Hello,

Im part of a community kitchen that wants to start composting our food waste instead of just throwing it away.

We started with a tumbler, but it took us two weeks to fill it up. I’ve read some other posts on the group about people wanting to do commercial/industrial composting, but I’m not sure what the best option for us would be. I don’t have much experience with composting at this scale, I’ve never needed anything bigger than a large tumbler for myself.

Some of the challenges we have is that:

We don’t have a lot of space, so having massive pits and whatnot is probably unfeasible.

The kitchen board is quite concerned about ‘odour pollution’. I’ve never had comport that smells too off, but I don’t know if that changes if you go up in scale, nor do I know how to deal with it.

Our kitchen only operates on the weekend, so we would only be able to maintain the compost once a week; is this ok for a pile, or do they need daily/every other day maintenance?

I would appreciate any advice on this, as well as recommendations for any resources/articles.

PS: we are located in northern Alberta, near Edmonton (so you can have an idea of the weather here)

There were more but they escaped downwards till I got the camera out

It's been a month now, it doesn't smell like trash gone bad anymore (I stopped adding greens and only added browns for some time) smell is, more like between earth and moldy bread now if it makes sense. It's not very unpleasant but I wouldn't want to take a wiff for pleasure yet lol.

Anyways there has been small flies, ants, bugs, lots of fast crawlers smaller than sesame seeds but these larvae are huge! Some are close to an inch long and I didn't keep turning the compost for better look for the fear of crushing them with action.

Anyone know what they will be as adults? Are they good to have in the bin?

Is there a solution for an odor free rotating barrel that can live on our patio? We're in a condo and currently pay for compost service to pick up our scraps, but I'm wondering if a compost barrel can coexist with our outdoor dining setup that we use almost daily.

Also how does outdoor compost do in the winter in Colorado? Not sure if it's worth continuing to pay and let someone else deal with it or if there's a viable option on the patio.

I currently have a bunch of BSF larvae, and am assuming that once I stop filling that half with food scraps, eventually it’s going to be less habitable for them and get hotter and dependent on just microbial activity. After that would I expect it to cool down and have visible mycelium growth?

I put shovels full of BSL into my open-air compost over a period of several weeks. When I churn my compost the soil is alive with BSL. I have sandy-loam and that is what a huge portion of my compost loos like. Aside from the obvious areas that still need to be further degraded, does this mean my compost is ready for use?

I'm relatively new to composting - started last December, but only really got my bin working in March. I kinda love it. But I find the cleanliness aspect stressful.

Here's what I do - I'm wondering if it's overkill and what everyone else is doing:

• Wear close-toed shoes that are only for doing compost (they are left outdoors)
• Wear a face mask when doing the compost because of mold spores
• Wear disposable gloves when doing the compost

I heard fabric gloves are good for composting but that feels unhygienic to me.

I also wonder what are those of you doing who want to avoid mold spores in your house? I've done both open kitchen compost bin and closed, and I'm not sure which is safer. (I also have guinea pigs at home who are sensitive to mold). Basically I want to have the simplest process with the highest safety.

My compost doesn’t get hot. I’m not sure what I do wrong. Can anyone give me an idea?

I have coffee grounds, shredded paper, cardboard and kitchen scraps. It is mixed with some of the dirt from the ground from mixing and moving.

Not bad. It held at 130°F for a full day. Probably would have held longer and got hotter if I had more browns.

Title says it all really. About to start a family compost pile on the property. And idk wether I should make an outline box out of plywood to keep it all in or a wall of bricks then a pile. We have feral cats nearby we don't want to poison but really don't care at the same time yk. Any opinions

I should have saved all those bottles of piss I made and brought them home for my compost. Missed opportunity I guess.

I let the bucket sit for a month, it smelled pickly and I thought it would turn them off. I am so frustrated! They haven’t dug down to the majority of the bucket contents, but I’m worried what I’ll find in the morning. I’m about ready to give up.

I started a pile 55 days ago which was 1 cubic meter in size. 15% was an old compost pile, 15% garden leaves, 15% garden waste (weeds, leaves, sold old and fresh grass) and the rest was basically coffee grounds and coffee chaffs.

I think I added way too much nitrogen (coffee grounds). It's now at day 55 with 0 signs of cooling down. It only took maybe 5 days to reach this temp, and it has not dropped since.

I have turned the pile 6 times and added HEAPS of leaves and sugar cane mulch.

What am I doing wrong / when is it going to cool down?

Hello Internet pals,

My wife and I just got this black and decker tumbler, and I see that it has these air holes on the bottom. When am I supposed to open these? Should they be open all the time or only during certain points? Please assist.

Thanks so much.

My pile is not large enough to heat up. Even so, I can I add weeds that I've pulled from my garden if I let them dry out and die first?

Hello all,

I work at an office and all my coworkers know I like composting, so they always shred paper and set it aside for me. To be honest though the shredded paper is getting a little too much for me, myself, and I to handle. So can I just compost the office paper by itself? I'll of course occasionally add a couple of vegetable and fruit scraps into the pile, but I assume the pile will be 90% shredded paper and 10% greens. Is this doable? Thanks.

For the past 6 or 7 years I’ve been shredding all the household cardboard with a 24-sheet office paper shredder (Amazon Basics model).

A sheet of cardboard is just 2 sheets of brown paper with a third sheet between them in a wavy pattern, so a 24-sheet shredder that can eat DVDs and credit cards is MORE than up to the challenge of cardboard, despite the fears many have.

It’s devoured everything I throw at it. I started doing two sheets of cardboard at once a while ago since they fit and it doesn’t slow the machine down at all.

BUT recently I bought a new BBQ grill and it came in a heavy duty box on a pallet. I cut the box up and was shredding it as well. It was made of this double-carbboard that was very thick and stiff. Hard to insert into the machine but once inside it got pulled through and chewed up just fine.

But torward the end some piece got out of alignment and the machine bogged down to a halt. I tried backing it out and rerunning it but it would not go through.

Eventually I took the entire machine apart and found that the whole shredding mechanism had gotten tweaked out of its thick metal carriage when a bearing retaining ring sheared, and a few key parts were then bent. This meant the two cylinders with all the teeth were running out of alignment, and they damaged each other further, seized, and ripped the mechanism further out of its moorings.

The machine is totaled. I will probably just buy another. I can afford to test things like this out on behalf of the community LOL but I wanted to be sure to pass along the experience.

1. don’t overload your shredder with cardboard that’s too thick to fit through
2. skip industrial strength cardboard that’s made up of multiple layers - find another use for it or some other way to get it into your pile
3. a capable shredder can handle two regular sheets as long as nothing goes amiss, but it’s probably best to just do one sheet at a time for those moments when something does go wrong with alignment and the cardboard gets folded up into a thick wad
4. if the machine jams, don’t back it up and try again 5 times in a row :D

Hi All New to Reddit and this sub. I’ve cleared a lot of dandelions (root to flower), bindweed and couch grass including roots. I’m in cold north of UK.
Should I take to council garden waste or bag snd leave to rot. If rotting how long without adding anything more. TIA.

Do I burn this before it starts singing and killing people? Guessing I need to dry out my bin more if this has enough moisture to grow by default.

Hello.

I am new to composting but would like to get started/set up properly. I'm hoping you all might be able to send me down the right trail. There's a couple considerations:

1. It will probably have to be more hands off than a hot compost.

2. I'm thinking I'll need to cover the tops and sides to get 0% light in there? I have invasive weeds. While I'm not going out of my way to compost them, they are absolutely going to make their way into any grass clippings etc. that I gather.

3. weed seeds. How long can they last in compost? Do you refuse to compost any grass or weeds that have gone to seed?

4. I might have access to chicken manure/sawdust mix, but have no idea how long it has to sit before being usable in a veggie garden etc. Does that number change if it's used for a fruit tree or bush?

5. I also have access to unbleached plain unprinted paper. I've been trying to smoother weed patches with it with little success.

Questions:

A) where would you put it? Is a sunny location better? What pests might it attract and how far away from buildings would you put it?

B) What's the best setup for cold compost with weeds? / what are some different setups?

Again I'm not asking for you guys to info dump everything you know about composting into a post, but instead hoping for some keywords, like "look into X type of composting, or Z type of setup." Or links or names of trusted sites/people.

If you give me a place to start I'll do the research, 🙃

I'd really appreciate the help.

Lol.

So I started a 3x3x3 pile about 6 weeks ago, it was just grass clippings and shredded paper. Surprisingly (for me) as I turned it very few days it would steam like crazy for a few minutes so I was happy.
Wife, less so (sigh).
I figured I'd meet her in the middle and I bought a Vivosun 43gal Tumbler. I took about 1/6 of the pile and put it in the 1st chamber, I also added 2-3 handfuls of shredded paper.

2 days later no heat. I hadn't filled the bin so this am I stuffed it pretty good and sprayed it down as well. I've added a small amount of greens.

Its a little harder to find info specific to just tumblers so I figured I would check here if i'm just being impatient or there are some tricks I could consider?

It gets spun about 3x a day so far.

thx.