The Compost Crew

We've been flying right through spring, heading toward an early summer. Or maybe there is no spring in South Carolina. It seems the daily highs somehow skipped the 70's and jumped right into the high 80s and low 90s. I'm not complaining, though. I love throwing on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt each morning and not having to worry about whether or not it'll be cool at recess. It never is.

I used the shift into warmer weather to sort out our compost a few weeks back. We keep two compost piles in the back. One is the traditional sort where we layer food scraps with other organic material. The other is a vermicompost which consists of a couple thousand red wiggler worms, shredded newspaper, and a few cups of weekly food scraps.

We used to temporarily keep our food scraps in an old margarine tub on the kitchen counter until someone took the initiative to get them outside. However, it didn't take long for the fruit flies to find their way in and before we knew it our house was full of what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny flies. They were everywhere. We eventually had to start taking our compost straight outside. This was effective but a hassle.

A few months ago Tricia's parents sent us a countertop compost crock. It is aerated by tiny holes in the lid. A small filter fits into the lid to control the odor as well as to keep out unwanted guests. We've had very few flies since making the switch.

This has been our first real attempt at composting. Much of what we've been doing has been trial-and-error. I've tried doing research to help improve our chances of success but much of what I read contradicts other sources and some of this stuff has too much scientific jargon for my present level of understanding. So, basically we've decided to collect our compost-friendly food waste and dump it all into a pile with some leaves and ash and wait to see what happens. There are worse places to start.

The traditional compost seemed to be a bit slimy at times. I suspect this was due to too much food matter (green) and not enough carbon (brown) matter. I could have kept the compost too wet, as well. Either way, when I pulled the plastic housing off the pile and spread it out it looked as though everything turned out pretty well. Pulling the pile apart with a shovel, I found that nature had produced a heap of dark black soil from all that stuff I had thrown in there over the past eight months. We immediately used it to plant a few pots of herbs and vegetables and the rest went into a large storage bin to be used in the future.

The vermicompost was a little more labor-intensive. The bin had to be dumped out onto a large tarp in the sun. There was a pile of sticky black soil (aka, worm poo). The worms, exposed to the sun, immediately made their way down into the pile. We scooped up the top later and placed it into another bin. This exposed the worms again so they dug even deeper. Again we scooped off the top layer. On and on this process continued until we had separated the soil from the worms.

Here are the worms doing their job - eating our trash and making it into soil.

Everything is dumped out into the sun. The worms hate this part.

The soil is really wet and sticky. It was hard to get any evaporation during the winter months.

Sorting it all out. We found many "balls" of worms in there.

This is the final result - super rich soil.

Shredding newspaper to start all over again. The worms will eat this paper in addition to the food scraps.

We used our compost to plant basil, cilantro, tomatoes, and a few other things.

We also used it to plant some Carolina Jessamine around our screened porch. This is watered with the rain barrel.

The rest of the vermicompost is being brewed into "worm tea."

Here you see the bag of vermicompost sitting in the rainwater. An aquarium pump and air stones work to circulate the water. The resulting tea will help keep our plants really strong and healthy.

I'd love to go through this whole process next year with my class at school. It'd be fun to compost our food, sort the soil, brew it, and then conduct some experiments to see what benefits, if any, the worm tea offers. Taller plants? Greener plants? Stronger root systems? Who knows. If nothing else I can guarantee such a project would save many pounds of food from being hauled away by the gas guzzling trash truck.