Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Good for you! I'm not to that point with worm castings. Now to avoid smelly 
compost, leave it open to the air all the time, never seal it up in a bag, 
and don't get too much fresh green matter like grass clippings for the amount 
of browns like dried leaves. For now the smell will dissipate if you just 
spread it out on the ground and leave it dry. Healthy compost will never 
smell. Recommend the old Rodale book on composting. Check it at 
Bookfinder.com , plug in compost for title and Rodale author. I've used that 
book for thirty years. At least starting with the original edition.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/23/2008 at 2:19 AM Michael Kaer wrote:

>I am a "worm farmer", at least that is how it is listed for StatsCan on
>the last census. A closer term would be a worm casting producer for my
>gardens. I currently live in a small city in Canada on a good sized lot(
>for the city, about a 1/5 of an acre). On it I have 2 herb gardens up
>front and a much larger garden in the back.  Worm castings is powerful
>stuff. I have pictures with a few friends from the Green Party ( their
>party symbol is a sunflower) standing in front of my sunflowers. One
>reached as high as my second story window and ended up around 18 feet
>tall.  I was  tossing  organic matter into a bin that was going to feed
>the worms and I ended up with too much( my mother was helping to feed the
>worms,who lives next door). I had tossed in a bunch of news papers bundled
>on top and forgot about it over the winter. Opening up the bin today was a
>chore I could not put off any longer. The wet newsprint had formed a seal
>over the rotting veggies and the stink that came up
> was pretty bad. Mom had just come home and dad made the comment  " Did
>you step in some dog  s--t, mother?". With the fence in the way they did
>not know what I was doing. I yelled over that it was me making the smell
>and I would have it taken care of quickly.
>
> That got me thinking about the future of small gardens and small flocks
>in urban and sub urban settings. Just like at a farm, there will be some
>processes that will not smell nicely and the neighbours  could complain.
>What can be done to keep these types of situations from happening and if
>they do happen how to remedy them?. My solutions was to seal it in a
>plastic garbage can and I will drag it to the back and open it only when
>people are at work or school, and feed it to the compost pile,bit by bit.
>
> The future may well be bad enough without getting our neighbours to hate
>us.
> As a Side note, I plane on moving to a farm in 5 years or less, then I do
>not have to worry as much about smells.
>
> Michael J. Kaer
>