Composting household food

[KQ]

fruit fly trap is a glass half full or half empty of stale wine ( is there such a thing ? ) with a piece of saran over the top , punch a few holes in the saran so they get in but they never get out

Apple cider vinegar works well.

Watch what veggies you bring in the house. I bought a live bunch of Basil, the kind with a root ball, and it was infested with fruit flies just waiting to hatch in my kitchen. Was a freaking nightmare getting rid of them. I could barely eat at my kitchen table they were so bad. Also, make sure everything in your kitchen is dry (no leaks, no moisture under the sink or around the dishwasher etc.). Even your sponge can become a breeding ground. An adult female fruit fly can lay up to 2,000 eggs on the surface of anything that's moist and rotting. Within 30 hours, tiny maggots hatch.

[Mustonen]

Apple cider vinegar works well.

This, but the secret sauce is a few drops of dish soap in the apple cider vinegar. Skip the Saran Wrap.

[TurxSki]

Just started the prep for a *Green Cone Solar Food Waste Digester* in our backyard.
An alternative to Composting.
Seemed like a really good idea as I don't really have use for compost.
So far, digging the 36×28 hole, for drainage, into compacted northern nevada "soil"(caliche?) is almost a deal breaker! Even with pick axe borrowed from our neighbor.
Any of y'all have any experience with them?
I paid top dollar, but some municipalities have heavy discounts to encourage use.



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[Core Shot]

http://www.greenconeusa.com/green-co...-digester.html

I’m not sure that would work well.

I had an alleged dog shit composter like that years ago. It didn’t have the cone head though.
Finally dug it up bagged it and trashed it. Too much waste, not enough turnover and decomposition

PS. How is it an alternative to compost? Does it not have to be emptied at some point?

[skaredshtles]

<snip>
PS. How is it an alternative to compost? Does it not have to be emptied at some point?

If it's anything like my mom's compost bin (just a bunch of concrete blocks), you can simply keep tossing organic junk in there for 40 years and it'll never fill up (she has never emptied the bin).

[sb]

Tuesday is soylent green day.

[XXX-er]

They should have been long gone by now but with the record breaking warm weather there are still lots for fruit flys so I got 3 fly traps out 1 red wine and 2 vinegar

So the vinegar has caught 1 fly and the red has caught at least a dozen, maybe my flys are more decerning cuz even set up right beside each other the flys go for the Stoneleigh Pinot Noir and they did not sink with the dish soap in the pinot noir and they don't seem to go for the Stoneleigh Pino Grigio

I supose YMMV but IME red wine with a piece of saran over the trap catches more flys by a long shot

[XXX-er]

And if you don't git em with the Pinot noir you can go after them acoustically

pretty surly eh? an interbike givaway from 2004

[BCMtnHound]

And if you don't git em with the Pinot noir you can go after them acoustically

pretty surly eh? an interbike givaway from 2004

I personally enjoy death to fly via electrocution racket. But the resulting zap sends the hound cowering for some reason, so unfortunately around her I stick to the poisoned bath with the one-way entrance.

[XXX-er]

You may not be able to read the inscription but it sez

" you smell like an onion sandwich"

[evdog]

Why stick with just household food? How about composting your relative who just passed away...

https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/lo...5-56e834a38a61

[bodywhomper]

Anybody using a lomi? Friends have been using one for a year-ish and speak highly of the results. Like us, they struggled with compost bin raiders for a while, which is no longer a problem using the lomi.

[TurxSki]

No. But am still happy with the Green Cone.
(See above. Not a compost maker. But takes care of food waste).
Had tiny flies this summer (off pineapple skins I think) went away eventually. Did dump some cinnamon powder in there.

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[RShea]

fruit fly trap is a glass half full or half empty of stale wine ( is there such a thing ? ) with a piece of saran over the top , punch a few holes in the saran so they get in but they never get out

Apple Cider (with the dish soap as mentioned above) works the same as the Wine if you do not ever have a thing as stale wine.

[kootenayskier]

Anybody using a lomi? Friends have been using one for a year-ish and speak highly of the results. Like us, they struggled with compost bin raiders for a while, which is no longer a problem using the lomi.

We’ve been using the Vitamix Foodcycler (similar to the Lomi) for over a year now. We bought an extra bucket so that we can rotate them in use, and couldn’t be more satisfied. No more animal attraction, no more winter composting, just a simple process that produces endless, ready to use, seemingly high quality compost. We gradually fill a 2 gallon lidded bucket on the deck with compost, and periodically dump it straight onto the garden beds.

[garyfromterrace]

Long time composter here. Child of composters (cause that's what you did if you had a garden). I just dig a hole a little over a ft deep. Spread a layer of my kitchen compost stuff (veggie scraps, coffee grounds, egg shell, fruit scraps) a few inches deep, add a couple of shovels fulls dirt, mix, spread second layer, repeat. The new stuff ends up with a few inches of soil on top so as not to attract unwelcomes.

Six months later, that shit is nice, black, soil. Will send pics if desired.

[highangle]

Composters, your meat scraps that your lodge wolves and cheetahs don't get should go to your ravens and magpies and jays so they can convert them into nitrates and distribute them on your asshole neighbor's cars and deck.

[riser4]

I'm not convinced that using electricity to compost is a green solution.

[kootenayskier]

I'm not convinced that using electricity to compost is a green solution.

According to the communities promoting them (and my wife): Each cycle consumes less than 1 kWh (approximately 0.8 kWh) - this is roughly equivalent to having a desktop computer running for the same amount of time as the cycle. Dependent on where you live, using the FoodCycler[emoji769] regularly should not cost you more than $2-$4 per month.

[bodywhomper]

Thanks for the reference to the foodcycler. I wasn’t aware of other brands with similar products.

This review of the lomi includes a discussion about energy use. I haven’t read it closely with a critical eye: https://www.tiltedmap.com/lomi-revie...hen-composter/

In my neighborhood, the critters (mainly black bear, skunk, raccoon, coyote, raven, deer, and ground squirrel) are pretty good and assertive at getting into shit, especially food scraps. The bin that I set up last year in our formerly poorly(?) fenced garden (we’re transitioning location now) got raided often. When we lived in a dense part of town and had a fenced yard, I had a successful large worm bin. Based on what I’ve seen around our current place (been here 9 years) the bears would tear that bin apart. We don’t have a perimeter fence.

One benefit that I read, the electric composters can compost meats, cheeses, orange peels, avo skin, and stuff like that. My very old experience is that successful conventional home-sized composting of meats and cheeses was very challenging.

I’m curious about Gary’s method, but think it may still attract the animals. Sounds like a good trial to run with our game camera.

[XXX-er]

every fall the bar at the craft brew where I hang out is infested with the little buggers, they dump hot water down the drains to mitigate but sometimes I just have to sit somewhere else

I try not to throw out good food so if its cooked and I just didnt eat it or before its about to go rotten I chop it up and put it in a covered conatiner in the freezer and it becomes part of my next big chicken Tikka Masala cook up which gets split up into 2 cup anchor hocking freezer dishes so i always got an easy dinner

I mean you went to the trouble of preparing it so why thro it out ?

[Core Shot]

2024
Throwing out food waste is illegal in CA
Timely bump.

https://calrecycle.ca.gov/organics/slcp/collection/

Collection Requirements
Single-Family Home Residents and Multifamily Complexes of Less than Five Units
Residents are required to subscribe to and participate in their jurisdiction’s organics curbside collection service.
Residents are required to properly sort their organic waste into the correct containers.
Some jurisdictions will allow residents to self-haul their organic waste. If this is the case, the jurisdiction will provide information about the requirements for self-hauling.

[bodywhomper]

We bought the cheaper lomi a few weeks ago when they had “open box” models on sale. Very impressed! They’re having a mothers day sale of their more updated/expensive version.

[old goat]

I'm not convinced that using electricity to compost is a green solution.

I would think that it beats sending organic waste to a landfill where it produces methane. But I'm too lazy to look up numbers.

[XXX-er]

Back in the day when I had a 60x 100 ft city lot I made a super easy compost for the grass clipppings by stacking treated landscape posts( 8' long ) and lining the inside with chicken wire which really let that pile breath and it would compost all the clippings from a city lot which I could just spread around or put in the garden so I never had to empty it