Composting

Ignorance is Bliss – oops!

April 1, 2011

The Snowflakes are doing great in the front yard despite the fact that I’m a clueless city girl. I’m learning more and more which means more and more questions but mostly I’ve been operating under the premise that Ignorance is Bliss.

I bought another composter last month to handle all the chicken coop poop. 1. Chicken poop definitely piles up. 2. Chicken poop is stinky. 3. Chicken poop is stinkier when it’s been in the pile for a while. 4. Chicken poop makes a compost pile really “hot.”

Whaaaaaaaat?!

This is where the ignorance part comes in. I was stirring the compost pile around and realized that the pile was REALLY hot in the middle. And I mean REALLLLLY hot. Then I started to worry. How hot is too hot? Could a fire start spontaneously? There goes my bliss!

After Googling ‘Compost Fire’ and reading about spontaneous combustion, I decided that I needed to deal with the compost pile out there with the girls. I emptied out the compost bin and found a pile of ash from the middle! No wonder the pile was hot – it had been smoldering in there! Oooopsie!

I filled up five recycle tubs that I placed together in a square. Once I filled them up I moved the chicken cage over on top of them so they can age for a while. I read that it takes about 90 days to mellow out the chicken manure and kill the bacteria so I’ll just leave those piles alone until at least July 1st. Hopefully, smaller piles translates into less combustible.

The girls seem to be thriving despite me!

All's well that ends well....

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Composting

August 5, 2010

It’s been awhile since we talked about composting. I don’t think much about it, it just seems to be incorporated in my daily life. I’ve got two big bins in the front yard, and a little composter just outside the kitchen door. The word “composting” seems to be a scary thing for lots of people. Basically, it’s not a big deal if you follow a few basic rules. You need green products (kitchen scraps like rinds, tops, cores, grass clippings, green leaves -anything that breaks down and doesn’t contain meat or fat products.) To offset the green products, you need to add brown products (dried leaves, paper, cardboard, straw and wood chips). Too much green and you’ll end up with a stinky mess. Too much brown and it won’t break down as quickly. Eggshells and coffee grinds are excellent things to add to your pile. Common sense dictates that the smaller your pieces are, the faster the breakdown.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to compost plant material that has been sprayed with herbicides. It will remain in the compost and kill plants if you spread it around the garden. Also, weeds can be composted, BUT only if they have dried out and have not gone to seed.

I practice vermiculture, which means I cultivate worms which, in turn, compost my kitchen waste products. My end product isn’t just compost, it’s worm castings. Gold for the garden. Remember, too, if you are raising worms, their mouths are small, so crushing eggshells and chopping their food into small pieces is a courtesy they will appreciate. Aren’t they cute?!

The Kids

I have been composting shredded paper mixed into my bins for awhile. My latest success story is a by-product of my bird feeders. The birdseed I use is black sunflower seed and I am going through a bag a day, so that translates into a lot of hulls I rake up weekly. With a layer of sunflower hulls in the compost bins, the worms have multiplied exponentially, which means they are really chomping through the stuff I through in; i.e. faster turnaround. Is it wrong to be so excited about that? :-)

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This is an interesting look for a compost bin

May 27, 2010

I opened up my compost bin the other day to dump some stuff in and this is what I found.

I raked up all the loose black sunflower seeds hulls under my bird feeders and dumped them in the compost a couple of weeks ago. I know there were some undisturbed seeds in all those hulls and apparently they’ve all sprouted! I stirred the top of the pile around a bit and discovered that the worms LOVE it! Sunflower seed mulch. Who knew?!

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Master Composter course

February 23, 2010

Learn the art and science of composting and how to teach it to others in this five-week, hands-on course taught by Master Composters from the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation. This course is sponsored by the City of San Diego.

Master Composter Training Course
Tuesdays, March 16 – April 13, 2010
6:00 – 8:30 pm
City of San Diego’s Environmental Services Building
9601 Ridgehaven Court, San Diego 92123

After completing the course, participants volunteer 30 hours for the Solana Center by teaching and inspiring people in their communities at workshops and community events, in school classrooms and gardens, and at
compost demonstration sites.

For more information, and to register, visit www.solanacenter.org or call (760) 436-7986 x217

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More worm information than you probably need….NOT.

December 3, 2009

As a self-proclaimed lover of worms, this information is GOLD! :-)

From the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation

A brief description of different composting worms:

“Earthworm” is the common name for over 2,500 species of Earthworm. But not all species are suitable for vermicomposting or the compost bin. Earthworker worms do not eat a large volume of organic material, do not reproduce well in confinement, and do not thrive when their burrow systems are disturbed. Vermicomposting worms on the other hand, reproduce quickly, eat large amounts of organic material, and tolerate disturbance.

Red Wigglers
Eisenia fetida
Red wigglers are the most common type of vermicomposting worms. They are rust brown in color with striping between segments. Adults can grow to about 3 inches in length, they prefer temperatures between 59-77 degrees F, and cocoons hatch between 35 and 70 days. Red wigglers work well for vermicomposting because of their high reproductive rate, ability to survive in varying conditions, and because under perfect conditions, they can eat their body weight in food everyday. Red wigglers are not soil dwellers and will likely perish if added to a garden.

Red Tiger
Eisenia andrei
The tiger worm is a close relative of the red wiggler and shares very similar vermicomposting abilities. They are dark red or purple in color and can grow up to 3 inches long. They prefer temperatures between 64 and 72 degrees F and can process large volumes of organic material. They are often not separated from red wigglers by commercial growers.

Redworms
Lumbricus rubellus
This worm works well for vermicomposting and bait as well. It is said to be irresistible to fish. This worm is dark red to maroon in color with no striping between segments. They can grow up to 3 inches in length and prefer temperatures between 64 and 72 degrees F. Redworms cocoons hatch in 12 to 16 weeks. This worm can potentially do double duty as a vermicomposter and earthworker.

Nightcrawlers
Lumbricus terrestris
Nightcrawlers are not ideal worms for vermicomposting bins. Nightcrawlers are deep dwellers that can burrow up to 6 feet into the ground. Nightcrawlers do not like their burrows to be disturbed and prefer temperatures around 50 degrees F. They can grow up to 12 inches in length and prefer to eat leaf litter and mulch. Nightcrawlers are earthworkers, performing an important role in soil mixing, taking organic matter from the surface into deeper layers of the soil.

For a list of suppliers go to this link: Worm and Compost Supplies in San Diego County

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Lazy Composting

November 8, 2009

The worms don't care

The worms don't care

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Composting – come on, you know you want to do it!

October 17, 2009

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal had a nice article about composting and comparing different models. Read the full article here…. Journalist Gwendolyn Bounds also made a cute video about her attempts with different composters. She even plays piano for the “kids” in her Worm Factory 360. I think she and I could be friends!

There is another article online at WSJ written by another journalist, Rachel Emma Silverman, as she shares her families attempts at being more “green” in their daily lives. There are a lot of great links in the article, too.

In our household, we’ve cut our trash down significantly by composting everything we can, including: vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, paper towels, cardboard, shredded paper, newspaper, old cereal and bread. Let the worms do the work. Sometimes I break the material down using a food chopper so the “kids” can eat through it faster, but in the interest of keeping things simple, just toss it in.

Just a quick note on eggshells. I just read that you should wash, not rinse, them before you toss them in because of the salmonella poisoning risk. That seems like a lot of water to waste. Another suggestion is to cook them in the oven for about 20 minutes, although I couldn’t find any info about a suggested temperature, so pick a temperature and wing it. From my perspective, I don’t see why we should have to go through all that work to have eggshells in our compost. There is bacteria naturally occurring in the soil anyway, and what about cow manure? This sounds like a subject I could spend hours researching on Google. No thank you. Moving on…..

Gardener’s Supply Company is a favorite gardening catalog of mine and they have a great selection of composters and composting supplies. Check it out:

Gardener's Supply Company

After you click on the logo above, you will see a link for composting on the left side of the page near the top.

I’m a “cold” composter vs a “hot” composter, which means that my brown/green ratio doesn’t have to be so precise and I can throw in whatever I want whenever I want. Plus, the “kids” don’t like it hot, so it’s all good.

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Coffee Grounds – part of a healthy (garden) diet

October 6, 2009

We’ve been saving our coffee grounds for the compost, but I wasn’t really sure what their value was to the garden. I was afraid they might be too “strong” to use too much but I didn’t have any basis behind my concerns so I decided to do some investigative work. Starbucks commissioned a study in [...]

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Spoiling the little darlings

July 9, 2009

Today was an impulse shopping day. Since my conversation at the Del Mar Fair with Mr. Worm Guy, I’ve been hitting garage sales on Thursday mornings in search of a blender or food chopper to break the food scraps down before I throw them in the worm bin. I’ve since learned that these little appliances [...]

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Let’s talk about the “Kids”

June 26, 2009

At the Fair, I found Mr. Worm Guy, and we had a good talk about worms. My “kids” don’t seem to be eating fast enough and I learned that I started with too low a number of worms when I first set up my new little Worm Factory stacking composter. I think I collected about [...]

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