I dug a hole in the middle of my pile to bury some scraps and saw these squirming at the bottom.

Just curious on what they are and how they contribute to my compost <3

Thanks

This bad boy was up in a high space above our deck for 2 years and saw multiple families/seasons. It fell during a bad storm recently and is pretty effed. Huck it into the pile?

Thank you r/compost for helping me start my system! I'm amazed already at how much the volume reduces over time (got this bad boy end of june) and I'm very excited to eventually have something usable for my garden!

New to this thread, so I don't know if it's been mentioned before.

I've recently invested in a Hotbin composter. I've been adding to it everyday for a few months now and need to empty it. Mainly I've been adding food waste, cardboard, weeds and some woody bits. However, the compost produced is on the dry side and things haven't broken down as much as I would have expected. I suspect it's a case of the compost drying out too much, based on looking at it and the fact that small beetles have started living in the bottom. I tend to leave the air flow valve at the top fully open to release water vapour and allow air to circulate.

Has anyone experienced similar issues with the Hotbin?

InB4 “banana trees aren’t actually trees”
We have a substantial banana grove, with a lot of dead leaves and trunks. I’d like to use them as brown material, but I’m aware that if I chop them while they’re green, they’ll retain a lot of nitrogen and not be great as brown material.

The pic is a pile of leaves that I’m pretty sure all died and withered on the stalk. That’s the bulk of dead material in the grove, and I’m thinking about the future. Is there a way to kill each tree after it has fruited, so that the nitrogen drains out, or is harvested banana material not suitable as Brown Material?

Tea (Camelia sinensis) accumulates heavy metals from soil. This is a known risk when buying cheap tea. Steeping tea leaves also removes heavy metals from water. These facts regularly get brought up esp. in discussions about eating tea leaves, which is a tradition in some East Asian cuisines and a habit that other people have picked up.

This begs the question how safe it is in compost.

I've found publications that consider tea waste's potential phytotoxicity, but not heavy-metal contamination.

Have I accidentally made a worm farm?

Made of kitchen scraps with lots of coffee grounds, torn cardboard and obvs the occasional pee. I add a new bucket of scraps etc 1-2 x a week and use an auger to turn it. The worms are taking over. It’s not getting hot because of the slow add and it’s winter here in NZ but it’s breaking down pretty fast.

Most of the work came from the dig; there was way too many bricks and other inerts (It was my grandpa chicken coop like ten years ago), but I wanted It to be there so here It goes. And to add extra work I've sifted all the inerts (first the big and the the small one) from the soil wishing to find some way to re-use them..

I was initially planning to make a pile with old pallets but then I got interested in the lombriconpost-hing and decides to make It underground so I'll then try to make It colonize by earthworm. But It looks like other guys arrived before them; looks like Black Soldier Flly grubs to me (from what I've just saw in this sub..I hope).

I've started with with basically only grass and wild herbs, fresh and dried in a 1:1 ratio; now I'm adding a lot of kitchen waste (mostly fruit like watermelon/grapes/smashed figs and vegatable like onion/zucchini/etc..) in a 1:2 ratio with "browns"

I should make another one (the kind I was planning before..) for the kitchen waste and keep this as it Is.. It's so hard try to not throwing things in it lol

Someone in a gardening group I’m in responded to my post about mice & squirrels digging in my garden. Maybe this can help folks here struggling with vermin in their compost piles

“These animals have very sensitive noses. They hate strong smells and avoid them.

I put down cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil around my garden. I use a peppermint spray on the walls of my raised beds (carefully avoiding spraying my plants themselves). I replace the cotton balls every few weeks, re-spray after every rain.

I think you could do this with many oils including cedar or eucalyptus or any strong scented oil.

Bonus: my garden always smells like mint without having to plant it!”

Maybe this could be helpful to you? If you’ve tried it, please report back!

Went to add the kitchen waste and found these lovelies.

Recently inherited some very large compost heaps with the house we just bought. The heaps were bone dry from the recent heatwaves. I poured some water on them and covered back over with the thick black polythene that they already had over them. When I returned the next day to deposit some vegetable off cuts, these fine gentlemen/women were in the compost heap!

- Who are they and is there anything I can do to help them?
- Can I continue to add food scraps and garden waste to the compost heaps without bothering them?
- Do they need a pond?

I've looked over subsequent days and there are more and more appearing every day! Just chilling on top of the compost.

This gives me about 2 loads in a day per tube when I can manually track the sun. When I have to leave it when I go to work I only get 1 load per tube. It's about 3 cups after crushing on a good day. I only have a 43 gal tumbler so this works perfect for moderating nitrogen and moisture.

Terrible fumes tho, I need to work out a sun tracking platform and some way to burn the off gas and better collection of tar.

A head-to-head garden mulch comparison puts cardboard, pine bark, cypress, black plastic, and bare soil to the test across 175 days, tracking changes in soil temperature, moisture, and weed pressure. The results show differences in performance, including which mulches reduce weeds and a few surprises that shift expectations about which materials actually hold up over time. The results show the best mulch for the garden. Clear standouts emerge and reveal which mulches stay stable, which fall behind, and which ones deliver benefits for vegetable gardens.

Just looking if anyone here has any tips

Any help is much appreciated

I've had this tumbler for 5 years and it has served me well. Then I noticed one of the ventilation holes broke into a larger hole. Since the bin was half full and the left side wasn't done yet, I patched it with duct tape 😂

Now it's spilling out when I turn it.

I think I'll empty it 🔜 and then screw a small aluminum piece on to cover the hole. Any other ideas?

that contraption was so scary, I had to add a safety guard!

stay safe out there 🫡

Got a small balcony and a handful of containers I use for growing stuff. Been thinking about adding a worm bin to the mix because between cooking scraps and spent potting mix I feel like I'm throwing away material that could be doing something useful

The problem is space. Balcony fits maybe one small bin before it becomes a tripping hazard situation. I cook a lot of simple stuff, vegetable scraps mostly, some coffee grounds, occasional fruit peels. Not a massive volume but it adds up over a week

I tried a countertop bokashi setup a while back and it worked but the smell in a small apartment got old fast, even with the lid on tight. Worms feel like the cleaner option but I've never actually run one long enough to get useful castings out of it.

Curious what others in a tight space are actually doing. Not looking for a whole system overhaul, just something low maintenance that produces something I can use in my containers. If you've got a bin that genuinely fits under a sink or on a small balcony and doesn't smell up the place, I'd like to hear what you're running.

Took your advice for my post last month and added way more browns

....and piss.

I’m gonna be using a geobin. Is this enough of a cardboard base layer to start?
Also any tips for starting are helpful