This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com with another exciting episode for you.
Today we're going to do a really good episode.
This one is the easiest way to make compost ever.
Now I must admit, I am a neophyte composter.
While I am a pretty good gardener, and do it fairly well, I've never taken the time
to really dive in to getting the compost pile going.
I've taken pallet piles and different compost bins, and it never seems to work for me -- I
pile the stuff on and I just doesn't happen.
So what I've learned is that the easiest way to do it is with a special composter, which
is what we're going to see in a moment, but more importantly than the composter you're
using are the ingredients which are going to make your compost.
I was over at my brother's house the other day and I was really saddened to see he's
just throwing out his vegetable and fruit scraps in the garbage, so it goes away in
the landfill and in my opinion, composting is not just for tree huggers and gardeners,
it should be for everybody, to conserve the worlds resources.
If you don't personally garden, you should compost yourself and give your compost to
a gardener, because I'm sure you probably know at least one of them.
I know I'll take your compost if it's good high quality stuff!
But first key to a successful compost pile is the right ingredients.
You need a percentage of carbon to nitrogen, and that percentage needs to be correct or
your compost pile is not going to work as efficiently as it should.
Now you could look it up and get all the ratios and you could get a headache thinking 'Oh
I've got to use exactly this much and this much', but you know what?
I like to keep it easy, because if it's too hard, you guys aren't going to do it.
So the very simple plan here is that I use the waste scraps from my kitchen, and I've
got a nice bucket in the kitchen.
It's a nice three gallon bucket here and it's actually full to the brim and this is what
I would call the nitrogen waste products.
So we've got things like -- well paper towels, which are actually a carbon -- we've got dryer
lint here, so don't forget your dryer lint, we've got a lot of vegetable pulp, I do a
lot of juicing regularly and we've got a lot of carrot pulp and I just go through juicing
some peaches of this tree.
I made strawberry peach juice.
That stuff was insane.
Anyway, now I've got all of this pulp that I generated and all my food waste from leaves
and what not, this is going to go in the compost pile.
Now if I just piled this in the compost pile, it's not really going to work because it's
just going to be too much nitrogenous waste product.
Now, if you don't have any carbon waste to add to it, the one thing you could do with
this is to actually just get a worm bin.
That's not going to be covered in this episode, but a worm bin or a worm box is very simple
to have, you could have it in your apartment in New York City, under your sink.
Keep it in the garage, or outside if it's not getting too hot or too cold.
The worms will actually eat your garbage or food to make worm castings which, in my opinion,
are in some ways more beneficial than just making standard compost.
Nonetheless, beside this nitrogenous waste, you need a carbon source.
You need to have a balance.
Now I'm not really going to get in to of the balance but what I will tell you is that for
every bucket of nitrogen, you want to get at least an equal sized bucket, or maybe even
and then some, of carbon.
My carbon sources today are some leaves -- you can see I have some dried leaves in this bucket
-- and in addition, for people who might not have leaves, depending on where you live and
what time of year it is, I always encourage you to save the leaves from the summer time
for the winter time.
You can put them in a big garbage can and save those leaves.
Many people are actually getting rid of them, but leaves can be a scarce commodity at some
points.
If you don't have leaves, not to worry, you can use other carbon sources.
So what I have here is some shredded newspaper and actually some shredded bags, the brown
paper bags and also there is some computer paper in here, some white computer paper.
It's not the best to be shredding up computer paper because the computer paper has the toner
which is a carbon, also with probably some plasticizers as well.
The message here is I like to use newspaper with soy ink, that's the best to use as a
carbon source.
If you do use something else, do the best you can.
If you don't have any other carbon source then use printer paper and actually, a thing
to do with your junk mail as long as it is not glossy pages is to shred it up and put
it in your compost pile.
That being said, instead of paper, I would prefer to use leaves or even woodchips or
sawdust from 100% wood, not from chipboard or ply-wood as they have glues which aren't
good to add to your compost pile.
So when you think nitrogen, think greens, so we have some greens in here, and when you
think carbons, think browns, think leaves, think trees, think sawdust, and the products
that come from them like the paper towels here.
In addition, on thing that you should add to your compost when you're starting out is,
grab some compost from your garden.
This is good finished compost and this is active compost so when we add it to our compost
pile it's going to get the ball rolling and get some of those beneficial microbes that
are going to help break down the pile faster.
I have an established compost bin so I don't need to add any this time but I wanted to
mention it to you guys because it is very important.
The other thing I like to add to my compost bin every single time that I add some compost
is this stuff here.
This is called the azomite or rock dust and what this stuff does is it adds trace minerals
into the compost pile.
What I've found is that the rock dust literally supercharges your compost pile.
The microbes go nuts for the rock dust, the trace minerals in there and your whole process
goes faster.
The side benefit is that when your compost is done, it is pre-inoculated with the trace
minerals in there so it is going to feed your plants as well.
So we're just going to go ahead and dump some of that in there now.
Next let me show you guys the compost bin I've been using, because this is the one that
I've found to be fool proof and works very easily every single time.
As you can see I have three compost bins here in the yard.
The first one is just a static pile.
It has a rock on top because the hinges broke.
So you can look in there and see, basically, I've added leaves and nitrogenous waste from
the food clippings and it's really not breaking down.
I'm not one to get in there and turn my compost and keep it watered and all this stuff.
I've got other more important things to do, so I'm going to ration out the stuff in here
into the tumbling composters.
That's the kind I recommend for you guys to get because they are the best.
It's very simple and very easy.
I've been very successful with it, unlike with the static box like this.
So let's go next door and take a look at these two compost tumblers.
Here are my two compost tumblers.
This is a lifetime compost tumbler and I have a video of me building this one and comparing
it to this one which is a basically a 55 gallon barrel composter.
It's kind of cool because it's made out of a barrel and you can get these barrels for
cheap.
Firstly what I've found after using these two guys is that I really prefer the lifetime
composter for a few reasons.
Number one is it's a lot more heavy-duty and sturdy.
It has nice metal framing here and nice thick plastic.
It also has latches to unclip it which is very simple and now you can open it up and
it is ready to fill.
Oh man!
I can feel the heat coming off of that, it's really cool.
So this is ready to fill, you just dump the stuff in here and give it a spin and it just
does its thing.
It's really simple, it doesn't take any time out of your day, you don't have to get in
here and shovel it or spin it around, and all you have to do is spin it.
Let me tell you, when it gets full, it get kind of heavy, but it's good exercise.
On this guy, the reason why I don't like this guy so much is because the lid is kind of
a pain in the ass to take off, you've got to spin this thing off.
Then you've got to mess with it and you just want to be able to do it and not screw around.
I got it off and now I've got to put it back on.
I think a better design if you've got a barrel is to put it the longways and cut a hole in
it for the door and put hinges in it.
The main steps for making compost the easy way is to use a compost tumbler.
I like this lifetime one until I find one that's better.
I like the ones that open longways and have a nice door and also the steel construction
is very durable actually.
Once you've got that you have to start adding your materials and the ratios are the most
important thing.
So we're going to start adding the materials.
Here's all the food waste, dump that in there.
Next is the carbons, all the paper shreds, check it out, next is all the leaves that
I raked up, dump that in there and next is some tree collards, so don't forget that can
go in your compost too.
All you've got to do with this bad boy is lock it down, very simple, very easy, and
spin.
This will give you a workout and this is why I don't go to the gym, better to get exercise
in nature.
Now that I've spun it around a bit, open it up and make sure it's well mixed.
Check it out!
It's nice and well mixed.
I can feel the heat off this.
Maybe a cold winter's night you could snuggle up in your compost bin, it would be nice and
warm!
You could get a compost thermometer, and I might get one here just for fun, but I know
this is totally and active pile that's been working really good.
Now, the third tip I want to recommend for you guys is once you get one compost bin like
this dialled in and it's nearly full, get a second one.
Once this is full and working, you're just going to leave this alone, and then get your
second one and start filling it and get that going and once that's full this one is going
to be done.
So get two bins and keep rotating back and forth between them to make a continuous, endless
supply of compost to feed both you and your garden and it's feeding you indirectly because
the compost you make at home is the number one fertiliser to add nutrients back into
your soil.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode, learning more about my tumbling composter and how it's
the easiest composter to use in the world once you get your ratios right.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com , I want to encourage everybody to go out
and compost today.