Hoping to find some resources for concoctions to brew for my garden. Nettle water is the classic, but there’s a lot of other options.

Does anyone know of a good resource listing what plants to brew for what nutrients? Or am i overthinking it and should just throw them together?

Generally calling out for pdfs and spreadsheets with dense information regarding what plants want and/or contain which nutrients.

I need a new compost bin. We put our food scraps in there, so it needs to be rat-proof.

Should be durable and accessible.

I guess metal ones are the most durable. I wonder if the grid or solid ones are better. Solid is warmer (faster composting) but is perfect breeding habitat for slugs.

Glad for any recommendations. I'm in Germany if that matters.

I used to put tea bags in my Vermicompost containers, but the bags always end up not completely composted & blowing around the yard. I think it is because the actual bags have plastic.

Recent my mom is taking a master class in gardening & some of the people are telling they do compost tea bags.

Do the you put tea bags in you Vermicomposting containers? Does the tea bags completely compost?

Has anyone else seen this hr. program about a Japanese older man who teaches young people how to compost all undesired plants/weeds?
Does anyone else compost weeds, without getting germination?

If not here is the steps (anyone wants add to this or correct it, as long as you right, please do)-
1st. Pile up a row of non-fertilizer (once I had nothing but dirt with fertilizer in it, so I did this step with it, weeds grew everywhere) dirt, next to plants you are trying to grow.
2nd. After weeding, place weeds on top of the row of dirt, you made.
3rd. Do a good job of covering the weeds
&
4th. Leave the row to compost

I tried it, three times, it works

Might seem funny & strange, but that exactly what I used to do.
When removing the Non-Indigenous Red Worms from my collecting of their castings, I would keep the largest ones. Afterwards I would planet them in our gardens & cover them with a top, for a day or two, from predators. Since they simply replace numbers, with lesser biggest worms to eat the food, never really an interruption in producing castings & worm tea.

Then it occurred to me, they are a Non-Indigenous & Pervasive Species, so I stopped. Yes, it has occurred me, especially, when I find those same Red Worms had still found a way to escape my C-O-W Vermicomposter, heck, I am sure nothing is perfect, some escaped through the casting piles & worm tea I put down. Yes, I have found living Red Worms in bottles of their worm tea, weeks later.

I tried regular/traditional composting, but never as successful as Vermicomposting with Non-Indigenous Red Worms. For a while now, I have wanting to do better by Using Indigenous South Fl.’s Earth Worms in Vermicomposting
Or if I have to
Going back to regular/traditional composting.

What are differences in what each type of worms eat & will not eat?

…I waited a few days to see if people wanted to pickup at the were green bananas (I had a ton home already) & eat them, I know we have poor migrants workers (which is best use of them). I was thinking would be good even if rotting for my Vermicomposting C-O-W, so I picked them up & filled-up my trays. Now, I can put the star fruit that have fallen to the ground (that I usually use in The C-O-W) into our non-Vermicomposting compost tumbler. lucky me; but one could argue, I should have asked the nursery poor migrants workers (everyone at the nursery are on friendly terms, with me & the dogs), if they were going take & eat them, while they were green.

Perfect example of problems- food waste, did not get the food to the most needy of it, but at least I was able to compost them.

For the next growing season I want to 1) stop relying exclusively on store bought soil and 2) stop wasting all my food scraps. I've started looking into vermiculture (and in particular a multi-tray DIY-solution), and I am currently looking for some good resources (books, in-depth article or video series or online courses) that can help me learn, and I was hoping that people here would like to share some resources they have found to help them on their journey to become composting masters.

I don't only want to understand how to do this in practice, but also how any choices along the way impact soil quality and how to ensure I have soil of good quality for my home garden. So I appreciate any pointers to more general soil-related resources.

Property owners and landlords in New York City can now be fined $25 or more if residents are found throwing a banana peel in the trash. As of April 1, all New Yorkers must separate organic waste from the rest of their trash, similar to how metal, glass, paper, and plastic is set aside for recycling.

This is how the city is encouraging participation in its curbside composting program, where food waste is collected weekly by the sanitation department, same as the trash and recycling.

Getting New Yorkers onboard with composting will take time — and effort. When it comes to diverting food waste from landfills by composting it instead, New York lags far behind other large U.S. cities. The city recovered less than 5 percent of eligible households’ organic waste in the 2024 fiscal year. The fines announced this month are designed to boost compliance; in the first week of April, the New York City Department of Sanitation, or DSNY, issued nearly 2,000 tickets for allegedly failing to separate organics.

https://archive.ph/iLpO5

What do y'all do to winterize your gardens? This is going to be my approach to the potato patch as winter approaches.

As municipalities contract with large waste haulers to comply with a California composting law, local composters say they're being driven out of business.

Getting ready for winter, though it is pretty mild where I live, and thinking about composting in place. Anybody done it? Would it work where you are?

what's up, everyone? i'm Andy, a new moderator of c/composting. i figure i can at least post a heaptalk thread for us to talk about our composting efforts. where are you, geographically, and what challenges do you face? what kind of composting setup do you have?

Hi all:

I got this message from an old colleague. TL:DR - they are looking to set up a good sized pile, but are looking for PDFs that show how to do this and how to start.

I don't have any experience with setting up piles themselves, so any insight is appreciated.

I am wondering if you know of or have a user’s guide for setting up and operating a medium size compost pile on the ground? There are lots of user’s manuals for backyard composting in bins, but that is too small. I want to set up a medium sized compost pile on the ground so that mixing can be done with mechanical equipment or many people with shovels. Covered with a tarp to keep moisture in. Know of any PDFs? There are websites that describe this, but I need to have a paper copy.

https://piped.video/watch?v=rpmzUPhVBG8

Here is a video of the slide deck with the presentation audio if you would like to both see and hear the presentation I gave. Canonical youtube link is here

Here is the slide deck with presenter notes if you'd prefer that - it links you to the google slides but if you're very averse to them please feel free to contact me (this is my handle everywhere) and I will happily send you a .pptx file.

Hi everyone!

First time posting here and so happy that there's a community about composting!

I was having a look at the different posts and saw some about critter IDs. I just wanted to let you guys know that iNaturalist lets you create projects and I follow this one https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/home-compost-exploration, which turned out to be useful sometimes.

It's great that you can contribute uploading pictures of whatever you find in your compost, and pretty fun (if you're curious) to see what other piles attract all over the world. You can also filter by location, of course, and see what you might find in neighbouring piles.

My city collects waste food for composting. There is /no seeds/ rule, likely because whoever uses the compost wants to control what they grow.

I make veg. broth by boiling veg. scraps for ~30—60 min., some of which are loaded with seeds. I’m wondering if the boiling kills the seed, in which case I wouldn’t likely cause problems by tossing the boiled scraps into the city’s compost.

I've been working on composting using another method besides trench composting for about two months now. I've enjoyed it so far, and been honestly trying to compost anything that is possible to compost. One thing I noticed though, as a moved from my brief time using a bucket (there were some holes), to a pile, is that I didn't see worms anymore. So I come to you composting experts to ask how can I bring more worms to my shady compost pile on clay soil.

Hey there everybody

For folks who are unfamiliar with us, we’re a small scale plant nursery that follows permaculture and regenerative agriculture principles. We’ve used tons of wood chips over the years and we’re getting ready to receive more over today and tomorrow. What would you like to know?