Composting: The breakdown for Appartment Composting

I can safely say the between myself and my husband we produce about 1 and 1/2 bags of trash a week. Not bad for two people. We recycle, try to use everything we buy and try not to buy more then we need. But as I'm doing this 30day, I'm starting to notice that a lot of our trash is food based. Scraps from dinner, prep scraps, egg shells, rinds and coffee grinds (oh my god the coffee grinds). I started thinking about the garden I'm starting with my mom this spring and how I might be able to cut down our out put even more.
I started to research composting and found all sorts of great articles on building your own system, what to put in our bins, how often to turn or add things. All the good stuff. But the one thing I was concerned about was, well, we don't have a yard... How was I going to compost without a yard? Would this idea make my house smell like to local dump? Do I really need to keep worms in my kitchen? Can you compost inside? Turns out there's a huge internet community full of apartment composters. So I started reading. This is what I found...

First you need to buy the right size bin for your space (that's a given) I bought this one:


Couple of reasons I went with this one:
It's small but not too small
(2.5 gallons)
It came with filters
(less smell)
It was only $20
(not a huge investment for starting out)



Second I was concerned about clean up, really quickly you see this is a consern for more then a few people too. It was suggested to buy some bio-degradable bags to line the bin with. I bought these.

In total set up cost me under $40, not bad for being eco-friendly. But what about the worms? We try so hard to keep bugs and insects out of our house. Was I really going to buy some to keep inside my house? And why do we need worms anyway? Not really. According to wikipedia there are 4 types of composting.

Compost tea
Compost tea is a liquid solution or suspension made by steeping compost in water. It is used as both a fertilizer and in attempts to prevent plant diseases.The liquid is applied as a spray to non-edible plant parts, or as a soil-drench (root dip), such as seedlings, or as a surface spray to reduce incidence of harmful phytopathogenic fungi in the phyllosphere. Compost tea has been shown to cause a 173.5% increase in plant growth by mass over plants grown without castings. These results were seen with only 10% addition of castings to produce these results.

Vermicompost
Vermicompost is the product of composting utilizing various species of worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and earthworms to create a heterogeneous mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast. Vermicast, also known as worm castings, worm humus or worm manure, is the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by species of earthworm. The earthworm species (or composting worms) most often used are Red Wigglers (Eisenia foetida or Eisenia andrei), though European nightcrawlers (Eisenia hortensis) could also be used. Red wigglers are recommended by most vermiculture experts as they have some of the best appetites and breed very quickly. Users refer to European nightcrawlers by a variety of other names, including dendrobaenas, dendras, and Belgian nightcrawlers. Containing water-soluble nutrients, vermicompost is a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and soil conditioner.

Bokashi composting
Bokashi is a method of intensive composting. It can use an aerobic or anaerobic inoculation to produce the compost. Once a starter culture is made, it can be used to extend the culture indefinitely, like yogurt culture. Since the popular introduction of effective microorganisms (EM), Bokashi is commonly made with only molasses, water, EM, and wheat bran. In home composting applications, kitchen waste is placed into a container which can be sealed with an air tight lid. These scraps are then inoculated with a Bokashi EM mix. This usually takes the form of a carrier, such as rice hulls, wheat bran or saw dust, that has been inoculated with composting micro-organisms. The EM are natural lactic acid bacteria, yeast, and phototrophic bacteria that act as a microbe community within the kitchen scraps, fermenting and accelerating breakdown of the organic matter. The user would place alternating layers of food scraps and Bokashi mix until the container is full.

Hugelkultur
The practice of making raised beds filled with rotting wood. It is in effect creating a Nurse log though covered with dirt. The buried decomposing wood will give off heat, as all compost does, for several years. This effect has been used by Sepp Holzer for one to allow fruit trees to survive at otherwise inhospitable temperatures and altitudes.

Since I already bought a ventilated compost bin, I can't do Bokashi. No worries, it seems more the pickling then composting. But some sites state you can use saw dust and news clipping and bypass the worms. I think we'll start that way :) So what can we compost. At first I thought everything and anything you wanted, but it turns out there are rules. 

You CAN compost:
Kitchen wastes, vegetable scraps, fruit scraps, egg shells 
Freezer-burned vegetables and fruit
Spoiled canned fruits and vegetables
Seaweed and kelp
Old, dried up and faded herbs and spices
Potato peelings
Stale bread
Coffee grounds
Tea bags and grounds
Shredded newspapers, Paper napkins and towels
Wood chips
Lint from behind refrigerator
Hay, Pine needles, Leaves and Grass clippings
Houseplant trimmings
Lint from clothes dryer
Brown paper bags
Vacuum cleaner bag contents
(to name a few)


You CAN NOT compost: (or should not I will say)
Cooking oil
Diseased plants
Heavily coated or printed paper
Animal feces
Meat products
Milk products
Rice
Walnuts
Stubborn garden plants (think weeds)
Used personal products (ewww)

So yeah, compost and save the planet...

I watch this show all the time, always felt bad for "heart" :)