The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

For the last few months, I've been composting at home.

I bought this big barrel that spins.  We put in mostly food garbage, but you can basically put in anything that used to be a plant.  Everything from paper, to linens, to food scraps, etc...almost anything except meat/dairy and synthetics.

You have to have a general mix of "browns" (long dead stuff, like paper, coffee grounds, etc) and "greens" (recently live stuff like banana peels, apple cores).  Then, keep in a little moist and add oxygen by spinning the barrel every few days.  Keep it in the sun.  It creates this environment where microbes live and feed other microbes, which feed other microbes, which break it all down into this brown dirt stuff.  It's great fertilizer and prevents it from going in a land-fill.

Fun project, easy to do -- creates less stinky garbage out by the curb.

Anyone done this before or have any questions?

Some communities don't allow this due to smells. So where do you store this 'barrel'? does it stink? I've thought about it.

No, it doesn't smell, for the most part.  This is especially true if your mixture ratios are correct and it's composting effectively.

It's comparable to a garbage can, I guess -- for the first couple of days of adding a lot of waste to it.  But what stinks about garbage is curdled dairy or putrid meat.  You aren't putting these things in there.  A decaying apple core doesn't really stink.  Or moldly bread, or coffee grounds, or whatever else.

I keep mine about 10 feet from my house, near my backyard fence.

Once you have compost in there, when you add new things, you rotate the barrel and it mixes the rotten food into the compost.  So, the garbage is essentially buried in dirt.  And if you have good conditions, it breaks down really, really fast, so it's gone before it would traditionally rot.  You should have no smell at all.

The compost itself has an Earthy smell, like a forest floor.

They have this at the farmer's market that I go to and I always have something to give. When I move to a better place that isn't actually the largest landfill on the planet (Staten Island), I will do things like this in my own backyard.

Hell, I probably have the cleanest garbage in the southeast. Before I put shit in my kitchen garbage can, I usually rinse out any empty containers like cans, bottles, or trays. And anything that the garbage disposal will eat goes down the drain. There's not a lot of remnants of left over food in my garbage. I can't stand a stinking ass garbage can in the house.

I've heard earthworms get attracted to compost piles.   Then you grab them and sell them to bait shops or directly to freshwater fishermen