I had to laugh when I saw this thread. If you lived in California, you wouldn’t have to ask what to do with that stuff–you put it in the “green waste” bin provided by the garbage company, and it goes to the brand-new anaerobic digestion facility paid for with your tax dollars. It’s now the law (starting yesterday), and I’m sure they will be imposing penalties now if you put your food scraps in the wrong bin.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought California sorted everyones garbage a few years ago making lots of money doing it. It makes sense to make people do it themselves. Trash is ridiculously profitable when you see it as all valuables. On TV the show I saw they recycled 100% of everything and used it. They sold the waste they got for free. The branches and things they turned into wood chips to be used. Other things like foods became compost, glass was melted. Tin was melted, plastic melted , cardboad recycled into cardboard, aluminum melted it was impressive.
My compost pile is out by my flat garden bed… where I grow my veggies… about 50 yards from our house.
We save scraps in a container… holds a gallon… mostly veggie scraps… coffee grounds… eggshells… when it gets full (every 2-3) days usually… I take it out to the pile.
Lots of other garden waste goes in the pile… corn stalks shucks okra stalks any plant material that looks healthy… and in the fall 40 wheelbarrow full of sugar maple leaves… and I often harvest some woods compost and add to the pile.
I dont put blighted tomato plants in the pile or anything that looks sickly.
My pile is very low maint… mostly just pile it up and let it rot. I do normally have to turn it over 5 or 6 times to get it to finish good.
Cant imagine gardening without a compost pile or two. Been doing that since the early 90’s.
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Rats are odd there might be none at all in your compost pile or a real problem. In this area voles take advantage of the loose soil in my compost piles but never rats. They are not there to eat they have fields of food and my compost is aged cow manure rather they build nests in it. The wood chips I have never seen voles in on my property for whatever reason. My suspicion is because snakes favor woodchips the rodents leave them alone. My hopes are someday the snakes numbers return to past numbers again and rodents are less successful because of it. The problem is people move here from the city killing snakes out of fear and the increased traffic kills many on the roads. It’s not that I like snakes but I do realize they are part of the system. Kitchen scraps I never put in the same spot twice. Have a tendency to bury scraps under tomatoes or something similar in the summer. Wow decomposing compost makes tomatoes grow! Add a 1/2 gallon of whatever scraps to the bottom of the tomato plant when you first put it in and the results are amazing. Heavy feeders like carmine jewell cherries respond quickly as well. There are times when I put garbage in the same place but I felt I was training the possums to come here. Quit doing that years ago once I realized I was causing problems not fixing them. Coffee grounds are fantastic fertilizer.
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@Vlad … my pile is open… literally just a pile.
I have never really worried about what visits it… no doubt lots of critters do… most noticeably armadillo… they churn it up some… who cares… it ends up being awesome stuff.
Here is a pic of my finished pile… and a new pile that I took on March 22 last spring. Looks like I had just turned them over and raked them up. I would estimate 400-500 ibs of finished compost. I probably put 150-×200 lbs on my tomato row each year… grow like crazy… gobs of tomatoes.
Never seen a rat out here in the country… have seen those in town at a factory that I worked at for 6 month when in my early 20s.
We do have plenty of field mice… chip monks squirrels coons possum skunk fox coyote Bobcats deer turkey and armadillo… and they do visit my pile. But it turns out like this… a great finished product. Once finished much less attractive to critters.
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They have been making us sort our own for at least 15 years now. We all have 3 waste bins–trash, recyclables, and yard waste. Three or four years ago they gave us little pails to keep on our kitchen countertops and told us to put all our food scraps (including meat) in them, and then dump them in the yard waste container instead of the trash container. I personally don’t like doing this because I frequently use my yard waste container when I am pruning or weeding, and don’t like to have it stinky or crawling with maggots.
As of January 1, it is now the law that you have to separate your food scraps from regular trash and put them in the yard waste container. I believe there are penalties for noncompliance, but I haven’t yet looked into what they are. The rationale for it is that when food scraps are put into the landfill they release carbon into the atmosphere as they decay.
Another objection I have to this system is that anything that goes into the recyclables container that has had food or beverage in it must be washed. We are almost always in a drought and being told to conserve water. (The target water consumption for an individual here is 50 gallons per day.) So I refuse to use up precious water washing out containers that are going in the trash, basically, since China doesn’t want our recyclables anymore.
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That’s pretty strict on how things are done. Some cities in Kansas seperate recycle 
items as well. There are people in my area that don’t yet have trash service.
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Ours is like that too, here in WA, although out in the country we don’t do the composting. The collection point is 1/4 mile up the private drive.
One container for glass, one container for other recyclables that must be clean, strict about what plastics are allowed, and then the landfill trash.
Most of the customers don’t follow the rules carefully and a huge portion of the recycling resources go towards dealing with the contamination and snarled equipment.
Recyclers were thrown for a big loop when China stopped accepting shipments from the US.
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I started a project about 3 years ago with about 400 or so worms that i scavaged from my property, under rocks, logs, flowerbed edges etc.
I watched way too many youtube videos and had these storage bins and then graduated up to a kiddie pool. I fed the worms all of my household waste during the year, then at the end of the season i fed them all of my annual plant tops, then fed them leaves. I didnt flush most of my toilet paper, and i didnt throw away paper towels… i just added it to the worm bins.
400 worms were probably around 50000 at this point… so i decided to just chuck everything in a raised bed kinda deal. Just 4 boards screwed together… about 8ft by 8ft. I harvested the black gold the best that i could and added it to my garden and berry rows.
So as of right now i probably have 500000 who really knows… I divide them and add them to my rows and gardens, i have gotten creative with leaf piles and just keep dividing them. Last year i bought a bagger mower and fed them about 100 wheelbarrows of grass clippings.
The bad thing about adding them to my berry rows is that they devour the compost and woodchips pretty fast… im not sure if im creating more work for myself by doing it this way…
Some fun facts that i think are mostly true-
A small colony of worms will increase itself around 20 fold in 3 months. And once that fold matures… it begins to become incalculable.
As far as i can tell the key to making them go insane with making babies is sweet fruits and vegetables. They love leaves, grass… kinda like whatever a chicken will eat they will eat.
Keeping cardboard boxes on top of the piles and putting cinderblocks or logs to weigh it down is their happy place. They like the darkness and compression for some reason.
I have also found something else kinda neat… yes i have gotten wood roaches and some wierd critters also ants… but lizards and spiders started appearing…then toads. So its like i created a little Ancient Roman Colosseum…
So if you want to make all of your food waste disappear, and all of your household biodegradables… start a worm farm.
If you raise chickens- or want to- I wonder what the math is on turning food waste into worms which can feed chickens… versus feeding the chickens food waste?
1lb of cabbage would probably feed and multiply tens of thousands of worms… ?
Lessons ive learned- You have to add some kind of grit… or else the pile gets too funky. I started by adding sand. I have also added washed wood ashes. It all disappears. I have moved on to adding poor soil… i just find a place on my property where all that grows is weeds or nothing of value and i dig up a bucket of that soil and spread it. That poor soil gets mixed in with the black gold and i harvest it later…
After a year or so it becomes second nature… you start creating buckets of food waste, household perishables… you ask your friends if they will start buckets… you start having a purpose for grass clippings, your raked leaves… so yeah it is a little work… and its another responsibility… but if you want a bunch of worms… get a pile started.
Disclaimer- I do not have rats. I dont really even have mice. So if you do then you will have to deal with those things im sure.
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“Fish scraps 10x tomatoes”
Can you explain please? I have plenty of fish scraps and starting to grow tomatoes. Thanks
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I keep a container under the sink and dump it in a pile in the woods when it fills up with scraps and coffee grounds, no meat products though.
I’m getting inspired by you guys and need more direction. Guess I need to start researching composting and such. Brother across the highway is getting chickens soon so I can contribute to feeding them.
We have over 100 acres combined, 2 creeks, 1 river and some ponds. Old family dairy farm. I got into fruit trees a couple years ago, still adding all the time. We’re trying to get into more farming, vegetables etc. I’ve thought about getting a legit wood chipper as there’s an endless supply of sticks and limbs.
Do you till leaves into your garden or just cover in the winter?
Just bury the scraps of one or two fish leftover from when you clean them at the bottom of every tomato you plant. Get ready for hravy production. Mulch around the plants to hold the water it will help. What I do is if I have a foot tall tomato plant I bury the fish 1 foot deep then the tomato 10" deep. The tomato turns a very dark green and blooms like crazy. There is a seperate thread on fish emulsions which you might like.
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Timely thread, I have just been pondering building a 2bin setup from scrap wood.
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Yes… however… if you have dogs or coons… dont be surprised at what lengths they will go to investigate.
Native americans planted fish scraps under their corn… they knew what worked.
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if you dont want the problem of animals digging around in your plants just bury your fish/ meat scraps deep in the compost pile. i then cover with a large tarp held down with logs and rocks to keep animals from getting to it and contains any smell that it emits. ive got 3 dogs and they never try to dig in there. we have a place we fish from shore that has alot of stunted invasive perch. i keep the big ones to eat and throw all the little ones in a 20 gal tote. at least 3-4 times a year i dump all those fish in there. within a few months the fish are all gone and half of my browns in there are reduced. it really turbocharges the composting. mix a little of that compost in your soil in the fall. by spring its ready to go. i also throw any berry stealing crows or culled chickens in there. the bodies are gone in a few months, but the bones and feathers take a year to completely breakdown. i just turn them back into the middle of the pile.
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I have never put meat in my compost pile… thought the smell would be rank.
My pile is like 50 yards normally down wind of our house.
Hmmm… instead of feeding all those fish scraps to my buzzards… I can compost them.
I will have to try that this spring.
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i bury it down 3-4ft. in the pile and never had a smell issue. trust me, my dogs would be right in it if there was. they like to roll in every dead thing they can find. i worked for a cattle farmer when i 1st got out of the Army. he had a cow that died suddenly. had me take the loader and bury that cow in 6ft. of manure and straw bedding. by fall there was nothing but bones and beautiful black compost. he was right against state forest land and no critters came around that pile all summer. should have seen the steam come out of it after a rain. thought it was going to catch fire.
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@steveb4 … Right now I have a large pile… that started last January… that I will finish (turn a few times) between now and april.
And I have a small new pile… that we are adding to now… by late March (when I start fishing)… it will have some size… but not 3 or 4 ft deep.
I have plenty of hay bales… could pile a few of those on… do you think that would do it ?
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