How We Turn Food Scraps into Compost in 90 days - Veteran Compost Facility Tour
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2024
- Justen Garrity (Founder of Veteran Compost) does a tour of the Aberdeen, MD compost facility. Follow along and see the process for turning food waste and wood chips into awesome compost in just a few weeks.
This site uses the Positive Aerated Static Pile method and temperatures in the piles quickly reach 140F to breakdown materials. After the active aerated compost portion, the material is then screened and cured for as long as possible. Every couple of weeks the curing piles are flipped and moved to further stimulate fungal aciivity and create an even better compost product
You can learn more about our compost operation and products at www.veterancompost.com
Got questions or suggestions? Leave a comment or shoot us a message.
Happy Composting!
FOLLOW US HERE:
Instagram - / veteran_compost OR @veteran_compost
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LinkedIn - / veteran-compost
Twitter - / veterancompost
Love to see more of your content just need a microphone brother 👍 good stuff here.
Working on it🤣
Thanks for being an example of veterans being advocates for positive change and green businesses.
Thank you for your service
Above 131 degrees celcius is way hotter than compost.. im sure you meant Fahrenheit, great video though 👍
Thank you for sharing this important information
I like your channel
Wanted to ask if demand for compost is still strong in your area?
Interesting… the walking backwards just made it awkward though.
Thank you very much for information and for your hard work.
You bet!
What test/tester do you use to measure your ph/ec in-house?!
Microphone pls
Thank you for informative channel, Sir. I am trying to do something like this in another part of the world, and your channel is very informative. I have a question, don't you crush the input waste material before sending it to the piling and curing area?
There are some operations that use rotary mixers (like you would use for cattle feed) to blend and crush their initial mix. However, we see this as just another cost and another machine to have to repair. So, we just ensure that our loader operators get a good mix when then are doing the initial mixing of feedstocks
@@veterancompost I see. Thank you for the information.
I'm looking at all those wood chips and all I can think of is mushrooms. And the pumpkin patch, I mean plant, would be a perfect location. King Stropharia tolerates some shade.
And all that lawn at the start could be such a nice orchard. Maybe some nice grape vines. Berry bushes? Wouldn't that be a great advertisement for the quality of your compost?
Poor audio. Try a microphone.
I believe you meant to say, 131 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius.
Hi Amazing easy technology for agriculture
I always love seeing fellow Veterans doing well and successful.. Congrats Brother.. Your operation looks great.. I just started my first compost pile a few weeks ago.. Im subbed, and ill have to stop by there one of these days when im down in MD.
Thanks! We are here weekdays from 9-4. Stop in some time and pay us a visit. Happy Composting!
Don't u use livestock manure in ur compost system?
Both our sites right now are handling only food scraps and wood chips. We have a site in the works that would handle manure and bedding, but it’s still in the design/construction phase. Once operational, we will be able to share videos about manure composting
Love it! great setup
Thanks!
Don’t you cover the piles during the curing process to stop leaching of nutrients when it rains?
We haven’t covered the piles in the past, but it is something we have talked about. If we could find inexpensive breathable tarps, I think we definitely would. We do recommend customers tarp their bulk deliveries if they are going to be sitting for a while to avoid nutrient loss from precipitation and also prevent weed seeds from being dropped by birds or blown by the wind onto the material. Our curing piles at our site get flipped about once a month and are only onsite for 3-6 months. So, given their shape, size, orientation to the site slope and short time in storage - we believe we have been able to minimize loss
@@veterancompost thanks for your answer. We are looking to get into composting at our farm in South Africa.
Never seen someone walk backwards for so long in my life
3 years of being a tour guide in college paying off!!
Solution for pesticide/chemicals in compost. Certain fungi and bacteria breakdown various toxins and neutralize toxicity
Problem is finding best microbes for specific toxins
Unfortunately it's not that simple.
Awesome!
Thanks as always Justen! Any information on your concrete mixing pad itself? Anything about size, depth, materials, anything would be helpful. I have heard from other site operators that it is one of the best investments in their site and they only wish it was bigger. We just broke ground on our new site and are getting plans together to establish a new mixing pad. We have already gotten a quote and delivery option for 2x6 concrete blocks for side and back walls but trying to get the best information possible on the pad itself. Thanks!
Our mixing/receiving pad is roughly 1,200 square feet, 8 inch thick with wire mesh reinforcement. We made it pretty rugged because we knew we would have a lot of loader and truck traffic on it. We sloped it so that we can collect any liquids and pump them onto the active pile. It’s definitely a great investment for a compost operation!
@@veterancompost Great, thanks for the information. I love the slope idea for liquids to pump back into the active pile. Good to know it's a great investment - there are always so many things we could be investing in, seems this one pays for itself in time.
Have you considered Soldier Fly farming? Rather than composting all the food waste, feeding them to soldier fly larvae would be a better idea.
Feeding animals is higher on the food waste hierarchy than composting, so always a good idea if you can pull it off. We just haven’t seen a setup that would fit our scale and fit our budget. Certainly not opposed to trying it in the future - it would make a great chicken feed 😀
@@veterancompost start off small, like in a small room and try it for a few years. You can tweak it until it's optimised. I think the only problem with black soldier flies is weather. They need to stay warm and don't like freezing temperatures.
But I do like your current set up. And I'm sure there must be a way of utilising that hot temperature created by the compost. Maybe run a few copper pipes through the heart of the pile and see what temperature the water can be heated to. Maybe try heating up a hot tub or bath etc?
Great tour
Good info
Audio not so much…
Agreed, working on tightening up our audio game….
@@veterancompost tricky thing giving critique. Not wanting to be harsh or criticize but to be constructive.
You said 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 ratio. Is that 2 parts carbon and one part nitrogen?
We recommend 2 parts or 3 parts carbon to one part nitrogen. Obviously, lot's of other factors in play that would cause that to change (particle size, moisture content, available carbon, etc) but that rule of thumb has served us well over the years
How do you keep the worms alive thru the winter
The pile generate heat. Also the eggs seems to survive harsh conditions, even if the worms dont.
We now have our worm bins in our hoop house, so they stay warm through the winter. But, back when we kept them outside we would just load up their bins with lots of material so they could insulate themselves from the freezing temps. Back then we would load up the bins in November, and then start to check on them in March/April when things begin to warm up in our area
MICROPHONE!!!!!
We agree 🤣 We bought a microphone for the videos we make now (this video is older but the algorithm seems to love it all of the sudden)
Place looks great. We need more of these in this country but I gotta ask, the walking backwards, is he trollin?
Do you guys do anything to get rid of microplastics that screening doesn't get rid of
The material we get is 99% free of non-compostable items - but we are always working to make it better so that our compost is even better. The challenge with accepting outside material is that once it's on our site - it's now ours to deal with (the compostables and the non-compostables hidden in there)
Micro Plastics are terrible, and getting plastic out of our inbound material is our top priority this year. We are attacking plastics in a couple of ways:
1. Reaching out every month to the Top 2 customers who are putting non-compostable material in their collection bins. Offering more signage and training to help reduce contamination at the source
2. Litter pickup each day - each employee who works on-site spends 15 minutes each day patrolling for any litter or plastic around the site
3. Building a platform on our "overs" conveyor where and employee can stand an pick out any trash, rocks, etc that they see on the screener belt.
We are also working on building a new site where we will only handle pre-consumer material for turning into OMRI listed compost. That way we have the cleanest possible inbound material to make the cleanest possible outbound material.
never put food waste in your garden. never . all the chemicals used in grocery store veggies goes right back into your garden vegetables. duh...
That only applies to America.