So, today's episode is all about composting in the city! So, if you live in an urban area, in a
small space, in an apartment, townhouse, condo, or in the city where you don't have access to loads
and loads of dry leaves, or you don't have access to a big backyard where you can create your own
large compost pile, can you still create your own compost? The answer is yes you can. And, I'm going
to show you exactly how to do it with very few materials, and very small space required for it.
But, before we get started, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the notification bell, so
you don't miss another great gardening video from Kellogg Garden again. Just to introduce myself,
I'm Resh Gala, founder of Hundred Tomatoes and a kitchen gardener from New Jersey growing zone 6b.
I'm an urban gardener and I don't have much space or access to a large yard where I can create my
own big pile of compost, yet for the last several years I have been composting successfully and I'm
here to show you exactly how to do it without having access to bags and bags of dry leaves.
But, before I say how to compost, let me also explain to you that spring, right now,
is the best time to actually start creating your own compost pile. And the reason being is,
it takes a couple of months for your compost to break down, and if you start right now in spring,
you'll have beautiful black gold ready by fall, and you can apply it to your raised beds just
before you close them down and put them to bed in winter. So, first thing first I want to talk
about the four essential ingredients to composting successfully and that's carbon, nitrogen, air, and
water. Now, what are some of the common sources of carbon? Well, it's nothing but your dry leaves,
dried twigs, and wood shavings. If you don't have access to dry leaves in bags and bags,
which of course if you're living in the city, in an apartment, or condo, you probably don't,
then what you need are pine pellets, or equestrian bedding. And, it's easily available in your big
box retailer store or in a pet shop, and what I like to use are these pine pellets right here,
from tractor supply company.
And, they look like this. They're nothing but compressed sawdust, and they absorb odors
and liquids very easily, and it's great when you're composting in a small space.
Now, this is what I have for my carbon source. Now, in terms of nitrogen source
what you use you can use things like your food scraps, banana peels, carrot peels, cucumber
peels, etc. Even something like coffee grounds, and dried tea leaves are totally acceptable
in terms of nitrogen. I know they're brown in color, however they're a high source of nitrogen.
The things you want to avoid though, are fats such as oils, processed food,
ghee, or butter, and you want to avoid dairy and meats as well. In terms of your moisture,
all you can do is water down in your composter, add a little bit of water to moisten your
mix if it's too dry. And, in terms of air you introduce it by turning your composter like this.
It's a work out. So, all you would do is turn it a couple of times, maybe five to six times,
once a day at least, and your compost should start cooking. Okay, so here's my process of exactly
how I compost in a small space. All I need are three things. One is a handy dandy kitchen pail
which has a carbon filter right on top in which I collect my food scraps or my nitrogen source.
The second thing that I have is this five gallon bucket, it's easily available just
like two or three bucks in a big box store, and I get this, make sure it has a lid.
And the third thing, of course that you need, are pine pellets or equestrian bedding.
And this is what it looks like. So, here's what we're going to do. This is your carbon source.
So right here, I have my nitrogen source, I have my carbon source, and I have this bucket,
and then of course I have my composters right here. So here's how I would do it. First thing I
do is, in this five gallon bucket, come on over. Oh! Heavy, heavy! I line the bottom 1/4 of it.
So, I line the bottom 1/4 of it, like this, with the pine bedding. And, the great thing
about pine bedding or equestrian bedding is exactly this, is that it absorbs all the odors,
and absorbs all the liquids, and fluffs up. So, you're not going to have a bad smelling compost
while it's waiting here in the pile, before you put it in your composter.
So, first thing is grab a five gallon bucket, fill it one fourth of the way with your pine pellets,
next take your food scraps your pail, and just dump it in.
Simple as that. I take my lid,
and I close it, and all I would do is leave this five gallon bucket with all the ingredients
inside, I would leave it in my garage or any other space where people won't be coming by too often.
Maybe in your mud room or anywhere else. Now, what I would do is essentially, wait for this
to fill up all the way to the top. And, one of the keys to composting successfully is to have mass,
or a large quantity of compost available. Or not compost, large quantity of ingredients available
in order to compost successfully. So, you need mass, and in order to build mass I would collect
all my food scraps in this bucket, when this bucket is full, I would go over to my composter,
open it up, and dump everything inside. Okay so, now that I have dumped all my ingredients
inside my composter, all I'm going to do is turn it. And, this one right here is a
Jora composter and it has handles, so it's very easy to do. It's a workout actually.
I'll just spin it a couple of times, and this actually, let's do it once more,
and so what's the advantage of spinning it? Apart from getting a workout done?
The advantage is that it introduces air, and it actually turns your pile. So, you might have seen
a lot of people they have a large pile they have a pitchfork, and they manually turn it. Here, with
the tumbling composter, all you have to do is turn it yourself with these handles. It's super easy.
it's a bit of a workout, but not much, it depends on how much of compost you have, it can get heavy.
But, compost over time does shrink, and so it will get lighter later on. So, not to worry. Now,
in terms of these composters, most composters come with two compartments, like this one right here,
and I have a Yimby composter right here, as well. Let me show you. This, all I would do to turn it
is this way. Now, this also has two compartments, one here and one there. So, most composters have
two compartments, and the advantage of having two compartments is that while you have one pile that
is cooking and ready to go you can start adding your fresh ingredients in another compartment. So,
when you have your fresh ingredients, like the one in my five gallon bucket I'm not going to add
it to my existing full pile, right here in one of my compartments. I'm going to add it to the
new compartment. So, as you can see, let me show you, this one right here, you can see it's like,
black gold dark compost, and smells amazing. So, I would not be adding new, fresh material into this
pile. I would just let it cook and do its thing. And, if you see this compartment right here,
this one is not as finished or ready compost.
I could, if I had to, I would add my fresh ingredients into this pile, right here.
Okay so, now I want to talk about troubleshooting as far as your composting is concerned.
The most common concern that people have is that my compost is taking way too long to break down.
How do I speed up the process? And, one of the tricks to speeding up your composting process is
to turn your pile regularly and frequently. The second trick in order to speed up your compost,
is to introduce more nitrogen sources into your pile. And by nitrogen sources,
it's nothing but food scraps. So, a lot of times, lack of enough of nitrogen material
can prevent your pile from getting hot or from decomposing faster. The other question or concern
that people have is that they find, sometimes they might have maggots, or they might have some bugs,
or things like that in their compost pile. And usually, the only time I would be concerned is
if you have some kind of rat or rodent inside your pile. But if you have black soldier lava flies,
that's completely okay because they actually eat up the plant material and break it down faster
for you, and you don't need to worry about that at all. Finally, one of the last questions would be,
my pile is extremely dry, what should I do? And, if your pile is dry cut back on your carbon
source, don't add as much of your pine pellets and introduce some amount of water to your pile.
Now most of the times compost piles, especially in a tumbling composter such as this one,
are not dry, however they are quite moist and they release a
lot of liquids during the composting process. So that liquid is actually
phenomenally high in nutrients and I would highly encourage you to add it to your watering can and
water your plants with it. But how do you catch that liquid? All you do is take a 10 by 20 tray,
which many of you, if your seed starting, would have lying around, and just leave it
under your composter. And so, when the liquids drip down through your composter when it's
cooking so to speak, it would collect in that tray, and you can just pour it
into your watering can and water your plants with it. So, thank you so much for joining me
and watching this video on composting in the city. I hope you found it helpful and
please don't forget to subscribe to the Kellogg Garden Channel and hit the notification bell
so you don't miss another great gardening video from us again. Thank you and see you next time.