Accidental Hot Composting

In my last blog post, I shared some of my knowledge about composting in honor of International Compost Awareness Week. I began composting in 1999, when I bought my first bin (something along the lines of this). Composters like my first bin are often touted as a way to achieve "hot composting" – the black plastic container absorbs heat, or so the ad copy goes, thus encouraging organic waste to "cook" into rich black compost.

As I explained in the aforementioned blog post, hot composting occurs when wastes rich in carbon and nitrogen are mixed in the right proportions (30 C : 1 N). A few scoops of soil or finished compost (for the microorganisms within) are thrown into the mix. The pile is kept moist and well-aerated and, if one is lucky, the bacteria in the pile will begin to consume like maniacs. They eat and breed in such a frenzied manner that they generate heat in the process. This heat is a sign that waste is breaking down rapidly.

I have no idea if my first compost bin really worked – sure, the waste I put inside broke down, but when I tried to remove it a year later the receptacle fell apart, and I never really found out if the compost heated. This is consistent with stories I’ve heard from other gardeners who have invested in expensive plastic composters only to find they broke or collapsed after a year or two of use. While not all of these bins bust so quickly, they can fail to deliver in their promises to cause the kind of heating that creates crumbly black "Gardeners' Gold" within three months’ time.

A few years after my disappointing first run with hot composting I opted to try passive composting. With passive composting, you basically throw stuff in a pile and let it rot for a year. You don't aerate by turning the pile, nor do you water the pile; you simply let nature take its course and enjoy a small amount of compost each spring. In 2003, my father-in-law built me a two-sided bin with an open top, removable wooden slats in the front, and chicken wire sides. I've been passively composting ever since, harvesting compost once a year.

That is, until about two weeks ago. That's when, despite the cold and rain, I discovered that my “passive” pile out back had accidentally become a hot pile – so hot, in fact, that it has been steaming for over a week. Here's a photo in which I almost captured the faint vapor rising one cold morning when I dug into the pile:





A hot compost pile is desirable because (A) heating causes compost to form much faster – it only takes about three months; (B) the quality of the compost is higher because of all the additional microbial activity encouraged; and (C) weed seeds and pathogens are "cooked" through the pasteurization process that takes place in the pile.

Accomplishing hot composting can be tricky. Most believe they fail to generate heat because their pile isn’t getting enough sun or warmth, though my case is proof that these variables have little to do with hot composting. My pile is in a shady spot in the back of my yard, next to an ash tree. The day I first found it steaming it was about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, extremely windy, and overcast. Not exactly the scorching day you'd expect would cause yard waste to heat. Nor is my bin made of heat-absorbing black plastic, which many companies claim is an important factor in successful hot composting (cf. this model, which advertises that "this high-performance tumbler is made of 100% recycled plastic in a heat-absorbing black color which helps compost 'cook'").

I'm not 100 percent sure what I did to cause my pile to heat, but I do have some theories:

(1) The pile is big. The whole thing is at least 3’x 3’x 3’. I'm not sure if it's absolutely necessary to have a big pile in order to achieve hot composting, but it certainly helps, for two reasons: one, the greater the variety of waste I throw on the pile, the more I increase the likelihood of balancing nitrogen to carbon, and two, the more waste, the more for the microbes to eat. I currently throw any and everything I can compost into the bin, from yard waste to kitchen scraps (my own and those I’ve collected from neighbors and, occasionally, local restaurants). I throw in large amounts of dried weeds and dead leaves from the yard (for the carbon) as well as buckets of moist, nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps. This helps me get closer to striking that important carbon to nitrogen balance of 30:1.

(2) The pile has LOTS of sticks in it. In the past I omitted the sticks, as they take a very long time to break down and are a pain to pick out of my passive pile once a year. HOWEVER, I learned in my Master Composter class that sticks, because of their size, create necessary pathways in the pile for air. So I allowed a number of sticks of various sizes into the pile, which I believe helped to aerate it, thus reducing the need for turning (something I seldom do).

(3) The pile is very moist due to ample rain. One of the main reasons folks’ piles don’t' heat is because they dry out, especially mid-to-late summer. Compost piles need to be watered when it's not raining – especially if they contain a lot of carbon-rich materials like dead leaves. It has been raining a lot this spring – which has limited the amount of time I’ve been able to spend in the garden, but has worked wonders on my compost pile.

Of course, my happy composting accident has me revved up to try intentionally hot composting. So lately I've been checking the pile daily and have even started turning it with a pitch fork. It’s so fun to see all the black crumbly compost steaming in the center of the pile. If my hot pile keeps working so well I’m sure I’m going to have compost by mid-summer, which will offer a nice pick-me-up for the veggies and herbs growing in my raised beds.

Do you have a question about composting or a composting success to share? E-mail me at gardensnotgarbage@gmail.com or leave a comment below. Or, stop by the Tosa Farmers Market on Saturday, May 28 at 11 a.m. and learn about composting basics at the Historic Little Red Store (7720 Harwood Avenue).

Do You Compost?

If your answer is yes, you have my permission to skip reading this blog post.

If your answer is no, I'd like to make a special appeal to you: consider engaging in the simple, delightful process of turning organic "waste" into the resource it really is. This is International Compost Awareness Week, and in honor of the event, I'd like to challenge you to make a bold move to cease throwing kitchen scraps into the trash and instead give composting a try. In doing so you'll discover for yourself how magical (and how easy!) the act of composting can be.

Composting is magical because it takes garbage and turns it into a useable product – compost, also known as "humus." Humus is a crucial but often lacking component of healthy soil. Adding compost to the earth reduces the need for commercial soil amendments, as well as manufactured chemical fertilizers that can run off our properties and into the rivers and lakes, polluting our water supply. Compost adds nutrients and micronutrients to depleted soil, helps soils retain moisture, and reduces erosion. This allows us to grow healthier plants, from vegetables and fruits to native flowers and even grass. It can act as mulch and side dressing and can be used to make "compost tea." Compost can be purchased, of course, but it is virtually free, after start-up expenses, once you begin converting your own kitchen waste into this natural resource.

And composting really IS easy. There are three main ways to compost -- choose your favorite. The bottom line is that anything you do to return resources to the soil, rather than send them to the landfill, is an important contribution to environmental sustainability.

The first method of composting I'm going to discuss is probably the most well-known. Hot composting is a technique whereby your aim is to "cook" your vegetable-based waste. Food scraps heat and thus break down faster into compost. Contrary to popular opinion, a pile doesn't necessarily heat because of the sun or summer temperatures. It heats when beneficial composting bacteria go to work inside a pile, heating it to degrees upwards of 160 F. This pasteurizes the pile and creates high quality compost quickly – the total turn-around time is about three months when a pile properly heats.

While this is a fantastic composting method, it can be tricky to get a pile to heat. Heating requires a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 30:1 in the waste. Carbon rich materials include things like dead leaves and hay. Nitrogen rich materials include fresh-cut grass, vegetable scraps, or manure. Many say a good rule of thumb is to mix two parts carbon-rich "brown" materials with one part nitrogen-rich "green" materials. In order to heat, the pile also needs to be adequately moist (about as wet as a wrung-out sponge) and it needs to good oxygen flow – aeration is encouraged through regular turning of the pile.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Um….sort of? I know I don't have time to do all these things. I would, of course, LOVE to see my big ol' pile out back get so hot it steams, but I know accomplishing this is no small task.

An alternative is what is called "passive" or "cool" composting. This is the outdoor composting method of choice for those who are extremely busy – or just plain lazy. I think I may have one foot in each of those categories, which is why this method works so well for me. The main difference between hot and passive composting is the amount of work that goes into it – and the amount of time it takes to create usable compost. For my pile, I simply dump waste into the bin. I try to layer the types of waste I add – for example, if I dump in nitrogen-rich veggie and fruit scraps I will cover them with carbon-rich dead leaves. I do this to help the carbon-nitrogen balance and to cover any offensive-smelling waste that might attract flies. Occasionally I will also turn the pile, although I admit I don't do it often enough to call it "hot" composting.

Interestingly, right now my pile is so big that it seems to be heating, despite my laziness. If it heats, it will compost faster. Otherwise, the compost from a passive pile is typically ready in six to twelve months. I usually harvest compost in late spring, just as I'm preparing my vegetable beds.

One caution: if you choose passive composting, avoid adding weed seeds to your pile. Though most weed seeds will be destroyed by heating, without the heat the seeds may survive the composting process and end up sprouting in your gardens.

The third method is worm composting, AKA vermicomposting. I've written about in the past on this blogand I own a small vermicomposting supply business; I encourage you to peruse those resources if you want to learn more. Vermicomposting is my favorite composting method, simply because it's fast, can be done indoors year-round, and produces a superior compost that plants love. Worm composting creates finished compost in approximately two to four months.

With all three methods, avoid adding meat, fish, poultry, dairy, and other animal products, as these wastes create offensive odors and can attract pests. Also avoid adding heavily processed and salty foods, charcoal briquettes and ashes, and dog and cat feces. Paper products are OK – throw those coffee filters and paper towels in with your fruit and vegetable waste. They'll break down quickly in a compost bin of any kind.

As for composting systems, you can invest in an expensive commercial compost bin, and if you want to do this, more power to you. Just make sure you read as many user ratings as possible before spending money so you have an idea of what to expect. Of course, you do not have to buy an expensive commercial bin to compost. There are plenty of plans for bins, ranging from a simple cylinder made of chicken wire to more complex wooden systems. You can also use concrete blocks to build bins. The Wisconsin DNR has a nice site with composting resources, including info on types of home composting bins. Check it out.

My passive bin is made from scrap wood and chicken wire, which allows for decent air flow around the pile. Wooden slats in the front slide up and out when the time comes to remove the compost. The two sides allow me to focus on adding waste to one side at a time; when the first side is ready, I remove any unfinished materials and place them in the other side, then begin adding new waste to the second side.

If you are unable to compost yourself, you may be able to find a neighbor to help you. I use my large bin to help neighbors compost. I also feed neighbors' waste to the thousands of red wiggler worms that eat garbage in my basement.

If you can't find a neighbor to help you compost, locate a community composting collective, like the Milwaukee Community Compost Network. Or, start a collective yourself.

If you have a big composting bin and not enough waste to fill it, you might consider offering to compost for your neighbors. You can also try to compost for local restaurants and grocers. There are many possibilities for composting. By working together, every community can turn their garbage into gardens!

The Wonder of Worms

This weekend I'm giving a vermicomposting workshop to our neighborhood garden club. It's the first workshop I've ever done on the subject and I'm thrilled to be able to share my knowledge of this unique practice with others. In case you're unfamiliar, vermicomposting is a special way to return the nutrients in vegetable waste to the soil. It involves keeping earthworms indoors, using them to eat coffee grounds, apple cores, carrot peelings, and other waste. They eat kitchen scraps and turn this "garbage" into a rich natural fertilizer.

My interest in vermicomposting began several years ago, when I began hearing that folks were keeping "pet worms" in boxes in their homes and using them to compost. I was fascinated by the idea of having a little composting factory right in my house. So one day I decided to give vermicomposting a try. I did some research and built my own bin using an 18-gallon plastic storage tote. I bought several containers of red wiggler worms from a local bait shop, dumped them into the bin atop moistened newspaper strips, and began my vermicomposting adventure.

Truth be told, my first couple of years experimenting with worms were rocky. All went well with my first bin until I started noticing tiny fungus gnats all over the place. Frustrated with the pests, I moved the bin outdoors, buried the too-moist, nitrogen-rich bin contents with with dry, carbon-rich materials, and left the bin alone for a spell – a very long spell. In fact, I left the bin outside all the way through the winter. When I returned to the bin in the spring, I had a container full of lovely compost, but no worms! It was then that I learned the hard lesson that worms cannot survive above ground outdoors during a Wisconsin winter.

Determined not to give up, that spring I started a new bin, this time with a bucket of worms from Growing Power in Milwaukee. As I started to get the hang of vermicomposting I soon added a second bin. Then a third. Then I started building bins for friends and family. I'm now at the point where I'm so into vermicomposting that I just launched a little side business called Gardens, not garbage! to help others establish their own worm bins. I also hope to continue to give workshops in the area. Vermicomposting is a fabulous way to reduce waste while creating an amazing organic fertilizer in the process. If you do it right it doesn't smell and works like magic.

The best perk of vermicomposting, for a gardener like myself, is being able to use vermicompost to revive tired houseplants. I brewed up some "vermicompost tea" about a week ago using this method. Before using the tea to water and fertilizer my houseplants (everything from dracaena to dwarf pomegranates, figs, and coffee plants) I decided to try something I recently learned about in my Master Gardener class: I gave my houseplants a shower. I took all my houseplants and put them in my two bathtubs, then rinsed them with warm water, cleaning dust from their leaves (excessive dust can inhibit photosynthesis). After rinsing the leaves and soil thoroughly, I allowed the water to soak through the pots, washing away the build-up of salts that can occur in the average houseplant pot due to treated water. After their bath, I poured my brew of compost tea on the plants' leaves and into the pots. The compost tea serves the dual purpose of acting as a foliar rinse and a fertilizer. The beneficial microbes in the tea strengthen the plant, positioning it to better resist diseases and pests. The tea also adds nutrients to the pot, bringing dead soil back to life.



My plants now look so healthy and shiny and new. Though the task of showering them was a bit painstaking, I don't imagine that the process will have to happen more than once or twice a year. Of course, I will probably repeat the compost tea every few weeks, because it's so beneficial. It doesn't take much vermicompost to make the tea – only about a quart per five gallons of water -- and it's fairly easy to make. The benefits are definitely worth the trouble if you want happy house plants!

Winter Composting

The arrival of winter can render composting an unpleasant endeavor for folks in the northern reaches of the U.S. Here at the Blue Bungalow, we don't care much for trudging across our snow-covered, dog-dropping-strewn back yard with bowls of congealing kitchen scraps. Worse, those scraps are dumped atop a frozen, snow-capped pile that won't decompose until the spring and can't properly be turned. Winter composting outdoors is a task we at our house are likely to neglect once the blizzards start rolling in, as they did last December:



I don't think I could even *find* my compost bin under all the snow that fell during that terrible onslaught of wintry weather!

For me, the answer to the problem of winter composting is simple: we'll rely on our indoor worm bins. When and if the worms get overloaded, we'll add more bins. This way, we'll be able to continue composting our kitchen scraps through the winter, reducing the amount of garbage we send to the landfill and building up a beautiful supply of compost for the spring planting season.

But vermicomposting isn't for everyone. To illustrate, allow me to share an e-mail I recently received from a fellow sustainer in Tosa. He asked the following:

Good Morning Heather, Do you have any experience with winter composting without worms? My wife doesn’t like the worm idea indoors. I found one solution at finegardening.com that sounds pretty interesting. Just wondering your thoughts. Dave in Tosa

I told Dave I've never tried indoor composting without the assistance of the amazing red wiggler. Of course, as a vermicompost enthusiast, I couldn't help but try to convince him to give vermicomposting a shot. I told him:

You know, worms aren’t that bad – esp. if you are very careful to keep a tidy bin and follow vermicomposting rules. Do you have a basement, or some other out of the way area your wife doesn’t frequent? You could try keeping them tucked away in some place so she doesn’t have to see them regularly.

Truth be told, my husband is not a big fan of the worms, but he tolerates them b/c he knows they are little wonderworkers. I used to keep them in my kitchen, which was fine, but at least a couple of times in warmer weather the fungus gnats got out of control. When that happened in the summers of ’08 and ’09, we moved the bins outdoors, where they remained just outside my kitchen door. When it got cold I moved them in again. Now they’re in my basement, which seems to work well. It’s cool down there, which keeps the gnats down, but not so cool that it kills the worms. ...

Do you and/or your wife garden or grow any plants indoors? If so, the worms, I've found, are indispensible in organic gardening. And the "compost tea" that can be made from worm castings and compost keeps indoor plants very healthy and happy.

I should make it clear that while I think every household should have at least one worm bin, the last thing I would want to do is encourage marital discord. IMHO a spouse (or roommate, or child) should never stress over sustainability techniques he or she is not ready for. Hopefully, my friend will find an alternative solution that appeases his spouse if she's still not ready for worms. And who could blame her? Worms aren't exactly the most appealing creatures on first glance.

I asked Dave to let me know if the winter composting solution mentioned in the finegardening.com article above works for him (and his wife). I'll let you know what he reports. Who knows -- maybe I'll try this method myself.

Finally, I'd like to add two comments about the gnat problem that has plagued my vermicomposting efforts since the get-go:

A friend of mine, who uses the same style of bins I do, told me she doesn't have gnats because she never feeds fruit to her worms -- she gives them only veggie scraps and coffee grounds. I imagine that a great number of microscopic pests arrive in our kitchens on the peels of bananas.

When I was at the 350 carnival a couple Saturdays ago in MKE, vermicomposting demonstrator Godsil of Sweet Water Organics told me that he doesn't have problems with gnats because he absolutely submerges all food waste with carbon-rich material. I've been using strips of newspaper to cover the nitrogen-rich materials added to my bins; Godsil uses finely shredded leaf mulch. This made me wonder if perhaps the hand-torn newspaper strips I'm using aren't fine enough to really bury the food waste. Perhaps gnats are still able to slip through the copious air pockets in the newspaper shreds to get to the food (or from the food, as the case may be) and do their breeding.

I think I'm going to gather a bagful of autumn leaves and keep it beside my worm bins this winter for composting. I wonder if the leaf mulch will be healthier for the worms and will do a better job of covering waste. Plus, it's probably better to send old newspaper to the recycling center, rather than into the earth. Aside from the dubious inks and other contaminants in the paper, reusing dead tree matter via recycling prevents further trees from being harvested.

Compost Gnats and Escaped Worms

Last week I wrote candidly about the somewhat embarrassing fungus gnat invasion in my worm bin. As you may recall, my husband Steve and I moved the infested bin outdoors as a temporary solution until I could figure out what my next step was going to be, whether waging biological warfare (by adding beneficial nematodes to my bin to kill the gnat larvae) or something else.

I opted for "something else," because "something else" is free, and much less scary than playing with creepy living organisms that may or may not solve my problem. So the other day I got out a few five gallon buckets and my wheelbarrow (and yes, it's "wheelbarrow" and not "wheelbarrel", as I learned today to my chagrin). I lined these vessels up on a concrete slab in my backyard, opened the compost bin, and started sorting the contents of the bin. This tedious, messy and somewhat back-breaking process involved adding about two shovelfuls at a time to a wooden sifter Steve crafted for me out of wood and 1/8" hardware cloth, then shaking the sifter over the wheelbarrow to separate the finished compost and worm castings from the unfinished compost. While some of the worms did fall through the holes in the screening, it wasn't terribly difficult to pick them out. I put the unfinished compost in one of the five gallon buckets, and then a second when the first filled up.

Truthfully, this is the first time I have harvested my compost in the entire year of its existence and I realized while doing so the task was long overdue. While I have harvested small scoops of compost/castings here and there to make compost tea, I have never gone through the bin and removed vast amounts of compost. This experience taught me three things:

To avoid problems like fungus gnat and fruit fly infestations, bins should be processed more often than annually -- maybe once a season would make more sense for an active bin, as it takes about three months for worms to process food waste.

Just as it is very useful to have a two-sided compost bin in my backyard, it will also be useful to have two side-by-side vermicompost bins instead of one. So from now on I think I'm going to alternate between two bins to keep both of them active and prevent them from becoming overloaded and prone to pests. Also, under the right conditions, worms breed like crazy, so after one year I have more than enough worms to move them into new bins and share with others.

Vermicompost is amazing! The stuff I sifted was gorgeous -- well, gorgeous to an organic gardener, anyway. It's rich, dark and crumbly. I wish I had done this worm-bin-sifting earlier, because the compost I harvested will be extremely useful in my gardens. Although some of the things I've seen over the last few days aren't really for the faint of heart, it still seems worth it in the end when I think of all that rich stuff I'll be able to feed my vegetables.

I sifted through about 2/3 of my very full bin and obtained one five-gallon bucket full of finished vermicompost when I discovered that the compost in the bottom of the bin was too wet to sift easily -- it was smelly, compacted and borderline anaerobic. So I aerated the remaining compost by scraping it off the the screening and pebbles that cover the bottom of the bin. Then I covered it with some of the unfinished compost and worms and added lots of *dry* shredded newspaper to the bin. I tend to not moisten the newspaper if the bin contents are already too moist, which is a common problem with plastic containers. I am hoping the dry newspaper will absorb the excess moisture.

Finally, I moved my processed bin to the basement, where I am going to let it sit for a while. In the meantime, I took the remaining unfinished compost and more worms and added it all to a brand-new bin. I covered the compost with shredded newspaper and set the new bin beside the original bin.

Regarding the gnats, I haven't seen any since I went through this process, although I did notice that the two flats of spinach I've been growing on my kitchen counter were also infested with fungus gnats. I experimented with pouring a homemade cleaning solution of water, vinegar and peppermint castile soap on the soil, as I've heard that diluted castile soap can kill plant bugs. I should have just made a new solution, but I already had this old solution in a spray bottle, so I thought I'd experiment with it rather than make a new solution without vinegar. The solution I poured on one of the flats did seem to kill (quiet?) the gnats, but also proved to hurt the spinach plants, as this morning they looked kind of withered. Not sure what got to them -- the vinegar or the soap, or both. I am probably going to dump that flat in the compost bin out back. I put the other flat outside, where I'll probably leave it now that it's warm enough. That's where a majority of my growing is taking place anyway, so I might as well focus on the outdoors and save indoor gardening for the fall.

One more candid confession: I have observed that two nights in a row some of the worms I placed temporarily in a five-gallon bucket with the lid loose for ventilation escaped. The awful task of scraping half-dried worms from my concrete basement floor is almost worse than finding a bin infested with gnats. Apparently these little red wigglers are SERIOUS night creepers and, in the dark, they will crawl to the top of the bin and all over the inside if it's shut. If a lid is open, they will crawl out of the bin and as far as they can get before drying up. If you have a worm bin in a place that is very dark at night, keep it shut, or make sure any screening you keep on top is too tight for the worms to crawl through (the 1/8" holes in the screen I put over the bin the second night apparently made for an easy worm exodus). After scraping about 20 dead worms from the floor, I think I've learned my lesson. Thank God they didn't escape onto carpet! Blech.

So now that I've said all that, anyone still want me to make them a worm composter? ;)

Insect Invasion

I have been trying to absorb everything I can about vermicomposting over the last few weeks and even created my own bin design to make for friends and possibly sell as a part of my business idea, "Gardens, Not Garbage." Things had been going well all spring with my one-year-old vermicomposter and I was feeling pretty confident about my composting abilities until I hit a bump in the road the other day.

The problem is flies. Last year, a month or so after I first started my bin, I found I had what I thought was a fruit fly infestation. So I moved my bin from the kitchen to a shady spot in my backyard, stopped filling it with kitchen scraps for a few weeks, stuffed the bin with dead leaves and let it rest outdoors, where I kept it there all summer and for most of the winter. I thought, foolishly, that my worms could survive the cold if they were buried inside my big bin and the bin were covered with snow, which it was for most of the winter. However, in the late winter I realized I had frozen my worms to death. Ooops! Not ready to give up, however, I bought new worms from Growing Power, brought my bin inside and I was back in business. That was probably in March or so.

Anyway, it wasn't until this last week in mid-May that I discovered a halo of flies around my bin. I assumed they were fruit flies, so I did some reading online and tried one trick I found at Chow Tips: I filled a few containers with a mixture of apple cider vinegar, warm water, and a squirt or two of dish soap. I put a mason jar and a large bowl full of the stuff on top of my bin the other night and the next morning both containers had a great number of dead flies floating in the liquid.

Unfortunately, the bin was still surrounded by a halo of flies, and yesterday they were so bad, my husband pointed out, that if you looked closely at the window next to the bin there were tiny flies all over it. Nasty.

I did more reading and figured out that these aren't actually fruit flies. Fruit flies may be a problem, too, and maybe that trick with the vinegar did work for them. But it actually seemed to do nothing for the fungus gnats that may be the real culprit in this situation.

Apparently flies are a common problem among us "worm workers" (borrowing a phrase from Mary Appelhof, whose book "Worms Eat My Garbage" I am reading right now). I came across this blog in which the blogger explains an identical situation. He ended up purchasing nematodes online to put inside his bins, which he said seemed to abate the fungus gnat population.

I think many of my houseplants are also infested with the same kind of gnat, because for a while now whenever I water my plants I'll see tiny critters fly up and then go back down to the soil. I am not sure if these are a danger to the plant, or to my compost, but they sure are creepy!

I have always been very careful to bury the food scraps I place in my worm bin under copious amounts of shredded newspaper when I add waste every week or so. However, my husband and one of my children had recently taken to adding some kitchen scraps unbeknownst to me until I discovered a banana peel sitting right on top of the bedding. I read in Worms Eat My Garbage that fruit flies like to lay their eggs on their food sources (moldy fruit) so their offspring have something to eat when they hatch, but that fruit flies are not burrowers, so unless food is exposed in the bin they are not likely to go for it. Also, their eggs are often on the fruit we buy from the store, so it would make sense that a misplaced banana peel could cause an infestation.

The fungus flies are more of a mystery to me, and from what I have read, they are harder to manage. I'm not sure what has caused this fungus gnat infestation. It could be that they somehow found their way into my houseplants and then into my worm bin, or vice versa. I'm not sure if the banana peels are what caused this problem, or if it's something else, but either way I'm eager to find a solution. I'd hate for a few hundred highly irritating but mostly harmless gnats to spoil my vermicomposting operation. For now, at my husband's insistence, I have moved the bin outside until I can figure out how to remedy this problem.

To be continued...

Got Worms?

Lots of folks have been asking me lately about composting and vermicomposting. As a result, I've been experimenting with building simple vermicomposters and I've decided I'm willing to make them for others for a small fee. If you would like an 18-gallon converted plastic tote Vermicomposter (AKA "worm bin") for your home, I am now taking orders. $20 without the red wigglers, $35 with. If you decide you want to buy the worms yourself, you can get them at many bait shops or from Growing Power in MKE for $25 per five gallon bucket.

I use my worm castings as fertilizer (straight or in the form of "compost tea") for houseplants, outdoor container plants and small vegetable gardens (i.e. square foot garden beds). The stuff is amazing; I'm fairly convinced the reason my houseplants and vegetable seedlings are so green and healthy is because I'm feeding them with compost tea made from worm castings on a weekly basis. The great thing about having a worm composter in your kitchen or basement is that it's easily accessible and can be used year round.

The other advantage of having a worm bin is the reduction in garbage you toss each week. When you add coffee grounds, egg shells, vegetable and fruit scraps and shredded newspaper to your bin, your garbage can is lighter each week, thus reducing your carbon footprint.

If you want to place an order for a vermicomposter, e-mail me directly at heatherzydek(at)gmail(dot)com. Your bin can be ready within 3 to 5 days of your order. I will provide some written instructions and will be available by e-mail to answer any questions you have about your bin.

Removing the Five-Gallon Vermicompost Bin

After much deliberation, I have decided to eliminate one of my two kitchen vermicompost bins.

I came to this conclusion based on the following lines of reason:

I don't think a five-gallon plastic bucket, even with holes poked in the sides and drainage rocks at the bottom, is the best place in which to grow vermicompost, given the tightness of the space and lack of airflow;

I am beginning to think that, while I'm still a novice, I can easily get away with the rubbermaid bin and the outdoor bin. Do I really need *three* compost bins for a 1/4 acre "farm"?

I don't believe this bucket can stop smelling like orange diarrhea fast enough.

So I took about half of the contents of the five-gallon bucket and as many worms as I could save and put them in the rubbermaid bin, aerated it a bit, sprinkled sphagnum peat moss on top and replaced the lid. I'll take the remaining conents in the five-gallon bucket and dump them in my outdoor compost bin as soon as it stops raining.

Another thought: we drink so much coffee here at the Blue Bungalow that I am going to have to be much more careful about managing the nitrogen-carbon balance in all of my bins (especially the indoor bin). And I am never, ever again going to add a bag of moldy oranges to a small plastic compost bin inside my house.

The Compost Chronicles: Worm Bin Crisis

I have two vermicomposters in my house: one is a large converted rubbermade bin in the back-door vestibule and one is a 5-gallon bucket with a lid converted, rather hastily, into a vermicomposter; I keep the latter in the cabinet next to my garbage can. I also use a 5 quart ice cream bucket as a "transitional bin" to keep my compost materials (coffee grounds, vegetable scraps); I put kitchen scraps in the ice cream bucket and then once a week I dump that bucket into one of the vemicomposters or, if both containers contain too much material, into my backyard compost bin.

I admit that, given the small size of the 5-gallon vermicomposter and the ease with which it becomes too full, I've let it sit (read: neglected it) for the last couple of weeks, thinking it would be good to let the contents decompose in peace before touching it again. The last time I filled it with waste, I'd added an old bag of moldy oranges; since this was a pretty big load for the small bin, I covered the oranges with shredded newspaper and left it alone.

Oops. Today I opened it up to retrieve some compost (I'm making compost tea with cheese cloth, twine, compost and a sun-tea pitcher, but I'll have to save that for another post) and it was nasty -- juicy, jet black, and putrid smelling. Think dirty diaper after baby has consumed mass quantities of blueberries. Although the worms are still slithering around happily, I'm upset about this, as I just read in the book Toolbox for Sustainable City Living that this kind of smelly scene is an indication that the compost is too wet and nitrogen-rich, which can cause the compost to become anaerobic, creating alcohol. This is good if you're a home brewer, but bad if you're trying to grow healthy compost.

In my uneducated attempt to remedy this situation, I took a long spoon and stirred up the stuff to aerate the bin's contents, then added shredded newspaper (I manually "shredded" a whole issue of the Shepherd Express with scissors to accomplish this). I also added the contents of a planter with a seeds that didn't sprout, some ripped-up paper egg cartons (to absorb some of the liquid) and a few handfuls of seed starter mix and sphagnum peat moss. I wanted to add dead leaves from my yard, but it's raining, and the last thing I want to do is add more liquid to this compost sludge. When I replaced it in the cabinet, I left the lid loose, to keep the air flowing.

So then I went to my rubbermaid vermicomposter to see if I could obtain a big spoonful of finished compost to make compost tea. This bin was disturbingly close to becoming anaerobic, as it was a little too moist and the compost was a little too black. I did manage to dig deep and find some semi-finished compost, but the bin needed some aerating, so I stirred it up and, when finished, sprinkled a generous amount of sphagnun peat moss (with a little seed start mix thrown in) to the top to cover up the smelly unfinished compost.

The silver lining in this dark compost cloud is that I've learned two valuable composting lessons. I need to aerate my vermicomposters more often and I need to avoid overloading them with nitrogen-rich materials. Instead of just letting them sit with an inch of shredded newspaper atop for days or even weeks at a time, I will probably have to check the bins daily, stir them up, and maybe add some more carbon-rich matter (the dry, brown stuff). Live and learn!