dry them peels!

[flowerbug]

@digitS' that's what i do here for quite a while. i just put them on a shallow tray and leave them by the heating vent where air is blowing quite a bit with this cold weather. they dry out in a day or two. no smell past that initial round. once they're dry they can be crumbled easily.

i usually feed the worm bins twice a month so in between feeding times i'm collecting some things in containers in the fridge which won't dry easily and then the rest of the things that will.

because i use closed worm bins with no drainage i have to watch how much wet stuff i add along with the dry stuff (shredded paper and then whatever else i have).

i have a pail of garlic trimmings nicely aging now too. love that smell. the worms really like it whenever i put any onion peels/roots/pieces and the same with garlic.

 

[digitS']

There is a chance that I could dig the compost out from under the chicken house deck. I'm not sure how frozen it may be or how much it has decomposed since the last addition. However, I've piled a good deal of snow in front of it.

I hadn't thought of drying "compostables!" Everything out there is frozen. No way do I want it thawing indoors!

Freeze drying outdoors might be possible in the winter.

The buckets fill up every year but with 4 weeks now, of sub-normal temperatures, they have ALL filled up for the winter season!

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

There is a chance that I could dig the compost out from under the chicken house deck. I'm not sure how frozen it may be or how much it has decomposed since the last addition. However, I've piled a good deal of snow in front of it.

I hadn't thought of drying "compostables!" Everything out there is frozen. No way do I want it thawing indoors!

Freeze drying outdoors might be possible in the winter.

The buckets fill up every year but with 4 weeks now, of sub-normal temperatures, they have ALL filled up for the winter season!

Steve

i wasn't talking about drying frozen stuff from outside, but just the new stuff you generate.

by mostly drying i can keep up with the amount of waste we generate for the most part in between worm farm feedings. if you have a basement you can do worm buckets too, they're pretty easy once you get the hang of it. cacheing a few things in containers in the fridge in between worm feedings is going ok. i have some ancient oatmeal i need to remember for next time.

the real fun used to happen when we'd have a lot of stuff all at once like a bunch of rinds from a half dozen or more melons, that is where having an extra capacity of worm buckets available helped to absorb peak amounts. i used to keep 16 4-5 gallon buckets and one more larger container (about 20gallons) but downsized to 10 last year and decided that 12 was ok for this year.

 

[bobm]

i wasn't talking about drying frozen stuff from outside, but just the new stuff you generate.

by mostly drying i can keep up with the amount of waste we generate for the most part in between worm farm feedings. if you have a basement you can do worm buckets too, they're pretty easy once you get the hang of it. cacheing a few things in containers in the fridge in between worm feedings is going ok. i have some ancient oatmeal i need to remember for next time.

the real fun used to happen when we'd have a lot of stuff all at once like a bunch of rinds from a half dozen or more melons, that is where having an extra capacity of worm buckets available helped to absorb peak amounts. i used to keep 16 4-5 gallon buckets and one more larger container (about 20gallons) but downsized to 10 last year and decided that 12 was ok for this year.

And how would you deal with the countless number of fruit flies that orbit the buckets ?

 

[flowerbug]

And how would you deal with the countless number of fruit flies that orbit the buckets ?

they make fine mesh material for making curtains. a chunk of that cut off and then held down with the rubber ring from the lid works perfectly to keep the fruit flies and other bugs in or out. you can also use an old t-shirt as long as it doesn't have holes in it - enough air will get through.

once in a while, because i am using dirt from the gardens in these buckets i may have a fungus gnat or fruit fly problem, but to deal with that i just take the bucket outside if i need to remove the mesh to feed them.

at first i tried cheesecloth in a few layers but that didn't work well enough.

http://www.anthive.com/project/worms/
http://www.anthive.com/project/taters/

you need a cover anyways at night or the worms may roam...

 

[Just-Moxie]

I used the mesh for fermented feed and rainwater buckets. It only seemed to work on some of the flying critters here in SC.

 

[flowerbug]

I used the mesh for fermented feed and rainwater buckets. It only seemed to work on some of the flying critters here in SC.

it would have to have been too large a mesh as so far i've not seen any critter get through this. you do have to make sure the mesh is held down securely and that they can't crawl through any wrinkles. i make sure to pull the mesh down a bit to make sure it is against the rim of the bucket so not much can get beyond that point, but then even if they do then they have to also make it past the area held down by the rubber ring. not much can get through that either. it's pretty rare i see anything that shouldn't be in or out getting out or in. when i remove the cover i may get a few bugs that escape and even some worms will try to make a break for it. don't consider that a problem... a few bugs eventually die off or the spiders get them.

last fall i had some small spiders in a few of the worm buckets, i've tried to keep them happy all winter and so far some of them seem to be doing ok. they keep the gnats/fruit flies under control too.

i think the point that is being missed in my case though is that i use some dirt in the worm bins so when i add things to the bins i'm usually also burying it into the bedding and dirt so that it isn't exposed to the air and casual fruit flies just don't happen much at all. fungus gnats it depends upon the season and also by container. some i won't have any fungus gnats in at all and others will go through a boom and bust pattern for a while and then i won't see them again...

i also see populations of wood lice and other creatures besides worms, i've seen flies, spiders, snails, mites, nematodes, moths, millipedes, earwigs, etc. the only ones i try to remove are the slugs or earwigs. i think it's all pretty facination along with watching some fungi develop and then fruit and of course the wormies...

 

[flowerbug]

a common price for worm castings at the store is $2/lb... i'm not sure what various fertilizers cost (because i don't use them) but the output of my worm buckets is all i use for most of my fertility enhancements. several hundred lbs each spring basically for free because i'm using food scraps/paper scraps/harvested things from the yard and simple/cheap stuff to house them. it's a nice system for the frugal.

 

[digitS']

An ecosystem!

... in a bucket



Steve

 

[flowerbug]

An ecosystem!

... in a bucket



Steve

i kno! it's also a fun way to keep my hands in the dirt during the winter.

i'm starting this month to ramp up for spring. i have a bucket of dried greens to use up that will give them a boost plus some old sauces i made that are almost entirely garlic so in small quantities i'll put this in each bucket too and the worms will chomp it all up and be ready to go by the end of May.