Easy, No-Turn Compost That ANYONE Can Make

what if composting was as easy as one two three composting can be that easy and today i'm going to show you my easy to manage small space portable composting system that you can build at home for less than 15 bucks let's do it a long time ago i learned that when you had a pot like this with holes in the bottom sitting on the ground eventually worms and other soil life would find their way into the bucket they saw something there that they liked and they decided to move in and set up shop i thought it was an interesting observation and i thought well what if i could scale this up a little bit so i take a bigger black pot and i put some food scraps in the bottom and then i'd put old soil on top of that and that was a way i tried to you know build potting soil leaving the food scraps in the bottom the bad soil on top knowing that worms and other soil life would be attracted to the food scraps in the bottom and they would populate this little black bucket and eventually turn all that soil into good soil or i could plant a plant in the top soil knowing that eventually the bottom of the pot would turn into really good soil would be fed by the soil life using this observation worms find their way into any container i scaled that and systematized it into the main composting system that i used today this is where the majority of my food scraps chicken bedding rabbit bedding and other vegetable trimmings go now i do have bigger compost piles as you've seen in previous videos but this is the system i really like to go to because it's contained it's portable i can move this around on a hand dolly if i need to and when it's done i can move it to where i need to use that compost instead of me having to move it wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow load and it's some system that my kids can use too they can just simply open the lid pour scraps in put the lid on and they also like to dig through it and see the worms so how is this system built well at the core you have a lid on a black trash can the black trash can itself has holes drilled down the side of it and a bunch of holes in the bottom of the trash can a lot of holes there's no certain amount of holes you're just going to want to put a lot of holes in the bottom and a lot of holes going down the side one thing i do observe in these systems is they can go anaerobic-ish at the bottom section of the can so near the bottom of the can i try and either increase the amount of holes or make the holes a little bigger to try and increase more airflow or get more airflow into the bottom of the can so now you have this can that used to be impermeable to air it's now open to air and soil life and other microbial life can enter it through the holes in the side and through the bottom the other principle that really i think helps the system work and it's borrowed from david johnson's bioreactor system i mean that's really what this is this is a scaled-down johnson subio reactor is we have a center tube a center tube that is as tall as the trash can is that sits directly in the center of the trash can over some holes in the bottom of the trash can and this allows air to come in and get air to the inner portion of the can if you think about this as your trash can diameter well if you have holes around the outside air can easily get to the scraps around the outside but how is air gonna get to the scraps right here in the center that's where our center tube comes in so air can come in in the center of the tube and it can feed this part of the pile air and the microbes there can be happy dr david johnson's found in his research that in compost piles if you're more than 12 inches from air you can get anaerobic conditions so by putting this tube in the very center of the trash can you ensure that nothing within this trash can is ever more than 12 inches away from air therefore always staying anaerobic or at least giving it the chance to stay aerobic not anaerobic for the center pipe itself this is a four inch drain pipe i bought it with holes in it if you have one without holes in it drill holes in it does it have to be four inches no just go with something pretty large diameter and make sure there's a bunch of holes in it then set it in the center of the trash can and start filling initially when you fill the can you are going to want to hold this pipe in place you don't want it getting tilted off to one side or the other you want to keep it as straight up as possible now one thing that david does in his johnson sue bioreactors that i do not do is i don't remove this center pipe i'll leave the center pipe in there for the life of the composting process i found that when i pull it out it just tends to collapse and i don't think i get as good of results so i will leave this center tube in here for the full length of the composting process when it comes to feeding the system i don't try and overthink it you just add your food scraps chicken bedding whenever you can and then try and follow it up with some sort of browns periodically i do try and mix my greens and browns not with any sort of formula just consciously keeping an effort oh there's a lot of food scraps on there i better put in a lot of browns for brown shredded paper works really well so often i will add shredded paper that i generate in homeschool from old credit card mailings bills that type of things but they can go right into the tube and then i'll layer up more food scraps on top of it every few layers i'll add in either some soil from the garden to try and help inoculate the center of the pile or i'll take some more mature compost from another trash can and add that into a pile just as an inoculation source the thing i really want to stress here is don't overthink the materials that you're putting into here you do want to mix so you don't want to be too heavy green you don't want to be too heavy brown you don't want to fill this with scraps from a juice bar and walk away it's going to create a mess you don't want to also fill this with pure straw and walk away because it's probably not going to break down at least in the time frame that you want it to break down so try and mix it add some soil add some finished compost periodically to help inoculate the pile and then you're well on your way to making good quality compost so a lid is a lid required do you have to have a lid yes you do it's going to conserve moisture it's going to keep mice out i think it creates a better environment in here for the worms to do their composting but you don't want a tight fitting lid if your trash can is really new and your lid can snap down on there nice and tight i don't do that i just set the lid on kind of so it it covers the top it creates a nice biome but there is space for air to get in and things like flies to get it because in my area one thing that will enter these trash cans and their amazing voracious composters are black soldier flies the black soldier flies will enter the can and suddenly i'll have this huge influx of black soldier fly larvae eating all the food scraps and that's a really good thing because they are voracious eaters and nearly anything i've put so you do want a lid but not a tight fitting lid if you can find trash cans but you can't find lid sometimes i'll just cut a old sheet of plywood cut a round piece and set that on top that's totally sufficient for a lid so cover it up and walk away so do you need to add water to the system possibly observe the system and add water as needed keep in mind that you are containing a lot of water within the system a lot isn't evaporating off because there's a lid on here when you do observe realize that the surface level of the scraps is probably going to be the driest area so dig down a little bit how wet does it feel deeper down it feels pretty wet deeper down i wouldn't add water even if the soil surface feels dry within here add water if needed and as needed probably not more than a gallon a week if you do need it obviously depending upon what you're putting into here and your climate so where do you put the can when you're filling it initially i like to start the can on the ground i want as much can to ground contact as possible early on to try and encourage earthworms and other microbial life to make their way into the can i'll keep it on contact with the ground sometimes for the whole composting process if i feel like things aren't you know going so well maybe i'm picking up a little bit of a smell i will lift the can off the ground i'll set it on some bricks to get it higher up to try and increase airflow get air going under the can and coming up through the bottom holes that tends to work pretty well i don't think you have to do it but i do do it sometimes you may think well if i raise it up off the ground or worm's still going to find their way in there and the answer is yes don't ask me how they do it but i have had this can you know three or four inches off the ground on bricks and i see worms you know migrating their way into there so they will find the scraps somehow using their worm spider sense so don't worry about not having worms in there if you do lift it up off the ground and one other thing i'm a big believer and is using the drippings from compost piles to be as productive as possible so think about where you're placing this can where the dripping is going maybe that's on an area you want to plant later on maybe it's near some trees maybe it's on a garden bed that you're going to plan out next season but if you put the can somewhere just be mindful that it is going to get drippings coming out of it where are those drippings going and can you put it in an area so you can use those drippings to your advantage or rather the soil can use those drippings to its advantage so how long can you expect something like this to take it's a long-term composting process you're probably three to six months to fully break down everything in the can depending on what types of materials you're putting in the can and what type of climate you live in so you're using fungi and worms to break down all of these materials over the long term and that just takes time they're not super fast consumers of organic material yet at the end of the day i think you get a really good high quality compost one other thing i love about this system is it generates a lot of worms and a contained space so if you do ever build a bigger johnson suit bioreactor and you need to put worms into it you can go to these tiny cans to help get the worms to put in the bigger bioreactors here's an example of a can that's probably pretty close to being done i would start adding it to soil at this point as you can see everything's broken down now i've added a lot of biochar to this can that's what those big chunks are but there's a lot of finer soil particles in here one thing you can do is sift this out using a screen and you can use this as potting mix i think it makes really good potting soil but for something that started as food scraps to end up like this i think it looks pretty good currently i have six of these cans in rotation and that keeps up really well with all of our household demands one thing you are going to notice if you fill the can to the top one thing you're going to notice that when you fill the can to the top with organic matter is after about a month it's going to really want to settle down instead of just leaving it there what i will do is i'll come back and fill that can up again let it settle out fill it up again until that settling has pretty much gone and that way i maximize volume within the can i'm using all of the space and i don't just have a 50 air space in the can because you might fill it up today and say wow it's totally full and again you come back a month later and you say where did i go a lot of that air space is gone it's became more compacted so use that space to your advantage go back and refill the can and you'll be good to go as i said earlier this has really become my main composting system that i use here in my house it's my edc my everyday composter i think for a lot of urban properties this can be your go-to for composting you don't have to worry about building piles turning piles it's nice and contained meaning you can move it around as needed while you're building it while you're filling it or while you're emptying it it looks fairly clean if that is a problem with neighbors i know people are like oh cares what the neighbors say or you know you got bad neighbors well sometimes people care this looks okay you know you can have the sitting out and it blends in with the urban landscape all right and it makes a nice home for worms it tends to hold its temperature really well it tends to hold moisture really well so overall my edc my everyday composting system when it comes to composting in urban environments there's a lot of products out there and i think they all work okay but i don't think any of them are going to really work any better than this simple low-cost everyday composting system that i showed you today so if you struggle with compost piles and you don't want to fork out a bunch of money to buy an expensive composting system in an urban environment or even on a homestead consider using my urban edc composting system built using nothing more than trash cans if you build one let me know what you think leave a comment below thanks for watching until next time be nice be thankful and do the work

Channel: Diego Footer

Views: 87,903

Rating: 4.9328027 out of 5

Keywords: Trash Can Compost, Sorghum Compost

Id: t39WfhyOc60

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020