Oh my God the smell!!

[sillygoosegirl]

Mamadorf gave us a nice little compost pail for Christmas. She said the guy who sold it to her said we could just compost right in it, no need form worms or anything. Okay, so we tried that. It's got a little filter so that it wont stink up the kitchen, and we put in some "brown" materials and microbe starter stuff. But it was getting full,

Comments

[zixi]

When we taught about worms at our crazy non-profit, one of the points was that they generally don't eat if it's below 40 degrees (they go into a vague hibernation, but will die if it's too long). So if your garage is that cold, and it likely is right now then, no, they won't eat much. Also, it usually takes them a few days to get used to a new situation, so you have some time before worrying about feeding

[zathrus]

We have a compost bin outside, which we have noticed some odor from, but since it's outside, the odor is able to dissipate fairly well and is not too bad. We also have a bucket that we collect compostables in on the kitchen counter. In the winter, we empty it when it gets full, and often find plenty of liquid on the bottom, as well as mold. In the summer, we empty it every day and keep the lid on whenever we're not actively adding things, because otherwise we get flies breeding in it. Our compost outside does decompose -- we've never added microbes or anything; we may have added some dirt at the beginning, and we've certainly put yard waste in there, but nothing else fancy, and there's certainly dirt at the bottom and plenty of empty space at the top. There's also still-recognizable kitchen scraps from weeks ago near the top, so I'm not sure how long decomposition generally takes. If I really cared, I guess I could put something unusual in, and then poke around occasionally to see when I can't see it any more, but I've never