeing a pattern here with 3 people now saying the same things as you. I will never recommend him to anyone again. I would like to remove his Forum links from my website but there is a lot of good information on there so I could be denying that information from someone else.

If you need any further help you can contact me here or via my website contact page or email. I have stuck with Bruce's Forum because I felt I was making a difference in helping people. He is very rarely on there anymore.

 

That's quite alright you had good intentions ill hopefully be getting my money back via PayPal dispute but well see. Perhaps you should also put a disclaimer next to your links on your website so people are aware. Strange he would just stop doing business like that. Anyway no big deal I'm glad I semi figured it out. Thanks!

 

well i filed a paypal complaint a few days ago so i could get my account refunded, and what do you know...i received my worms today haha im not sure what was going on over there, but they finally shipped me my worms with 2 day usps mail. they are happy and settled in now. just wanted to give you the update. thanks!