Episode: 3408
Title: HPR3408: Composting
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3408/hpr3408.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:49:21

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3408 for Wednesday, the 25th of August 2021.
Today's show is entitled, Composting. It is hosted by Rowan and is about six minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is inspired by Episode 3157. Rowan describes his experience
of learning to compost. This episode of HPR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
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Welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. This episode is inspired by HPR Episode 3157,
entitled Compost by Klatu. During the early 2000s, I lived in single-family home which had a
number of oak trees around it. Between the trees, other foliage and grass, there was a large
mound of yard waste. While my city, Baltimore, Maryland in the US, will pick up your yard waste if
you put it in bags by the curb. I would use the oak leaves as mulch and did have a mulch pile of
leaves and other yard waste. The time, I thought about composting food, but there was a big issue
with rats in Baltimore and I didn't look into ways to compost. I just knew I couldn't randomly
mix it into my mulch pile. I'm currently living in a different house, without any oak trees,
and not as much yard waste, particularly since we hire someone to mow the grass every couple weeks.
After listening to the compost episode, I was inspired to look into the best way to do it and
given my current living situation. The first thing I did was to look and see if there are any
laws against composting in Baltimore City. The rat problem is big enough that the city purchased
and distributed a large green plastic trash bin to every physical mailing address in the city.
This has been your required to use when putting out your trash. Given the situation,
I wasn't sure it would be legal to do composting in your backyard. Much to my surprise,
it is not only legal, but the city website has a web page on it how to compost and just recently
started a pilot program for food scrap drop off with seven locations around the city.
I have references to these websites in the show notes.
After determining I wasn't going to be a scofflaw, I went to the internet to see what kind of
bins are available for purchase. While Klaatu gives great suggestions for low-cost composting bins,
I wanted something that would look nice sitting out on a shelf for the small inside for a small
inside bin. I found the Utopia kitchen compost bin. The bin is made of stainless steel and has a
volume of 1.3 gallons, 4.9 liters. The lid is rounded and has a series of holes around the top.
The inside of the lid holds a circular shaped charcoal filter. The combination of holes and
charcoal filter capture any odors generated by the food. It works amazingly well and even with
onion scraps you need to stick your nose to the holes and inhale deep to smell anything when the
lid is closed. It holds three to seven days worth of food scraps, most of which end up being coffee
grinds. We've had this bin for 10 months and the charcoal filter is still effective. There are
replacement filters available for this bin, but you could also cut other charcoal filters to fit
inside the lid. Given the potential and the rat and other small critter issues, I wanted the
main outside composter to be fully enclosed and preferably not sitting directly on the ground.
A quick search brings up a number of options, both composers that sit on the ground and
ones that are tumbler-style, which hang on a frame. I went with the tumbler-style compost bin.
This provides the desired feature of not being on the ground and has the added advantage of
making it easy to turn the compost every second or third day just by rotating the bin slowly
for three or four turns. I purchased the FCMP Outdoor IM-4000 Tumbling Composter. The
Composter's octagonal shaped column with two chambers inside it. This allows you to fill one chamber
while the other side is finishing the composting process. There are also aeration holes for each chamber
which can be opened to different levels to moderate the amount of moisture. The combined volume
of the two-changer chambers is approximately 37 gallons, 140 liters. So far, I've been very happy
with this combination. I just emptied a chamber for the third time. I do have a bit of an issue with
compost being overly damp. I've mixed in some drier yard waste in from time to time, and that does
help, but it had times when parts of it get a little slimy. I've also run into issues with flies
and other bugs living in the chamber for a while, but generally I don't see them outside of the
composter just when I open the door to add more material. Not ideal, but not so bad that I did
anything about it so far. I've also found certain things do take extra time to compost,
and usually need some manual help to break down. Pits of mangoes and avocados, in particular,
along with corn cobs take a long time to break down. They do start to compost, and are easy to
crumble in your hands, but keep their basic shape for a long while. Egg shells don't really
break down as Klausu mentioned, but they do become very brittle, and I crumble them up manually
along with the pits and corn cobs. Another issue I've found with damper compost, particularly in
cooler months, it doesn't heat up enough to decompose the seeds of some plants. This ended up being
a pleasant surprise this summer after mixing in the first batch of compost in our little herb garden
during the spring. We now have a combination of plum and medium sized tomato plants, and some kind
of squash plant growing in it. If you don't want random plants growing in your yard or flower beds,
do be careful in composting plants with seeds. While it takes a little extra effort,
composting does reduce the amount of garbage you are sending to the dump, and does reduce the smell
of your kitchen trash bin. It also gives a rewarding feeling as you watch the material break down
into Ridge Dirt, and then mix it into your garden or yard. I recommend giving it a try,
and posting your experience as another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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