Comments on: Successful apartment composting stories wanted

By: Johan

Johan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:29:23 +0000

i just saw this wonderful video on youtube via treehugger on how to make your own tumble composter for only 8dollars. but she also uses a lawn mover … so perhaps not ideal in an apartment …

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/diy-compost-tumbler.php

By: Compost Guy

Compost Guy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:49:41 +0000

Hi,
I have to agree with some of the sentiments shared here. I’m WAY better at killing plants than I am at killing worms! haha :-)
While there IS a bit of a learning curve with vermicomposting, it is very easy once you get the hang of it. In my opinion the key is moderation - especially when you first start a new bin. It is SO much easier to overfeed your worms than underfeed.

Excess food can lead to anaerobic conditions and the production of various nasty compounds.

I recommend mixing up your bedding material with a bunch of food scraps, moistening the mix, then letting it sit for a couple weeks before even adding the worms. This allows time for the microbial community to develop (worms get their nutrition primarily from the microbes that are decomposing the food wastes).

Anyway - just my 2 cents worth! :-)
(yeah, I’m a little biased - haha)

Bentley

By: Melissa

Melissa — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:10:23 +0000

I have been using a worm bin for composting my kitchen scraps for 2 years. I have successfully killed mint and yet the worms have been quite easy to take care of. They even survived a huge spill where the bin toppled over dumping all the contents, worms, castings, food, and liquid from the bottom chamber. It was an unfortunate mess and I lost a lot of the bedding for the worms, but they kept on eating and soon enough had a strong community again.
I started my bin after a free composting workshop offered by L.A. county where I purchased the bin with worms for something around $50 or $60. The county still offers the workshops. This site has a schedule for the workshop: http://ladpw.org/epd/sg/ws_schedule.cfm
It was enough information to get me going very easily.

By: new to worms

new to worms — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:49:56 +0000

I just bought a worm bin from Santa Monica last week. They have “Wriggly Ranch” bins for $27.50 for residents and, as someone else mentioned, for $30-something for everyone else. Go any time during business hours:
http://www.smgov.net/swm/contact_us.htm

The bin is easy to set up, and comes with bedding and a helpful booklet.

Worms are available at the Santa Monica farmer’s market on Main Street on Sundays ($5 for 50 worms) and some Sustainable Works instructors have them as well. Also, you can often get free worms on Freecycle.

It has only been a week, but so far so good. The worms require very little maintenance: keep them moist, give them food. It takes a while to get enough worms to really compost all your “green” waste, but it is well worth it. I have my bin out on the balcony of my apartment, but it could easily be inside without a problem.

By: Beany

Beany — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:32:26 +0000

Also…you don’t really need that much supervision. Since there are three layers in various states of uh…doneness, the worms keep busy for about 2 weeks without problems. You have to turn the thing to aerate it every once in a while. For some reason the worms tend to group together in certain sections only and turning it once in a while breaks up the party. I do check on it every few days because I’m just exciting that way. Plus I cook every day so I’m always adding something into the bin anyway.

By: Beany

Beany — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:25:28 +0000

I’ve been composting since last summer. I was worried about killing worms as well since I killed my lavender plant last year, but the thought of throwing away so much organic matter really bothered me.

We almost did kill our worms and it was due to the high temperature last summer. Then our worms started turning white in color and I learned that it was because of the high levels of acidity (too many lemon peels being composted). A little bit of garden lime (available at home depot) solved that problem.

We also had another problem with fruit flies last summer. We quit eating bananas and the fruit fly problem went away…so this may be a problem to those attached to banana eating. :) There isn’t any bad smell or anything, or maybe I’m just used to it. But I will continue to compost when I move to LA from Philly toward the end of the summer.

The downside is the initial cost. I paid about $250 for my bin and worms. And the bin I purchased has layers, so its easy to move them around (even for a woman) as the worms travel between the layers. The other downside is that in the cold season (I went without heat for most of this winter), the worms don’t eat as much so we were freezing much of our scraps. And we have a large fridge which may not be an option for most apartment dwellers.

I’ve been reading your car free posts with great interest since people online seem convinced that car free living is impossible in LA. But we’re car free and intend to remain so when we move.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:14:09 +0000

So I do collect my food scraps in my freezer, then bring them to a greenmarket to be composted by a cool organization, which also sells bags of finished compost as a way of earning income. I was recently in a Whole Foods and saw that they were selling those bags of soil, which I thought was so awesome! I do feel somewhat lame for handing off my scraps for someone else to compost, but I’m so glad that the finished product is then staying local and has a chance to green this city. (But Russ has a good point, above, about the cost of the Naturemill potentially being offset by the lifelong cost of Bokashi…)

By: Russ

Russ — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:51:38 +0000

The NatureMill actually starts at $299, and they have free shipping and group discounts ($249) which is not much more than the other options (especially when you consider the bokashi replacement material that you have to buy).

By: Jodie

Jodie — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:36:29 +0000

I’m having some luck with Bokashi in my tiny studio apartment. Yes, it’s more or less by using a second compost bin, but the big draw to using Bokashi is the lack of a rotting food smell. I don’t have all the details worked out yet, but here’s how its going so far: http://pickyvegan.blogspot.com/search/label/bokashi

By: Beth aka Fake Plastic Fish

Beth aka Fake Plastic Fish — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:50:17 +0000

The idea situation would be neighborhood composting, just like neighborhood gardening, where apartment dwellers could take their compost locally and share in the “goods” when they were finished. It would be nice to be able to actually benefit from the compost we make (potting soil for indoor potted plants, for example) than sending it away to a commercial composter to be sold for their profit.

And, while the city of San Francisco’s Jepson Prairie compost facility gives away a certain amount of compost for free to city residents, you have to get in your car and drive all the way out to Vacaville to get it. How about all the apartment dwellers who don’t have cars in the first place?

Anyway, it’s a dream. But wouldn’t it be sweet if each neighborhood had its own local garden where we could contribute our buckets of food scraps every few days?