apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I have two worm bins. Love them. I'm also fortunate that our scavenger company takes all green matter including dairy and meat products as well as cans, paper, and some plastics.

I have a tupperware bin for compost in my tiny backyard. I just drilled many many holes into the top and sides. It works really well, and plenty of worms have found their way in. I just turn it with a hoe every couple of weeks. Very cheap and very easy.

What's on the plate in the right-hand picture? Pasta?

yellow studio: how big is your bin? I went to a seminar lately and was saddened to find out that the recommended size is 1 cubic meter. Too big!!!

yellowstudio, do you have pictures of your bin?

Erika, I wish I knew, but pasta is as good a guess as any!

I just measured it. It is about 15" high, 22" long, 16" across. It's a standard big tub-shaped thing.

To start it off I put a lot of shredded newspaper and dried leaves in it, and slowly started adding the foodscraps. I also make sure to add some dried leafy things to the pile if it smells a little or if it is too wet.

I did recently add another bin, so I can rotate and let one "finish" while I add scraps to the other. I stack them and it takes up very little space. I have found it takes 6-8 months for the compost to be totally completed.

Give it a try, and if it doesn't work you can look for a small-scale manufactured composter or get a worm bin. Good luck!

i recently bought one of these -

http://www.envirocyclesystems.com/US/info.html

it is not "small" but very self-contained, and makes turning the compost super easy. plus there should be some "compost tea" after a while.

i noticed the post said the worm composter should reduce odor. but you should keep in mind compost shouldn't stink. actually, if it stinks you might need to add more brown stuff (dead leaves or grass, for instance).

Laure, great post on composting. I always love talk of gardening and environmental sustainability. We compost at my community garden and have a worm bin at my work and the result is great, a bit larger scale than your working with. Here is a link to the site (with a really bad pic of me working in the manure pile)...http://www.oceanviewfarms.net/compost.html

Many local Cities also give away comnpost bins and some even have free compost days.

I have a worm compost in my coat closet. It's made out of a rubbermaid bin... aprx 40 litres (24" x 16" x 9"). It's big enough for my wormies to live off the food scraps of two people. It doesn't smell at all and I harvest the castings by adding fresh food and newspaper to one side. The worms go to the food and you can scoop out what they leave behind... but watch out for slowpokes! A google search will lead you to many great resources to get you started.

Man I had a worm bin and it became a breeding ground for fruit flies. I was definitely doing something wrong! Then I spent so much time lamenting and trying to trap the empire of fruit flies.......yikes! Those were bad times.

for apartment dwellers with little or no outdoor space---Nature Mill indoor automatic composter all the way!

http://naturemill.com

I got one a few months ago. Granted they are a bit pricey. But you only have to buy it once and you'll love it and use it forever. Now my trash is not nearly as heavy when i got to take it to the dumpster. And all that compost I just add to the "yard waste only" dumpster and it gets trucked along with people's yard clippings to the city compost heap.