Home Composting Tips

Veronica: Hi, I’m Veronica at WatchMojo.com. And today we’re going to find out how we can join the environmentally friendly world of composting. We hear that composting is one other ways to help the environment but what exactly does that mean? Randi: Composting is the breakdown of organic materials, so fruit and vegetables and they biodegrade. It’s like recycling them into earth. Veronica: You mentioned for its investitures, is that all that can be put into your compost pile? Randi: Fruits and vegetables are the best things to put in your compost. We can also take egg shells, materials from your garden like dry grass, dry leaves. No meat and no dairy products in a composter. If we put our fruits from our table into the composter and then some dry material, this is some straw that you could also use leaves then that would stop the smell. It will create air in the composter. Once a week, we can mix them. It can be as often as you wish, maybe once a week or it could be once a month. It depends on how often you want to activate your compose or how quickly you want to have compose. Veronica: So in looking down here and I see some dirt and newspapers, what exactly is this? Nikki: This is actually a vermin composter. Vermin composting when you take worms, normally red wigglers and you put them in the box like this and they breakdown your food. So if you start off with the half of pound of red wrigglers, you can put a quarter pound of food every day which is really amazing for the transformation. Veronica: So this looks like something that you may home. How do you start that? Nikki: What you want to make sure is that you have aeration for your worms. They are living creatures and you want to make sure they’re breathing. So you would have some aeration holes on the top of the composter, normally when foods and vegetables decomposes lot of water produce. So often, you put a bunch of holes in the bottom of the vermin composter. You lay extreme, probably just like a mosquito screen that you would have for your window. And then the worms can’t go through the holes and it’s quite amazing how fast they multiply within the month, you might have probably two-thirds, more worms and you have before. So little by little, they reproduce and you can put more and more food which is really good if your family expand or if you have more quantity that you need get rid off. Veronica: For some in like myself who was in an apartment and it doesn’t have a backyard. What options are available? Lisa: You can join a community center which has a community compost. I cut out my food scraps, my egg shells, my vegetable peelings. I put it in the freezer. After I have enough, I walk it to my community compose site and dump it in and nature does the rest. Veronica: If you contribute to this compose then you would be able to keep some of the compost afterwards? Lisa: Yes, that’s the big benefit. The community will give us back the rich hammiest to put it our post plants or to add to your garden or my friend’s garden. Veronica: How long until it decomposes and you can take the compost home? Lisa: It can take six months to a year. I belong to a community center which has high tech composting meals which turns continuously so it can take as little as a few months. Veronica: Thank you very much. Lisa: My pleasure, thank you.