Composting

Ahh....fruit flies. I don't think I've ever met a person who hasn't encountered a fruit fly. Their eggs can be found in banana peels and other fruits and when that piece of fruit has been sitting around too long and starts decomposing, it's the fruit fly's time to shine. The reason I have all this wonderful knowledge of fruit flies is because last summer we dealt with swarms of them in our house. Now now, don't go thinking that we're slobs or that we leave decomposing food lying around the house. Here's what happened:

I was watching a show on cable TV...I think it was on HGTV (a network I became obsessed with during the short time we paid for cable) and they were talking about composting. One of the ways they suggested composting was to use a worm bin. I loved the idea that I could keep these little worms in a container in our house and they would eat up our organic kitchen scraps and I'd be throwing less waste in our trash can. Brilliant! So a couple months later, for Christmas, Scott got me The Worm Factory. Yeah, I'm not the typical woman who wants jewelry or an expensive handbag...I wanted a plastic bin that I could fill up with worms that would eat decomposing food. Anyways, we ordered our little red worms (red wigglers to be exact) and they came in the mail about a week later. Since it was winter and freezing outside I had to make sure that I caught the mailman and that they didn't get left outside (all my little guys would have perished!). We followed the directions and put our worms to work and everything was great. We filled them up with food scraps and they were thriving...then the summer came. Turns out it's not a good idea to put banana peels in the bin in a house with no air conditioning (we have AC now, but that's another story for another day) when it's hot and humid outside. The fruit flies were in heaven! We, unfortunately were not... everytime we went to add food to the bin, we'd lift the cover and 50+ flies would swarm out and disperse. The first thing we did was stop putting peels in the bin but fruit flies can lay a ridiculous amount of eggs in a short period of time so they were breeding like crazy in there. The next step was moving the bin, temporarily to the garage which ultimately solved the problem long term but short term, we still had a ton of fruit flies in our house. With a little help from the internet, we devised traps out of plastic containers with tiny holes in the cover filled with apple cider vinegar. They're attracted to the vinegar and go inside and essentially drown. After a month, our fruit fly problem  was pretty much gone, but it was certainly a lesson learned for our composting operation.

Despite this, composting has been a rewarding process for both of us. We plan on planting a garden one of these springs (also another story for another time) and having this nutrient rich compost to use that is essentially free will be awesome. Scott and I have also done a backyard compost pile in addition to our worm bin.

I'm by no means an expert, but I'll outline some of the basics:

For your outdoor compost pile, you can throw almost anything in there. A few of the big no-nos are any kind of meat product or food with fats in it (like cheese, butter, etc). Vegetable, fruit, bread, egg shells, even pasta is all fair game. That's just from your kitchen. Outside, you can use the leaves you rake up, grass clippings, even small twigs and sticks. You put all these items into your compost container, keep it moist, and occasionally move the mixture around to make sure enough air is incorporated to allow the composting to occur.

With a worm bin, also known as vermicomposting, you go through the process I explained above (minus the fruit flies) though you don’t necessarily need to buy a special container. You can find ideas on how to make one out of an ordinary storage tote. The worms usually like to feed on fruit and veggie scraps but you have to balance it out with some fiber too (think paper, egg cartons, and bread). Depending on how big your container is and how many worms you have…once you get them going, the worms can eat half their weight in food a day, so if you get 1 lb of worms, they’ll eat ½ a pound of scraps each day. Basically the compost you get from vermicomposting is worm poop. They eat the scraps and what they poop out is the nutrient rich compost. Nature is amazing!

I’ve provided an overview of composting but a website I found called HowtoCompost.org has been a great resource and I’d recommend checking it out if you want to start your own composting operation and get ready to plant this spring and summer!