Composting

Every gardener should know the importance of composting. Even if you don't garden its not a bad idea to compost your food waste. 26% of US municiple solid waste is yard trimmings and food residuals, so if everyone composts that would be almost 1/4 less stuff going into our landfills! If you also recycle on top of that, half our waste will be reduced.

So where do you begin?

Composting is an art. There are few ground rules that apply to every form of composting.

1. Stuff does not "compost" when left exposed to the elements. It is a biological process where usually bacterial is employed to decompose waste. Waste should be covered with soil present with the microbes.
2. Particle size of the waste also plays a huge role in composting. Smaller the size, the larger the surface area for the microbes to get at the waste to break it down.
3. Since these are living organisms, so the temperature, oxygen flow and humidity of your compost heap will play a major role in how fast the composting process occurs.
4. You need to feed your compost the right amount of green organic materials (nitrogen) and brown organic materials (carbon) for it to be nutritiously balanced.

Once you learn to understand the basic principles of composting the fun begins.

There are several different methods of composting. There is the traditional way of composting which is throwing everything into a giant heap and allowing it to break down slowly. This method is great if you have a yard you can pile everything up in. Vermicomposting is a very popular method which utilizes red worms to help speed up the process of composting. It is also my recommended method if you have a lot of food waste instead of yard waste. There is bokashi composting which is an anerobic method of composting developed by the Japanese. Finally, I've recently learned about black soldier fly larva composting from Tilapia Mama.

Since I have a yard I go with vermicomposting. Nothing's easier than converting a few large tubs into worm bins. Just keep it fed, moist, and turned regularly. However, I have tried the bokashi method which worked great when I lived in an apartment. The pros of bokashi composting is that you can throw everything (including meats) into the compost. The con was that I was filling up the 5 gallon bucket much faster than the food could break down, so I ended up with several 5 gallon buckets sitting outside my door. I havn't tried the black soldier fly composting yet but I'm very tempted to check it out. It seems like a great method for me to compost my rabbit manure while raising tasty grubs for the chickens.

I may go into the different processes more later on. But here are some good sites I've found online that you can refer to.

163 things you can compost: http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

Vermicomposting: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/442/442-005/442-005.html

Bokashi Composting: http://www.cityfarmer.org/bokashi.html

Black Soldier Fly Composting: http://www.thebiopod.com/index.html