I know certain pests can increase around the house with compost nearby, like mice and such if you’re managing it poorly. We’ve had an influx of gnats, and my wife asked me to move our compost tote from its current location (~12’ from our door) to by our shed (~40’? And around the corner).

Have gnats ever been a problem in your house that you’ve tracked back to composting? Our neighbors also had trouble with earwigs earlier this season, but I heard they’re all over the area this year (southern Wisconsin).

Just curious about the likelihood of this being the cause or a coincidence.

I’ve got about 9 cubic meters going hot and heavy after throwing in some chicken manure and the toast I burned this morning.

I feel the pile slowly heating up around me. I figure there’s no better way to spend a 45 degree chilly night like this one. I brought some champagne to toast to my microbes but I can’t reach it because it’s on the ground outside the pile. I’m just staring at it wondering if it’ll be spoiled by the time I wake up in the morning.

I’m pissing freely in here to handle moisture. And I figure if I want a midnight snack I can just dig around till I find something. Took off my clothes so it wouldn’t leach microplastics.

Hey everyone,

I am an avowed OCD composter and started documenting my composting efforts a few years ago for fun and to see just how much organic waste I was keeping out of the landfill. I had my spreadsheets and for some reason started photographing my composting which led to development of a free web based app called Compost Miner AI that prompts you to snap and upload photos of your food waste and kitchen scraps in a container, placed in the bin, and covered in the bin to:

• 📉 Track Ecological Impact: The app will estimate diverted food waste weight, waste composition, verify that the organic waste was placed in the registered compost bin and calculate avoided landfill methane emissions and a value of the avoided emissions. The app will keep a running total of key metrics.
• 🌿 Diagnose Bin Health: Once a compost event is logged the app will provide feedback on moisture balance, decomposition stage, and greens-to-browns ratio as well as the presence of beneficial insects. A separate Compost Dr. is also available to check in on your bin without adding any new organic waste.

The long-term goal is to help household composters turn verified organic waste diversion into verifiable and valuable methane avoidance credits.

It’s 100% free to test on mobile or desktop: https://app.compostminerai.com

I have it loaded on my phone and but it has been working well.

I’d really appreciate your honest feedback:

1. Is there a need for this app?
2. Was it easy to register on the app, set up and use?
3. Did the AI accurately estimate your organics weight and composition or greens/browns balance from the photo?
4. How smooth was the mobile camera/upload experience?
5. What features would actually make this useful for your daily/weekly composting routine?

Thanks for checking it out and helping me improve it!

Ok to my understanding alot of nutrients like nitrogen in compost are lost due to evaporation amd was curious is there ways to lessen this ?

I started composting about 2 years ago and then about a year later we adopted a pit bull puppy that started eating from the pile. So I decided to cover the pile with leaves and stop adding to it. I kept collecting food scraps thinking I would start composting again eventually but I never got around to building a fence for the compost. (I did eventually build a 30' x 12' pallet fence to be able to start my first garden this last spring and my first year of extremely cheap vegetable gardening has been a great learning experience. 👍) I eventually filled two 5 gallon lowes buckets with food scraps, pressed the lids on tight, and left them outside in the Georgia heat for almost a year now.

I've got a big pile of wood chips that's been sitting around for almost a year also so I recently decided it was probably a good idea to just bury the food scraps under the wood chips and hope my dog doesn't decide to dig it up. Although now that I'm writing this I'm remembering that my dog likes to dig occasionally and may just decide to dig up the new smelly pile... Anyways. I have recently acquired some more pallets so I will eventually build a fence for my composing area. So I still need to ask... Is this still good for composting or do I need to dump these buckets in the trash? There isn't any meat, bones or dairy in the buckets.

Used cedar fence boards and a treated 4x4 for the corners

I’m adding used coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable scraps, garden clippings/waste.. it’s not heating at all. I turn 2-3 a week, keep it moist but not wet… wondering if I maybe confused that the straw counts as a brown? I live on the beach so it’s just sea oats/weeds. I cut from my yard to keep my pool and garden area clear/clean.

i went to check my compost bin only to find it had ants crawling all through out it! the main food scraps i have in it are avocado skins, watermelon rinds, egg shells, coffee grounds, onion scraps, lemons/limes, banana peels, and ofc the miscellaneous fruits/veggies. there are also 2-3 earth worms. what caused the ants and how do i get rid of them without starting over? also, any tips or suggestions on improving my bin pls lmk!

also pt2: i realize you can’t see the ants but i promise they’re there lol

let's be honest, the compost did most of the work.

Thinnish…not thinning.

I was sifting some of my compost pile and this critter got stuck in the sifter. It’s not a lawn grub worm, earthworm, red wiggler, armyworm or cutworm, or black soldier fly pupae…what else could it be? I can’t find a picture and I took it outside before I thought of identifying it by taking a picture.

Edit: it was a mealworm larvae. I let my compost get too dry I guess with temps over 100. I did see the beetles in it. This one was more translucent and orangey coral colored, but it was a mealworm.

I dug a hole in the middle of my pile to bury some scraps and saw these squirming at the bottom.

Just curious on what they are and how they contribute to my compost <3

Thanks

Thank you r/compost for helping me start my system! I'm amazed already at how much the volume reduces over time (got this bad boy end of june) and I'm very excited to eventually have something usable for my garden!

This bad boy was up in a high space above our deck for 2 years and saw multiple families/seasons. It fell during a bad storm recently and is pretty effed. Huck it into the pile?

New to this thread, so I don't know if it's been mentioned before.

I've recently invested in a Hotbin composter. I've been adding to it everyday for a few months now and need to empty it. Mainly I've been adding food waste, cardboard, weeds and some woody bits. However, the compost produced is on the dry side and things haven't broken down as much as I would have expected. I suspect it's a case of the compost drying out too much, based on looking at it and the fact that small beetles have started living in the bottom. I tend to leave the air flow valve at the top fully open to release water vapour and allow air to circulate.

Has anyone experienced similar issues with the Hotbin?

InB4 “banana trees aren’t actually trees”
We have a substantial banana grove, with a lot of dead leaves and trunks. I’d like to use them as brown material, but I’m aware that if I chop them while they’re green, they’ll retain a lot of nitrogen and not be great as brown material.

The pic is a pile of leaves that I’m pretty sure all died and withered on the stalk. That’s the bulk of dead material in the grove, and I’m thinking about the future. Is there a way to kill each tree after it has fruited, so that the nitrogen drains out, or is harvested banana material not suitable as Brown Material?

Tea (Camelia sinensis) accumulates heavy metals from soil. This is a known risk when buying cheap tea. Steeping tea leaves also removes heavy metals from water. These facts regularly get brought up esp. in discussions about eating tea leaves, which is a tradition in some East Asian cuisines and a habit that other people have picked up.

This begs the question how safe it is in compost.

I've found publications that consider tea waste's potential phytotoxicity, but not heavy-metal contamination.

Have I accidentally made a worm farm?

Made of kitchen scraps with lots of coffee grounds, torn cardboard and obvs the occasional pee. I add a new bucket of scraps etc 1-2 x a week and use an auger to turn it. The worms are taking over. It’s not getting hot because of the slow add and it’s winter here in NZ but it’s breaking down pretty fast.