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Garbage Can Composting
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| Friday, May 1, 2009 |
Here’s a large-capacity vermicomposting system for vegetableatarians and big families. It might even have sufficient digestive capacity for serious juice makers. You’ll need two or three, 20 to 30 gallon garbage cans, metal or plastic. In two of them drill numerous half-inch diameter holes from bottom to top and in the lid as well. The third can is used as a tidy way to hold extra dry bedding.
Begin the process with about 10 inches of moist bedding material and worms on the bottom of the first can. Add garbage on top without mixing it in and occasionally sprinkle a thin layer of fresh bedding.
Eventually the first can will be full though it will digest hundreds of gallons of garbage before that happens. When finally full, the bulk of its contents will be finished worm casts and will contain few if any worms. Most of the remaining activity will be on the surface where there is fresh food and more air. Filling the first can may take six months to a year. Then, start the second can by transferring the top few inches of the first, which contains most of the worms, into a few inches of fresh bedding on the bottom of the second can. I’d wait another month for the worms left in the initial can to finish digesting all the remaining garbage. Then, you have 25 to 30 gallons of worm casts ready to be used as compost.
Painting the inside of metal cans with ordinary enamel when they have been emptied will greatly extend their life. Really high-volume kitchens might run two vermicomposting garbage cans at once.
PART TWO
Composting For The Food Gardener
Introduction
There is a great deal of confusion in the gardening world about compost, organic matter, humus, fertilizer and their roles in soil fertility, plant health, animal health, human health and gardening success. Some authorities seem to recommend as much manure or compost as possible. Most show inadequate concern about its quality. The slick books published by a major petrochemical corporation correctly acknowledge that soil organic matter is important but give rather vague guidelines as to how much while focusing on chemical fertilizers. Organic gardeners denigrate chemicals as though they were of the devil and like J.I. Rodale in The Organic Front, advise:
“Is it practical to run a garden exclusively with the use of compost, without the aid of so-called chemical or artificial fertilizers? The answer is not only yes, but in such case you will have the finest vegetables obtainable, vegetables fit to grace the table of the most exacting gourmet.”
Since the 1950s a government-funded laboratory at Cornell University has cranked out seriously flawed studies “proving” that food raised with chemicals is just as or even more nutritious than organically grown food. The government’s investment in “scientific research” was made to counter unsettling (to various economic interest groups) nutritional and health claims that the organic farming movement had been making. For example, in The Living Soil, Lady Eve Balfour observed: |
posted by neptunus @ 12:38 AM
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