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82 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
82 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 3408
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Title: HPR3408: Composting
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3408/hpr3408.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:49:21
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3408 for Wednesday, the 25th of August 2021.
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Today's show is entitled, Composting. It is hosted by Rowan and is about six minutes long
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and carries a clean flag. The summary is inspired by Episode 3157. Rowan describes his experience
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of learning to compost. This episode of HPR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
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Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
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Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
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Welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. This episode is inspired by HPR Episode 3157,
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entitled Compost by Klatu. During the early 2000s, I lived in single-family home which had a
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number of oak trees around it. Between the trees, other foliage and grass, there was a large
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mound of yard waste. While my city, Baltimore, Maryland in the US, will pick up your yard waste if
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you put it in bags by the curb. I would use the oak leaves as mulch and did have a mulch pile of
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leaves and other yard waste. The time, I thought about composting food, but there was a big issue
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with rats in Baltimore and I didn't look into ways to compost. I just knew I couldn't randomly
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mix it into my mulch pile. I'm currently living in a different house, without any oak trees,
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and not as much yard waste, particularly since we hire someone to mow the grass every couple weeks.
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After listening to the compost episode, I was inspired to look into the best way to do it and
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given my current living situation. The first thing I did was to look and see if there are any
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laws against composting in Baltimore City. The rat problem is big enough that the city purchased
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and distributed a large green plastic trash bin to every physical mailing address in the city.
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This has been your required to use when putting out your trash. Given the situation,
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I wasn't sure it would be legal to do composting in your backyard. Much to my surprise,
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it is not only legal, but the city website has a web page on it how to compost and just recently
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started a pilot program for food scrap drop off with seven locations around the city.
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I have references to these websites in the show notes.
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After determining I wasn't going to be a scofflaw, I went to the internet to see what kind of
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bins are available for purchase. While Klaatu gives great suggestions for low-cost composting bins,
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I wanted something that would look nice sitting out on a shelf for the small inside for a small
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inside bin. I found the Utopia kitchen compost bin. The bin is made of stainless steel and has a
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volume of 1.3 gallons, 4.9 liters. The lid is rounded and has a series of holes around the top.
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The inside of the lid holds a circular shaped charcoal filter. The combination of holes and
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charcoal filter capture any odors generated by the food. It works amazingly well and even with
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onion scraps you need to stick your nose to the holes and inhale deep to smell anything when the
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lid is closed. It holds three to seven days worth of food scraps, most of which end up being coffee
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grinds. We've had this bin for 10 months and the charcoal filter is still effective. There are
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replacement filters available for this bin, but you could also cut other charcoal filters to fit
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inside the lid. Given the potential and the rat and other small critter issues, I wanted the
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main outside composter to be fully enclosed and preferably not sitting directly on the ground.
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A quick search brings up a number of options, both composers that sit on the ground and
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ones that are tumbler-style, which hang on a frame. I went with the tumbler-style compost bin.
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This provides the desired feature of not being on the ground and has the added advantage of
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making it easy to turn the compost every second or third day just by rotating the bin slowly
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for three or four turns. I purchased the FCMP Outdoor IM-4000 Tumbling Composter. The
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Composter's octagonal shaped column with two chambers inside it. This allows you to fill one chamber
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while the other side is finishing the composting process. There are also aeration holes for each chamber
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which can be opened to different levels to moderate the amount of moisture. The combined volume
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of the two-changer chambers is approximately 37 gallons, 140 liters. So far, I've been very happy
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with this combination. I just emptied a chamber for the third time. I do have a bit of an issue with
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compost being overly damp. I've mixed in some drier yard waste in from time to time, and that does
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help, but it had times when parts of it get a little slimy. I've also run into issues with flies
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and other bugs living in the chamber for a while, but generally I don't see them outside of the
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composter just when I open the door to add more material. Not ideal, but not so bad that I did
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anything about it so far. I've also found certain things do take extra time to compost,
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and usually need some manual help to break down. Pits of mangoes and avocados, in particular,
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along with corn cobs take a long time to break down. They do start to compost, and are easy to
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crumble in your hands, but keep their basic shape for a long while. Egg shells don't really
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break down as Klausu mentioned, but they do become very brittle, and I crumble them up manually
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along with the pits and corn cobs. Another issue I've found with damper compost, particularly in
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cooler months, it doesn't heat up enough to decompose the seeds of some plants. This ended up being
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a pleasant surprise this summer after mixing in the first batch of compost in our little herb garden
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during the spring. We now have a combination of plum and medium sized tomato plants, and some kind
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of squash plant growing in it. If you don't want random plants growing in your yard or flower beds,
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do be careful in composting plants with seeds. While it takes a little extra effort,
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composting does reduce the amount of garbage you are sending to the dump, and does reduce the smell
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of your kitchen trash bin. It also gives a rewarding feeling as you watch the material break down
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into Ridge Dirt, and then mix it into your garden or yard. I recommend giving it a try,
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and posting your experience as another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org. We are a community podcast
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network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Today's show, like all our shows,
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was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording a podcast,
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then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hacker Public Radio was
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founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomican computer club, and is part of the binary revolution
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at binrev.com. If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment
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on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself. Unless otherwise stated, today's show is
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released on the creative comments, attribution, share a like, 3.0 license.
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