Home Compost Systems -- Low Tech Podcast, No. 81

[music] Sorry for the delay. We are prepping for the garden expo in Madison. So today I'll [music] be bringing you a recording of a presentation I gave there on choosing a home compost system. This is the low tech [music] podcast. Hello and welcome. I'm Scott Johnson from the Low Technology Institute, your host for podcast number 81 on February 20th, 2026. I'm coming to you out of the Lowtech recording room in Cooksville, Wisconsin, where my neighbors are having their well drilled, so you might hear some background noises. Um, thanks for joining us. Uh, today we're listening in on a seminar I led on home composting at the Wisconsin [music] Gardening and Green Living Expo in Madison, Wisconsin last weekend. And we'll get back to our regularly scheduled visit to the year 2100 in a few episodes. Do you want to hear your voice on the podcast? At the expo, we interviewed a half dozen people about what they would like to see in the year 2100. Here's a quick sneak peek of that. Tell me your name, where you're from, and if you jumped in a time machine and went to the year 2100, what would you like to see the world looking like? And leave modern politics out of it because it's 75 years from now. So, >> right. I'm Reed. I'm originally from Arkansas, but now I live in Madison, Wisconsin. And the world 2100. What I would like to see is I would like to see a world where we are giving back to the local ecology more than we're taking or at least as much. uh would like to see a world where we are living in a way that is more more sustainable that's you know not predicated on endless growth and more about satisfying our immediate needs than >> you know going and trying to >> make everything uh immediately accessible and easy and frictionless all the time. >> Yeah. >> Cool. Well, thank you. >> Of course. Yeah, >> thank you. >> Yeah, first one. Yay. >> All right. >> We're going to be featuring all these voices on an upcoming episode. So, if you'd like to add your voice to this discussion, please send me a voice note with your name, location, and what you'd like to see if you stepped out of a time machine in the year 2100. You can send that to scottlinstitute.org. [music] Um, and please send that in by the end of February. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter. Oh, just kidding. We're not on Twitter anymore. Like us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, subscribe to us on YouTube, and check out our website, which is low techchinstitute.org. There you can find both of our podcasts, as well as information about joining and supporting the institute and its research. Also, some podcast distributors put ads on podcasts. Unless you hear me doing the ad, someone else is making money on that advertising. So, while all of our podcasts, videos, and other information are given freely, they do take resources to make. 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So, here we go. >> So, today uh we're going to be talking about home compost systems and uh my name is Scott Johnson. I run the low technology institute. We are a 501c3 research and uh educational nonprofit and we like to think about how are people going to live uh in the future. And we're talking far in the future. And uh we talk a lot about things like localism, which means getting most of what you need to survive and live uh comfortably from your local environment and from your local region. Um which solves a lot of sustainability and other problems we'll get into another time. Um but basically compost is really important because if you think about it, um before World War II, uh well actually before the 1800s, uh a lot of agriculture was a circular system, right? They were bringing in nitrogen, which is the limiting factor, uh from a variety of sources. is they were fighting wars over nitrogen. Um, which is kind of crazy to think about now. And then in the 1800s, the harbor brush process was invented where they take atmospheric nitrogen, compress it to 400 atmospheres and they can get soluble nitrogen out of it. Uh, just takes a lot of energy to do it. And uh then people stopped fighting about nitrogen because they can make it. And we started using fossil fuels to do that. Um and then we went through a couple world wars and after the second world war they had all this extrogen nitrogen uh production capacity because they also makes really good bombs which is why you hear about fertilizer plants blowing up or people buying nitrogen fertilizer to make bombs. Not that I would No, we're not getting that's that's my later presentation. [laughter] No, no, no. If the NSA is listening, that was a joke. Okay. Um [laughter] so anyway, uh they had all this excess nitrogen fertilizer after World War II. So, they said, "Oh, you should have clover, no clover in your lawn. You should buy fertilizer, stuff like that." And so, we've made a one-way street with nitrogen. Um, I'm just kind of harping on nitrogen since that was the limiting factor. And it goes from the factory to us, uh, and then down the waist stream it goes into the Gulf of Mexico making giant algae blooms and things like that, right? We all know this probably if we're here. So, what we're talking about now is create going back to more of a circular nitrogen economy and not throwing our nitrogen down the uh, tubes literally. So, uh, one of those ways you can do that is with a home composting system. Are we going to solve all problems with home composting? Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. [laughter] I used to have a composting system that was so robust it could, uh, both smother and, uh, completely eat a human body in under a month. So, I used to tell people, "Don't mess with me or I'll put you in my composter." But, [laughter] I decommissioned that one. So, okay. We're not going to talk about a system quite that big today. But, um, so today we're going to talk about home composting systems. We'll start Okay, we'll start uh with why do we compost? If you're here, you probably have some good reasons to compost already, so I'm not going to dwell on that very long. Uh, we'll talk about what compost is. We will talk about uh how to compost really briefly. This is not a how-to compost. It's about uh what would be a good system for you uh in your current situation. So, we'll talk about uh that really briefly just so that we have the basic nuts and bolts down because that kind of informs what kind of system you might want to install. And then we'll talk about a variety of compost systems, starting with the smaller, working up to larger, talking about how price intensive they are, um, and what sorts of considerations you might want to have when making that decision. So, why would we want to compost? It'll come up someday. I my slides aren't that exciting. Um, number one, it improves soil fertility, right? It's a source of NPK, which is not the only only thing that we need to put into our soil, but it has those. Um, it also improves the soil microbiome because the same things that are decomposing everything in the compost are really great to have in your soil to feed your plants um and to support all the other things that are in your soil that also support the the plants. Right? 10 years ago, if I said soil microbiome, some people would know what that is. But today, raise your hand if you know what the soil microbiome is. Most people. So if you don't know the soil microbiome, uh it is a shift that has happened in the last decade of viewing soil not so much as a sponge for holding nitrogen, potassium um and other chemicals that the plant eats like a you know just some inert sponge. It's looking at it as a living organism. We've heard the you know how many billions of tiny microorganisms are in a cup of soil, right? Uh these things all work together symbiotically hopefully um and they make these nutrients more micro available to the plants. There's all kinds of great things that are going on, the fungi, everything. It just all works together, which makes total sense. I mean, all these plants evolved on this planet with that micro with a microbiome in the soil, right? Um, take it had to take a breath. Okay. Uh, so, uh, it conditions and builds the soil. It airrates and adds organic matter. Um, it reduces waste. Um, I have a really cool chart here that shows that about 70% of what goes into our waist stream could be theoretically composted. Uh now, are we really going to compost the 70% of our waist stream? No. Uh because, you know, it's going to have treated wood and stuff like that that you definitely wouldn't want to put into your um compost. Uh but there has the potential for a lot of organic matter that's going now into waist streams, which is why if you drive uh from here towards Milwaukee and you see the old uh landfill that has been covered and there's pipes coming up, that's to release methane and stuff. Uh it's uh there's a lot of organic material that's not being reused, right? It's that one-way nitrogen street that I was talking. Um and also if you're just a dollar and cents person, having your own making your own fertilizer is one less thing you have to buy. Things are only getting cheaper. So you know um especially [clears throat] especially nitrogen fertilizer you know as uh maybe not today or tomorrow but you know in a couple decades as uh as energy becomes potentially more dear uh perhaps nitrogen fertilizer will become more expensive. Um okay so now we're moving to what is compost. I'm so sorry that this is not working. Um >> they're not on at all. Yeah. So um so what is compost? Well, if you think about it, we're really just managing the natural process of decomposition. So, decomposition is going to happen no matter what. Uh if you have an organic material, eventually it's given oxygen, uh it's going to or even not in some cases, uh it's going to decompose. Um but if we manage a few inputs, we can kind of hypercharge that or supercharge that, right? And we can speed up the process. And all of us would love to have um what do you call it? a compost system that would, you know, you put in your banana peel today and tomorrow it's usable soil. Unfortunately, even ah shoot, have you, if you listen to podcasts like I do, you've probably heard of something called mill or you've seen it on the internet. They're like these little countertop things and you put your food in there and it makes compost. I'm not going to talk about those today. Um, basically [clears throat] those are supposed to do supercharging like that. And from what I've seen, I don't have one, although if they want to send me one, I will test it and give it an honest review. Um, they don't really, um, compost. What they do is they dehydrate and grind up so that when you put it in the soil, it then [clears throat] composts itself in the soil later. Um, but really without micro b without microorganisms breaking it down and going through the heat and the cold cycle or the the heating up cycle, it's it's not true compost. It's a way though to reduce food waste in this waist stream. And if people did that, that's great. I'm all for reducing food waste in the waist stream uh and just throwing away nitrogen. But there's ways that don't take a lot of electricity. Those take electricity, too. So, yeah. I'm not going to get into those, but they're kind of it's an interesting idea. If only worms were so popular. All right. It's a little more uh I'll talk about worms later. I used to give a for the last five years I've been giving a vermma compost uh talk here but not this year unfortunately. My worms are happily at home. Um so we have uh a couple of biological processes going on here right so we have microorganisms like f mold fungi and bacteria uh breaking down food or breaking down our our compost feed stock fancy uh on the microscopic level. And then we have macroorganisms like oh potworms, ants, pseudoc scorpions, portood, millipedes, centipedes, mold mites, soil flatworms, springtails, and sometimes actual earthworms. Um, and I have a really cool chart that I'll show you because it's so cool. Uh, once I think we're getting closer to having maybe closer to having Okay, we got fingers crossed. That's on our way. Okay. Uh, but I will briefly go back through these things once we get it back up. Um, once we get it up and running. Sorry, everybody. I know. But still, um, I can only dance so much and I can't really do a potworm and separate that out from a millipede. I It's not It's not quite the same. All right. Well, what's this one? No, I don't know. Okay. Uh, [laughter] [snorts] so, uh, I try. Uh, so there are just like building a fire, right? What do we need for a fire? Everyone knows if you know you need your fuel, you need your oxygen, and you need your heat. Same kind of thing really. Um, I kind of got to thinking about my compost as a really slow lower low burning fire because it needs kind of the same stuff. It needs um oxygen because there are ways to do anorobic composting and I'll talk about them um in a little bit, but um for the most part we're going to be dealing with aerobic oxygen uh consuming uh composting systems. It needs carbon and it needs nitrogen. And both of these do different things. So the carbon, we'll talk about the carbon and nitrogen mix in a minute, but carbon is brown dry organic material and it is food for microbes and cells are about 50% carbon. So they need a fair amount of carbon to split and divide and eat more stuff, right? So having carbon is important and nitrogen that's your greens and your moist materials and that al provides other things for the cell like uh proteins, amino acids, enzymes and other cellular building blocks. So it needs both. You can't just have nitrogen. You can't just have carbon, which probably no. And the last thing that I feel like gets neglected perhaps the most is uh moisture. And maybe not neglected the most, but uh often uh problems with composting piles are either the nitrogen or carbon mixture and or they get too dried out or both uh cuz then moisture can go uh through pretty quickly. Um microbial activity happens on a film of um of moisture around uh around any particular piece of of feed stock, right? And so if you have too much water, uh there's no oxygen exchange. If you don't have enough water, there's no moisture to uh for the bacteria and things to be active in that moisture film. So you got to have the right amount of moisture. All right. Um again, really like the most amazing slides. Oh, hey. He's a long-term um he's usually in the other room doing demos, but he's here now, so I'm glad to have him. All right. Uh so inputs process. Okay. So regardless of what type of compost system you Hey, now please pause and contemplate the All right. So I plugged in >> [laughter] >> That's the presentation next door. >> It is. [laughter] >> That's next door's presentation. [laughter] >> These are my friends Lisa and Frank. >> All right. >> How much you know about hummingbirds? Uh >> compost their food >> if you can catch it. Um >> I know. Oh, I know that they like uh tobacco plants cuz we have tobacco out where I live and the really beautiful trumpet. Uh and they're great attractors for So if you're interested in a plant that might attract hummingbirds, maybe ornamental [clears throat] tobacco, that's end of lesson on hummingbirds. Okay. Um so process because I only have so much time. So as Brian endeavors here. All right. Um, so you're regardless of the process you're using, unless it's vermic compost or another one I'll mention later. Um, basically what you're doing, uh, you have your day one, right, where you're putting most of as much feed stock as you can all at once. Sometimes it's not possible and you're feeding over a period of time. That's fine. But it's nice if you can start with a big glut of material. Um, everything's at ambient temperature and microbes are just starting to get activated. Um, and then for the first couple of days, if everything's going right and you have enough irration, meaning oxygen, enough moisture, carbon and um, nitrogen, you're going to get some initial warming, this is the messilic, which means like middle heat uh, period, and the bacteria start to break down uh, and oxidize organic materials. It starts to warm up. This is up to about 120° and then you have your peak days from about day 5 to 20 if this is ideal. Um, and there you're reaching temperatures up to 150 um, over that even sometimes, but that starts to kill off the uh, bacteria that you want. So, this is the thermopilic. So, that the high heat loving bacteria are really going um, they become active and they take over and continue to break down organics, but they start to die off when it gets too hot. This is really important to reach these peak temperatures because that kills off pathogens. Excuse me. [clears throat] Kills off pathogens and also weed seeds because I certainly have been guilty of spreading my weed seeds by because some people uh choose not to compost their weeds uh if they have any sort of seed head on them because if you don't reach these temperatures, you're just spreading more weed seeds on your garden which is you know kind of usually counterproductive. Um, so if unless you're confident of reaching those, you might consider composting your weed seeds uh in a different way or uh heading. Anyway, uh after day 20, as things start to cool down and I have all these really great temperature curves to show you in theory, uh we can all cra behind me here and look on my laptop. Should I plug in? >> Yeah. >> All right, let's see. >> Keep. So, um but my presentation has disappeared up here. So, when it shows up there, [laughter] it's okay. I can go on. It's fine. It's better that we get this connected. So, all right. Uh, it's just it's on some screen. So, it's reading somewhere. It's It's reading a second screen. >> Oh, that would be hilarious if I keep taking over the one next door. [laughter] >> It wouldn't be, but it cuz it's it's definitely reading a second screen here. Sorry. One second, folks. I'm going to pull up my my display. I'm so sorry. Oh, it pulled it up on the others. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I have two screens right now. There's a second and a first. Okay. Fun times. All right. Okay. So anyway, um after the as after after the temperatures start to come down and we've been turning it to get the heat get the oxygen in there and all that. Um we have cooling days. So from day 20 to 40 plus, we're letting it cool down. Some messilic bacteria come back and finish off the compost. Um and this helps condition the compost so that it's nice to go in your garden and not going to burn anything by having too much nitrogen left over. Um or too much carbon left over, which could also sap nitrogen out of your out of your existing soil. Um finishing days. Um right. So, what do you get out of this? And again, this is not a how-to compost, so I'm just kind of breezing through this. Uh there almost certainly uh composting uh information in the vendor room and also other presentations. Um >> Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Now, can I >> I've got one more. >> I'll take it. Now, can I drag Oops. Can I do this without Sorry, everybody. It's like patting my head. And now, can I go full screen presentation, please? Okay. Cross your fingers everybody. Slideshow. Slideshow. Hope. Hope. Are we at the beginning? Yes. >> Um that QR code uh is a link to our blog post from today on our website and it has the slide deck on it. If you want it, it's there. Uh also are the other uh presentations that I'm giving this weekend. Um so >> put it up again. >> It'll be up at the end again. Absolutely. And hopefully it'll be on both. That's my great hope. All right. So why Okay. So now we get to catch up. Benefits of applying compost, soil benefits, water benefits. I know, deja vu. Um, anyho, so uh I know I apologize for having to skip through this, but let's get to where we were. Decomposition, micro and macro. See, this is the cool slide I was referring to where I was doing the interpretive dance being the millipede, centipede. There's a lot going on. Uh, ingredients here we have our moisture, oxygen. Haven't talked about particle size yet, but I will. um inputs and outputs. So, we're getting close to where I was. So, here's uh yeah, some again, this is not a how-to, uh which is lucky because there's a lot of good information. All right, this was the temperature curve where we had the initiation phase, the heat, sanitation, and seed killing phase, and then the maturations, right? Black go Texas. Uh not quite. All right. And so, here's another temperature, a longer uh temperature, and each one of these uh arrows represents a turning event. Get tickets for that. um where you're uh turning over your compost pile. Uh anyone here ever forget to turn over their compost? I Yeah. All right. So, we are almost Where was I almost there? I jumped ahead. Okay. So, man, uh finish compost and distribute compost. I'm sorry. Oh, no. >> All right. >> So, now we come to the actual meat of what we want to talk about. Uh I apologize for folks over there. Uh so before you choose a home composting system, uh your major questions at least in my oh oh in my uh >> thank you tech wizards. All right, there's a who came up there's someone uh who came up with the idea that basically any technology that is so complicated that to to function or to understand that it's essentially magic. Yay. Uh, all right. So, uh, how much space do you have is for me the where I would start, right? Are you in an apartment? There are certainly ways you can compost in an apartment. Um, you may have to not tell your landlord. No, it'd be fine. Uh, there are certainly ways you can compost in a apartment that don't smell um and are small spaced. Um, how much and what types of organic waste do you have? I live on a larger not large we have an acre and a half and so I have as much weeds as I want [laughter] or more weeds than I want let's put it that way but if you live again in an apartment maybe you're just dealing with uh food scraps uh largely that's fine too um and how much time effort and money do you have to invest because I will tell you on the money aspect you can go no there is no end I'm sure William Sonoma has some sort of composter system that's $1,000 [laughter] you make it yourself for less probably all Right? Time, effort, and money are always something to consider because if it's a lot of uh time and effort, it might be fun to start it. Uh even if it's the cheapest option, but if it's going to be a lot of time and effort and you let the system break down and it doesn't do what it needs to do, and you have a big stinky mess, you got to know yourself. So, here's a fancy flowchart that we're not going to go all the way through, but it is one way to think about it. And if you want, uh I'll leave that up for a minute. Um but yeah, so for uh most of us, I think we're how how small should I put there? I'm sorry. All right. So, let's talk about some of the small systems. These are the and we'll start with least money intensive and then we'll move to more money inensive or complicated flex like that. So, um but also I will say the more to a point the more complex you get the better your results the more you can do and then there's a law of diminishing return right once you get comp. Um so soil incorporation this cost you just about nothing. Um, some folks uh will just go out and dig a trench and literally just put kitchen scraps right in the ground. There's nothing wrong with that uh necessarily, especially if you're putting in a fair amount of nitrogen heavy stuff and if you're taking it out of your kitchen, you're probably pretty nitrogenheavy. Um, if you were to bury lots of carbon, say I did this same Oops. And I apologize. I could see the picture. You couldn't uh for my fault now this time. Okay. Um, if you're doing kitchen scraps, you're putting a lot of nitrogen directly in the soil. It's going to take a little while to break down. Um, but it will break down. Um, and you're not going to get the hot and cold. So, make sure you're not putting seeds and stuff like that, right? So, like you have peppers or tomatoes or things like that or potato ends. You're not going to put those in there. If it's going to >> get potatoes, >> then you get potatoes. [laughter] Who likes potatoes? No, >> we we have >> I thank you for bringing up potatoes because I'm a potato evangelist. I need to have a spangel I need a good name for it. But I will push potatoes on any presentation that I can. I did for years a presentation that I wasn't even joking about potatoes saving humanity, which I would do every time if they'd let me. I asked, "Can I do the potatoes again?" They're like, "You did it last." Okay. Anyway, uh so yeah, don't put viable seeds in the ground. If I did the same thing with wood chips, it would suck nitrogen out of the soil because wood chips are basically just large carbon chunks and it would suck uh nitrogen out of the soil around it. This would add soil to or nitrogen to the soil. Cheap, easy. If you got a garden and it's doesn't smell, I mean, it's a quick and easy way to do it. Um, if you do it a lot and you don't bury it, you know, a bit, uh, you might get raccoons coming and smelling it and digging it up. That's a possibility. So, something to think about. Um, the next thing, these are probably the most common. Who's had a ground bin? Like a Yeah, bins on the ground where you put stuff in. Yeah, that's they're simple and they can be super cheap. Um, you can do them out of pallets. Uh, you can do them out of uh wire. You can do them out of uh cinder blocks. If you do pallets, here's my public service announcement. Make sure that you get a heat treated pallet, not a chemical treated palette. There's different designations. Um but they'll have something like you see my I can see mine. Are there is there a pointer? I didn't see it. Usually there's like a pointer or something. Okay. So over here, um we have these different symbols and this heat treated one is usually the best. That just means they heated up the wood to kill pathogens and stuff in it and to keep it slightly longer. uh from disintegrating, but it's essentially untreated with chemicals. So, make sure you're getting heat treated, which I've only ever seen chemically treated ones every once in a while. I will also mention, and this is completely anecdotal, and I mentioned it just because it was pretty nasty. A friend of mine will not use pallets at all. Won't even touch them because her daughter got a sliver from a palette and got a fungal infection that nearly took off her arm. >> So, wear gloves. I still use I still use the pallets but you don't these come from all over the world and you're you know you might get some not to pick on Somatra but I'm going to pick on Somatra Somatan born fungus that a doctor in Madison Wisconsin has never seen because we don't deal with funguses from Somatra very often that's not where it was from but just picking on it. Uh so heat treated is the way to go if you're going to use pallets. Uh but yeah, you can use wires. Um you might stay away from galvanized because there's a bit of tiny bit of lead that could but it's pretty minimal. Uh, something to think about. All right. Uh, where am I? Bins. Ground bins. Um, and if you do, you can do a single ground bin. That's okay if that's all you have the space for. We'll talk about triple bins in a little bit because those are preferable if you have the space. Um, these can be [sighs and gasps] these can be small. Bear with you. Uh, these can be small, but really you want to be like 3 feet on a side so you get a yard at a time. Um, a cubic uh yard at a time because if you get smaller than that, it's really hard for it to heat up and cool down properly. If you have less than a yard, uh, we can talk about even smaller systems. Yeah, they're stamped right on there. Yeah, all of these, all of the pallets have to have stamps on them that says, you know, where they're from, all kinds of stuff like that. But look for the HT. Sometimes it's not in a circle, but yeah, HT is what you'd be looking. So, yeah, approximately like any if you take three pallets and knock them together like and stake them to the ground, those are that's [clears throat] perfectly fine. or across the front like that, you know, any configuration, but approximately a yard is the rule of thumb. Probably also because pallets come in basically 3x3. They come in different sizes, too. Um, so that's that's the most basic, the easiest one. You can probably get free pallets around Madison. Uh, so, uh, you can use bins. So, this is a just a wire four 4 inch by 2 in wire mesh looped around. I do this with my leaves. Um, these are very open and they lose moisture really fast, which is fine. You could uh line that with a cardboard if you can get like a refrigerator box or something like that. [clears throat] Um you can just throw a layer of cardboard around there and then pack in there and that'll keep the moisture in a little better. Uh but maybe you have really wet uh materials going in anyway. So you don't necessarily need to do that. But uh excuse me. All right. I will say for legal purposes that you should not compost human or uh pet manure because uh outside of an approved system for doing that because there is there's possibility for pathogens. There are ways to compost human manure uh that I'm not going to get into today, but they involve letting it sit for two years to make sure that it's completely free of that being said. That being said, in theory, if someone wanted to, against my advice, which I legally have said, do not do it. Uh, if if it reaches the high temperature and it's your own poop, you're not going to give yourself anything that you don't already have. Just saying. But I I'm for legal purposes, I'm [clears throat] saying use approved like a composting toilet. That'll do that. Um, and it gives you finished compost right out of the bin. and it's approved by uh the by a couple different foundations to do or by a couple different ways to do that. So, I'm not gonna talk about composting toilets today, although I'll have one at my house here shortly, much to the chagrin of some members of my family. All right. Uh anyway, [snorts] you're taking the composting too far. Um cinder blocks also makes a reasonable way to do it. Uh they're configurable. [clears throat] You can use uh they have wooden stakes here driven in through the voids to help hold it together. Uh you don't even need to learn how to do masonry. uh to lay them together time. Oh, good. Start at quarter past the hour. Good. Excellent. Um so, vermma compost. Vermmaic compost is Oh, yeah. Question. Underneath the blocks or on the ground? >> That's all dirt. >> Uh yes and no. Well, so it's on the ground because then it lets microbes come up from the soil, which is fine. That's true. Uh because compost is uh when you put on feeds, are you putting on like a I know for me when I mow the lawn, which I do infrequently and so I have large piles of grass that I'm putting on there. Uh the next day it's half the size and the day after that it's quarter the size because it's moisture. It's giving off moisture real fast. So you're largely losing water weight. So it's a poor dieting uh method, but it works. Uh but yeah, so it's it's largely water weight that you're losing and carbon dioxide and uh hopefully not methane, carbon dioxide. So it yeah, it's true. Uh but if that's not because the bottom isn't there, it's because compost is breaking down significantly to like a tenth of its size often depending it depends what's what you put in. So uh it depends on uh the feed stock. So yes, it certainly will reduce in size. Um vermma compost. So this is for you apartment dwellers. Um, vermic compost uses worms and it does not heat up. This is a completely different system. This is basically feeding worms and then using worm poop which looks a lot like soil because well worms live in soil and their poop is indistinguishable uh other than it has lots of great stuff in it. But it's not the same biological process. If you heat this up to 150° you will have uh compost full of dead worms. So you don't want it to heat up. But they will take fresh scraps out of your kitchen. I did I've done a lot of presentations on this. You can find them on our website um uh and podcasts and things like that. So, you can want to listen to it. But basically, um you're putting in fresh uh food scraps other than not meat, not dairy. Um and a couple other things they don't like to eat like they're they don't like onions or uh they won't break down a avocado um pit or skin, stuff like that. So, a little idiosyncratic, but you can put pretty much everything in there. Uh they like bread, no Atkins for them. Um and they will How old am I? Uh [laughter] so, yeah. Uh, and they make worm tea, which is the liquid that squeezes out of it. They live in the top 8 in. So, you just keep adding to the top and they work their way up and then the bottom. So, there's a lot of nice bin systems that are super cheap. If you were very resourceful, you could probably do it for practically nothing other than buying the worms, which are going continue to go up in price. Um, >> is that shredded? >> So, [clears throat] yeah, you can put shredded paper in there. It helps. Uh, so you want a one to one nitrogen to carbon mix in this because you're not depending on the microorganisms. Although they are working, the worms are doing the majority of the work. Carbon in this instance is a water uh it absorb. Yeah, it retains water, but it also [clears throat] lets water out. So, it it regulates the amount of water because why do earthworms come to the surface when it rains? They can't breathe. They breathe through their skin and they need some oxygen air contact. And so, um same thing here. If it's too wet, they're unhappy. If it's too dry, they're unhappy. Uh, but these can live in your apartment. And, uh, the only word of warning is get red wiglers to do it. Do not dig worms out of your garden and do this. Unless your garden's full of red wiglers, which probably not. Um, because you will come home from a long 3-day weekend and you will find a whole bunch of dead worms on your kitchen floor and your wife will get upset with you. Not that that's happened to me. [snorts] [laughter] So, then we got red wiglers. I said, "This is why I need to invest in the red wiglers, honey." And she said, "Okay, fine." And then now we haven't had any runaway worms in a decade. So um get the right worms that like to live in containment. They're perfectly happy eating and reproducing for years. All right. Uh so vermma compost one good option. The other one um is vocashi and this is a Japanese anorobic uh bucket composting system. So this one is kind of out there. It's if you like fermented food, this is the composting system for you because it is fermented compost. Uh, it's an anorobic bucket and it uses a bacteria, a little magic dust, uh, not really, it's bacteria, uh, that you sprinkle on it, and it breaks down organics. It's bacteria that like to live in anorobic or oxygen-free environments. So, you fill up a bucket, you put the lid on it with the magic dust bacteria. [clears throat] Um, and when it's full, it sits for 2 weeks, they basically ferment. It gets really sour uh, smelling uh, in the bucket, right? Not in your apartment. Well, unless you leave the lid off, but then it would be organic, so it wouldn't work or or uh oxygenated, right? So, leave the lid on, keep it, tell your uh tell your significant other and people in the house, don't open that bucket. Um I mean, my kids wouldn't listen. They would open it and then they would learn not to open it. Okay. Um it does you can get special buckets. You can see uh sorry, you can see in the next uh slide here, there's a little it looks like a coffee uh coffee urn. Don't drink it. Uh but it does create a liquid that you can pour off and pour right into your house plants or other plants. Um so it makes a tea just like uh vermma compost does. Uh and after 2 weeks you can finish it off in an open air environment outside. Um and it's a little more acidic uh than regular compost. So if you're growing like blueberries and you need some acidic uh need some acids for your soil, this might be something for you. apartment again. But it does cost it does cost a little more because uh both with the worms and with the picashi you're getting um you're having to buy you can get the buckets and you can use regular buckets, but uh you'll need you probably want to buy the uh anorobic bacteria because they're not usually just floating out and about in the environment because it's aerobic. All right, so those are some of the smaller options going from cheapest and easiest to slightly more labor intensive. Uh moving on to medium systems questions. I'm so sorry. Yes. Yeah, >> sure. Good question. Sure. Good question. So, the question was um what if you're feeding uh only or what if you only have uh feed stock uh episodically and a lot of it that's easier for composting I think generally other than for the vermma compost. The vermma compost the worms need to be fed regularly just like your you know dog or cat. Uh like once once a week that's how often you feed a dog and cat. Um [laughter] but if you feed the worms once a week they're they're okay. Um the bokashi would be good for that because you could have four or five buckets that are empty just stacked and then when you're do you're process I imagine you're processing stuff out of the garden and you have a whole bunch of stuff then you fill up a bucket put the stuff in let it sit for two weeks good to go. Yeah. internet the internet any reputable you know uh garden or composting website uh you know uh if it looks like it was made in geo cities in the 90s probably not you know um I'm sure I didn't look on Amazon but I'm sure uh okay um the other question but yeah the other systems like I like putting everything in a bin all at once and letting it go rather than adding a little bit at a time although that doesn't always work for me either so medium bin system so three bin setup so if you have space for one pallet bin really consider if you can ek out the space for three bins because um if you're continually adding to one, how do you go through that nice curve to heat up and cool down your compost and have finished compost? If you're always adding, it might stall out high. It might never get hot if you're not adding enough all at once. So, it it's it's nice to have three bins. Um because you can have here's how I usually do it. I have one first bin, that's my active bin. I'm throwing actively throwing stuff in there and then I'll be taking out of the last bin and I use a shovel to move things along from one bin to the other. Uh, you know, once a week I'll dig out uh or once a two weeks, you know, I might fluff them up every couple of days to get air into the first two especially and the third one as well. But then as they start to finish and you start to get an eye for it's like, oh yeah, this is getting towards this is cooling down below 100. So now it's going to move into the final stage to finish off. I see your hand with you. Um, and then so you can have different zones basically of compost and you can move things through a little more systematically. Um, you can also, and this is another way to do the three bin. Um, you can just use bin number one, fill it up, keep airrating it, making sure that that goes, and then when that one's cooling down, you just leave everything there. Then you don't have to move it. And use bin number two as your active one and fluff that up. Make sure it's busy um getting enough oxygen. Um, and then when that one is starting to cool off, then you start to use bin number three, right? So you could, and then by the time bin number three is just about full and done, uh, you can empty bin number one. So you can do that, too. That's slightly less shoveling, uh, but it doesn't airate as well. Usually [clears throat] different ways to do it. I'm sorry, there's a question. Yeah, >> you can do it either like an assembly line like I described or you can do one bin, three bins next to each other essentially, independent bins, right? But then they have a moment to cool off before you are adding. Yeah. Yes, you can pump air into it. That's called a airrated static pile. Well, there's there's an airrated static pile and then there's a more of a passive airrated static pile. So, what you could do um get PVC pipes and cut a whole bunch of uh drill a whole bunch of holes in them and then you put those maybe five for a bin like that, five inch and a half pipes with a lot of holes in them uh into them as you fill them. And that allows air to come in and out of the middle and you have to turn it less. you should still monitor it and it doesn't work perfectly. Um, but I'll talk about an arrated static pile on the next one because usually you want to be a little bigger than this for a air area. I would call that a larger system rather than a medium, but we'll get to it. Uh, good question. Um, the other thing to mention here, uh, what was the other thing to mention? Oh, one thing if you have chickens, uh, one thing I've done is in front of these, I'll make I I make a something that fits on it. That's basically I should have taken the picture of course. uh like uh those boards, but I make a little pen in front of it, and then I close off the inactive ones and the one that I'm actively adding to. I'll let my chickens in it, and they'll go up and they'll scratch down in the in the bin and scratch everything out into the little fouryard that I've made with walls to keep it from going too far. You don't really need to do the walls. It's just slightly less messy. If you've had chickens, you can imagine. Um and then at, you know, every day or two, I'll scoop everything back into the pile and then they'll go back in and take it all down. And then that really turns everything around. They eat a lot of scraps out of there. They pick out worms and stuff, so they get to eat. There's actually a woman in Maine, and I cannot find the I cannot find the business for the life of me, but I read about it. It was amazing. She had a larger system that we'll talk about Windows later, but she would have uh she had contracts with restaurants. She would pick up their scraps so they could say, "We compost all our scraps." She'd bring them to her facility. She'd lay them down in Windows. She had tons of chickens. The chickens would eat through all the scraps, pooping on everything, turning it all over, com helping with the composting, and then she would sell eggs and meat back to the restaurants, and then she sold the compost to gardening places. So, it was like just a big old cycle spitting money out. Like, it was really amazing. So, but that's slightly beyond the home composting system that I think we're all here. But, I mean, I would I'll take a 5% fee if anyone comes up with that in the next year or two. I'll be I'll be knocking on your door for 5%. Uh trash bins are perfectly fine. They make trash bins that are set up for compost. Um where these are kind of like a vertical conveyor belt a lot of times where you're adding in the top and it's uh working its and it's more uh finished compost at the bottom, medium compost in the middle, and then fresh compost feed stock in the top is the ideal. Does that really work very well? I I haven't I haven't had a lot of success with that because it it's best when it's one big mass and it goes through that whole thing together. >> It's like a gra, you know, like a graduating class going through school together. Uh rather than like the one room schoolhouse where you have like the seniors and the first graders. It's a little more complicated with the for the teaching and also for the biology, right? So, um so that's why you might want to get three of those. That's why I have them in the medium systems. Um where you have one that's active, one that's less I find them hard to turn and airate and all these things. Um but some people have with them. They're clean. They're nice. Uh, so, uh, manufacturers will have lots of instructions on use these. I have not had luck, so I'm not going to go too deep into them. Um, yeah, an ice augur. >> Ah, excellent. Thank you. >> You have to cut. >> Okay. So, if you couldn't hear, he's saying, "Yeah, he uses an ice augur to do this." Do you? So, now I can tell my wife I need to get the powered ice auger. [laughter] That's a That's a great idea. Thank you. >> Drill a >> drill augur. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe one of those. I wonder if you could do it with one of those paint uh augur type things. >> Uh rotating drums. Everyone's Who's had a rotating drum? Everyone loves a rotating drum. Um >> great idea. Everyone loves the idea of a rotating drum. How about that? Um yeah. So yeah, I just heard someone say it doesn't work. Uh that's true of all compost systems depending on conditions. I've done a lot of different composting systems. I've had worms on the floor. I've had, you know, all kinds of things go wrong. Um, but yeah, rotating drums. Uh, the nice thing is they're easy. They're probably the easiest to turn because they're designed to turn. So, that's nice. I think the problem is similarly people will get one and then they put things in over like 3 months constantly expecting it to turn into complete all compost when really you have the one room schoolhouse situation where you have the 12th graders and the first graders in terms of composition uh decomposition uh in your in your drum. So, it's never going to be finished quote unquote. That's why you know two maybe three better and you have one active one and you turn them all and then you will get finished compost out of it. But yeah, having three of those is a bit more of an investment. That's why I had them um on the end. Oh, so this is the first time I've given this pres. So the chicken composting uh I used to say chicken composting and people are like why would you compost your chickens? [laughter] >> No, the chickens are for eggs and heating. Uh the compost is Yes, they help with the compost. So, this is one way. Uh, I would actually open up the side of that and let them spill it all out, but yeah, it's a I went through it already. So, this is a new presentation this year, so um I don't have it all down. All right. Large systems. So, if you are blessed with a little extra space and maybe a lot of uh feed stock, you could do something as simple as wind row. Windows are uh long piles. And basically if you had, let's say we had this room and we wanted to turn this lovely indoor space into a outdoor smelling space, [clears throat] um you would just pile compost in a line over there and then when that h gets high and big enough then you would come in and move it over into a pile next to it or into a a row next to where you previously had the pile. You can do that with a tractor. You can do it with special attachments that pull behind a tractor. You can do it by hand. Um I don't know, force labor your children to do it. Uh that's the one I recommend. All right. Not my children, your children. Okay. [laughter] And then in the space where that first wind row wind row was, you add the next one. And by moving it, you're uh airrating it. And uh so eventually you would, you know, get it all the way across the room and you'd have rows from most metriculated compost to least, right? Um and then you'd scoot that up and use it. Very efficient for large spaces. If you have like a some equipment to move it, you can do it on a smaller scale, but again, you want to have a yard, one cubic yard at a time sort of as your minimum. So, you could do a small wind row system. That'd be possible. Um, airrated static pile. Woohoo. All right. This is my favorite. So, so an airrated static pile pushes air. Uh, this is the active version. It pushes air up through the pile and so it's providing the oxygen for the price of a bit of electricity and a uh and I swear the the industry standard is uh bouncy house blowers. I've got two of them uh because this was the system that could eat a person um because I put a bladder over it like a a big tarp that was water tight and airtight and uh I was harvesting that carbon dioxide into pipes and pushing it under uh grow beds. Uh, and it was I had to measure it each year uh and or each week and it was over 10,000 parts per million uh carbon dioxide. So it was like well beyond what would you know you would suffocate immediately. Um so and it was hot and it would break down uh organic matter like that. So there wouldn't be much left. Uh but basically what it is is it's a plenum which means the pipes with the um with holes drilled in it. You can use the 4-in um septic system, drainage system uh pipes that are 4 in with uh pre-drilled holes, perforated perforated uh pipes, and then you put uh some wood chips on there to further help distribute the air. And then you pile on your feed stock and you don't really have to turn it as long as everything is going well. Um and so you can So these are built on top of a concrete slab, but you could put the pipes in the concrete slab and then you could use a skid loader to load in and out. I mean, if you have if you want to like people um these are really popular with people with horses because you can compost a lot of dung. [laughter] This is that's what I use as feed stock because horse manure is 25 to1 carbon and nitrogen. It's the correct mixture right out of the the horse. Uh because they have they have less efficient digestion than uh cows which chew their cud. Horses there's a lot of a lot of carbon left and nitrogen in there. Yeah, chicken manure is hot. You could certainly do this with chicken manure. Um, I do it with mine. I have a smaller system now. My big system for the testing. Oh. Uh, the aesthetic airated pile. Oh, yeah. For sure. You can go down to I mean, if you're going to invest this much in it, I would do two, you know, uh, two yards by two yards and maybe three bins. That's what I have. You could do it with one yard. You can do smaller systems. Yeah. Um, but then you have to get a smaller blower. And the blowers like I have the smallest blower they have. Mhm. You could do a three bin system with a static area piled beneath it. ratio of so for example I do for my chicken manure and there's calculators online and at the last slide I have a list of resources and a couple of those have u calculators where you can put in your feed stock and how much of it and it'll tell you your ratio so you so I have a giant pile of wood chips which is my carbon and then I have a chicken house with 11 chickens in it and so I will do if I remember correctly two wheelbarrelfuls of chicken poop and scratch uh or uh litter right now with two two or three barrel barrels. I have to double check my math of of wood chips and that's the correct carbon nitrogen mix for mine. But you can always tell uh >> Yep. Because the chicken manure is very very uh nitrogenheavy and the wood chips are practically just carbon. Yeah. I mean if it's from start to finish from when I take it out of the it's 60 to 80 days usually and it's been rained on and wet and so that takes a lot of the year away. But I I use ura on uh on my uh tomatoes. I mean, tomato food is ura. Um, but you can compost urine. Most people, if you're just saving urine, I know it's [laughter] welcome to my life. My my spouse is very understanding. Uh, but like 6 months, if you compost it for 6 months and then you dilute it 10 to one, it won't burn the plants either. At least that's what uh a Finnish study finish I think it was a Finnish study showed. Um, and that's what I've been doing for years. Um, you know, I'll come over and eat some delicious tomatoes. Um, >> [laughter] >> That was the finished study. It was does do you uh transmit anything from the urine to the the tomatoes? And they had like a blind taste test. And there was like and they also did like they sent off the tomatoes like is there E.coli? Is there all these things? And as long as you don't splash them with fresh urine, which you're not going to do, uh don't [clears throat] pee on your that that's too hot. you need unless you are drinking so much water that your urine is diluted to onetenth of usual strength in which case you're probably going to have we've gotten way off track here. Okay, sorry. >> Um but actually surprisingly the third most popular page on our website is uh tomato urine uh tomato fertilizer out of urine. Um and we're going to do a USD well okay we were going to do a USDA funded study on um using urine at different dilutions or not different dilutions but different um application rates to tomatoes. Um but we're uh the grant we applied to was the sustainable sustainable agriculture research and education and we're going to have to rejigger that to be more in line with what gets funded nowadays. I mean it's just a different um >> yeah so uh so here are some excellent resources uh again um on the next slide I'll have the QR code again so you can scan and have this whole thing um but basically we have five minutes for questions or discussions if you've had a system that I didn't show that you'd like to plug and has worked well for you love to hear about and add to this. Yeah, go ahead. Ah so question was uh good question for any of these. Um does it need to be in a sunny spot? I was listening to a podcast today and he said, "Oh, my compost pile didn't work because it was in the sun." And then he said he gave it to his neighbor who put it in the shade and it didn't work either. So, uh, this the main thing that putting it in the sun will do is dry it out faster. It's not going to a bit of sun isn't going to bring it up ne it'll be negligible and only on the outside is it going to bring it up a few degrees here or there. So, shade, sun doesn't matter except for it'll dry out faster. That's the main thing. So, I keep mine shaded just to keep the moisture in. Uh, yeah. You had a question. >> Yeah. Oh, rabbit. If No, you should not compost your rabbit manure. In fact, you should put it in a bag and give it to me. Yeah. Yeah. Uh rabbit rabbit's good. Uh sheep, goats, that sort of thing are fine. Um and honestly, dog and cat. Yeah. It's because they're meat eaters and because they might have pathogens and blah blah blah. So, yeah. Uh don't compost your uh dog and manure just because Yeah. Don't legal reasons. Yes. No. Come over there. Yeah. Go ahead, please. So, if uh when do you turn your compost? Excellent question. Uh, do you have a compost thermometer? Compost thermometer is your next purchase. I bet you can get one here. Uh, I don't sell them, unfortunately. I wish I actually uh uh because what you do is you just check it each day and as long as the temperature is going up or stable, you're good. Once it starts falling, maybe give it one more day and then turn it and it'll you'll see it go back up. So, uh, it's just it's running out of o as the temperature comes down, it's either running out of nutrient uh, nutrients, nutrients, what is that? uh nutrients, water or oxygen. And so as you turn it, you can see if it's dry. Uh you want to be able to squeeze it and maybe a drop falls out. If a lot of drops come out, it's too wet. If not, if it feels dry, add water. Um so mix it up a bit. Um so yeah, that it'll be needing water or oxygen. Uh so turning it will help you figure that out. Eventually it will go down no matter what because it's eaten everything. Yes, ma'am. Oh, and then I'll come over there. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. Great. Yeah, you can vermma comp. Can you vermma compost right in the garden? Absolutely. Uh they can go away. Um but uh yeah, I mean I was highlighting it today, but some people buy and throw it right into their compost and they'll migrate away from the heat and they'll live and then when it cools down they'll come back up. Some people will dig down trenches and put down um Okay. So you're letting them in. I'm saying if you want to keep them captive. Oh, that's nice. Free range worms. Um [laughter] so >> I'm more of a warden. I would do I would dig down because they only go down up to a foot or so. I would dig down and make like a a foundation type out of bricks or cement blocks and then fill that in with soil, put the worms in there, compost on top. They'll stay within there and then I could always go in and dig out and throw shovel fulls across my garden and let them out in controlled fashion rather than let them free range. Although that's that's good, too. Yeah. Um yes, >> it's good to monitor the moisture. If you're turning it enough, you'll monitor. I usually just water when I turn. I say, "Oh, it's a little dry. Oh, it's a little wet. If it's a little wet, you can always add uh a bit of like wood chips or carbon. Um something dry to dry to or leaves or things to try and soak up some of that moisture. Like I said, if you take a handful and squeeze it, if there's a drop or two coming out, you're probably good. If it's dripping out, it's too wet. If it feels dry and no drops are coming out at all, then it's probably a little dry. Usually, mine tend to get dry, but mine are covered. If yours are in the rain, they might get wet. So, you might think about putting a piece of cardboard over it just to kind of reduce some of if they're getting over wet, stuff like that. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Keeps the critters out. Yeah. Oh, nice. >> Mhm. >> The plate. Yeah, that's possible. And also, it might be too small of a volume to really heat up, which is Oh, it's for the worms to competent in. Oh, nice. Oh, you more freerange worms. Yes. Behind you. And then you >> What is the best way to recycle? >> Good question. Um there there are some places I don't know if Madison is one of them that does take comp manure or animal manure to compost it properly under supervised conditions but I don't know unfortunately I wish I knew. Yes. [cough] >> Well [clears throat] uh you could so how the question was how do you keep it warm during the winter? Um you can make more insulate you can put straw on top of it. You could put uh you can insulate the sides. Make sure the wind's not blowing through it. That's one of the even my airrated static pile was pulling in really cold air um in the middle of it was running in the middle of winter like it would be 10 degrees and I would be shoveling in a yard of horse manure and shoveling out another yard and it would be 10° and it would be hot. It would be 90s 100 120 uh because it's just they insul it's self-insulating. So also volume if you're in the winter you need a bit more volume a lot more volume. Okay we're running out of time. So on Thank you. All right. Last thing. Uh thank you on the low tech website. It's on the blog. It's the top post on the blog right [music] now. [music] Thank you so much for listening and remember to send in your thoughts on what you'd like to see in the year 2100 to scottloinstitute.org by the end of the month. And if you're in the Cooksville area and interested in learning about bees and pollinators or putting in your own prairie, check out our neighbors, the Historic Cooksville Trust, which has two programs coming up here in Cooksville. You can find out more information on their programming at historiccooksvilletrust.org. [music] That's it for this week. The LOTE podcast is put out by the Low Technology Institute. [music] The show is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Scott Johnson. This episode was recorded in the Low Technology Institute recording room. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube, and elsewhere. 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