Did you know compost gets really hot?
A well-managed pile can reach temperatures between 120 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
Welcome to the Chop Chop Podcast.
I'm Sally Sampson.
And I'm Harry Rosenblum.
Our mission at Chop Chop is to enrich the lives of families by inspiring and teaching them to cook and eat real food together.
Today, we're going to talk about composting, a subject that I am a little obsessed with.
Harry talked to Jane Murner, who runs EarthCare Farm in Rhode Island.
Harry...
Do you want to dig into your conversation?
Jane runs an incredible commercial composting company.
As an example of how big it is, my home compost in my garden is about the size of a kiddie pool and I move it around with a shovel.
At EarthCare Farm.
They have a pile of compost that is over 10 feet tall and the size of a football field.
They move it around with a giant front-end loader machine.
How did composting take root for you, Sally?
I first started composting many years ago after I visited Will Allen's farm in Milwaukee.
It was an urban farm where they grew everything and composted everything.
It was incredibly inspiring.
And when I got home, I tried doing it myself.
It wasn't really successful.
So when Black Earth, a local composting company, started offering curbside composting, I jumped at the chance.
That's awesome.
I first composted with worms, which is called vermicomposting.
When you're basically keeping a worm farm.
We kept it under the sink in a plastic bin and we fed them all of our scraps.
And then afterwards you have worm poop, which is called castings, which is great for your garden.
And then I started composting in my garden in like a compost pile and it was really smelly.
And I learned that you need to add a lot of dried material, like leaves and grass that are dried out, or coffee grounds, to your more wet veggie scraps, or it won't decompose well and it gets really stinky.
Here's the top 10 things we like to put in our compost.
Flowers, veggie scraps, including seeds, skins and pits, tea bags and I just found out it's okay to include tea bags with staples banana peels eggshells, coffee grounds and coffee filters, leaves and grass bones, fruit with pits skin, everything and sawdust.
Thank you.
Okay, what's your first name so we can shout you out?
And then the first thing i'm gonna ask you about is compost.
So do you know what compost is?
I don't know what the compost, okay.
So compost usually you take like scraps of food and then you kind of collect them and then use them for soil so that it helps plants grow or vegetables grow or fruit or whatever you want to use.
One time i put a banana Okay, you put a banana and used it for like soil.
That's awesome.
Anya.
Anya, okay nice to meet you.
So do you know what composting is?
Okay, like how would you describe it?
It's when you put like food and stuff in the compost and it turns into dirt so you can reuse it.
Absolutely, and do you compost or do you know anyone who does it?
Does your school do it?
Yes.
Your school does it?
And we do it too.
Oh nice, do you guys have like a garden or?
We put it in our backyard.
That's awesome.
That's great to hear.
Thank you for doing this.
Thanks, Stella.
This month's book giveaway is World of Rot by Britt Crowe Miller, illustrated by Bruno Velassi.
It's all about the wriggly, slimy, super cool decomposers we couldn't live without.
Follow us on Instagram at Chop Chop Kids and subscribe to our newsletter for more information and to enter the giveaway.
Hey there, this is Matt the Engineer and I have a game for us to play.
Can you guess this month's mystery sound?
Let's turn down the music and give it a listen.
Interesting.
If you're not sure, try describing what you heard.
How does it change over time?
I'll be back before the end of the show to let you know what it was.
Joke.
What type of musicians have the best gardens?
Decomposers!
Jane Merner runs EarthCare Farm in Rhode Island.
If you're interested in compost and composting, you should also check out her podcast, The Composter.
I'm Jane Merner, and I run EarthCare Farm.
It's a large-scale compost farm in Rhode Island.
And EarthCare Farm was started by your dad, is that right?
Yes.
Back in 1977, my dad was just composting. called to work with the land.
He grew up in the suburbs and he just was called back to the land and started a homestead and found that the piece of land he had bought had really poor quality soil.
And so he started to experiment with how to make that soil better.
And compost was such an efficient way to do that.
And there was no place to buy compost around here.
So he started making it and it was so successful in our home gardens that he made it a business.
And I'm so thankful because I love making compost here.
Amazing.
What is compost?
Compost is a process really, of taking organic materials such as food scraps and yard materials and manures and making a habitat for life little microscopic life, to break it down into something even better, a soil amendment that we also call compost.
So it's a process and a product.
That's really interesting.
So it's sort of like you're farming the microbes.
They are my livestock.
Exactly.
Do you have any tips for people who are looking to compost at home or how you would use compost in your garden?
Absolutely.
If you want to make it at home.
A great time to start is actually in the fall if you're in New England or anywhere where there's deciduous forests and the leaves are falling.
Because you do need a pretty large stockpile of carbon or browns, which leaves are perfect for that.
And making a big pile of that before you start composting your food scraps.
That I find to be really helpful.
I find the pitfall is when people just are using too much of the food scraps and not enough of the browns.
That's when you kind of will get kind of the stinky smells.
The browns really help absorb the odors and balance that compost.
And then give it time.
You know, it really takes us a year to make a good batch of compost.
Let those little microbes and worms really do their thing and digest everything.
And then in a year's time, spread that compost on your garden.
Another thing is to like have separate piles.
So have a pile that you're accumulating and making the pile and then Stop adding material to that.
Let it fully break down and start a new pile.
So generally we have at least three piles going at a time.
So we have one pile we're adding to, one pile that's just breaking down, and one pile we can use.
I find that to be something that happens in people's gardens too.
They have one pile that they just are constantly adding to it never allows it to fully break down.
And then yeah, when you're planting, put a little in the hole at the bottom or spread it on in the fall so that it's ready in the springtime for you.
It's really just a gift to give back to your garden.
It's really fun.
And what kinds of things can you take into your compost?
Is it any kind of food or animal vegetable product?
Yes.
So we have such a large system here that we can take in, you know, meats and fish and dairy and all the things.
We find that the more diverse the ingredients are in your compost, the better it's going to be.
Just like humans eating a really varied diet.
If we only ate chicken nuggets, we wouldn't be very healthy.
So even with the yard materials, having leaves and wood chips and trimmings from the fields here, and seaweed and fish and vegetables,
All sorts of things makes a great compost.
We take it all in.
Thanks, Jane, for that amazing primer on what compost is and how to make it.
It's also clear to me that compost keeps weight out of garbage trucks, which means less fuel use and less wear and tear on the roads.
And of course, compost has lots of other benefits as well for us and our gardens.
I've been adding shredded paper and just discovered that it's not allowed in the service I use.
I should have checked first.
And really the rules are different for composting at home and for composting with different commercial companies.
That's totally true.
In our garden.
We don't put bones in the compost, mostly because our dog would end up digging them up and he might choke on one.
Not good.
I have a neighbor, we call him Green Gene, who uses compost in his vegetable garden.
And one look at it convinced me that it was essential to do so.
I can't really describe his garden because it's completely amazing and abundant.
And he grows some of the most delicious vegetables, particularly tomatoes, that I've ever seen.
Not surprisingly, soil with compost produces healthier, more nutrient-dense soil.
I don't have a lot of room to grow vegetables, but I have lots of tomatoes and herbs and they're all in compost-rich soil.
Yeah, one of the reasons that compost is so important is that when we grow vegetables or flowers, they use the nutrients in the soil to grow.
And so by adding compost to our gardens, it helps replenish those nutrients and minerals, just like when we eat healthy foods for our bodies.
Between composting and recycling, I love how little trash I have.
Plus, the trash I do have never gets stinky since there's no food in it.
Amazing photos and fun facts delivered right to your door.
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We want to hear a joke.
What did the gardener say when the kids made fun of his compost pile?
That's degrading.
What did you eat for breakfast today?
Today I had Cheerios and strawberries, which I only have when I have good berries.
I like Cheerios with really good fresh berries.
If you were stuck on a desert island and didn't have many choices, what would you want to eat?
Oh boy, that's really hard.
I should say something healthy, but I think I'm going to say a chocolate milkshake.
Because it would cool me off.
Is there a food you'd like to try but haven't?
I've tried a lot of different foods.
I don't like them all, but I've tried a lot.
You know what I should try is coconut because I've never had coconut.
I can't stand the dried coconut that people bake with, but I would like to try what a real coconut tastes like.
Okay, my question for you is what is the weirdest food combo that you like?
Well, the weirdest food combo is bread.
Dipped in ranch.
Bread dipped in ranch.
And you like that.
Why do you like it?
What makes it taste good?
The bread.
What do you like to cook?
Macaroni.
That's a good thing.
And pancakes.
Chocolate croissants.
Chocolate croissants.
You're a good pancake cook.
Yeah.
You are.
You measure really well.
Did you know?
Did you know?
Did you know?
Did you know worm castings, also known as worm poop, are rich in balanced organic fertilizer?
They contain beneficial microbes, enzymes and nutrients to help plants grow stronger and more resilient.
Georgia was really excited by what she was learning about composting and its impact on the environment, but she noticed that her school wasn't doing any composting and she set out to change that.
Hi, I'm Georgia.
I live in Waveland, Massachusetts.
I'm 10 years old and I go to Clayford Hill School.
I'm in fifth grade.
So Georgia, we heard that you started a composting program at your school.
And I'm really way into composting.
So I'm really excited to talk to you.
But I want to know, why did you do it?
What about composting is interesting to you?
I think it's really interesting about how there's so many facts about composting and you get to research.
And it's really important to help our environment.
And I thought our school really needed to know because we didn't have a good facility.
How did you get started?
I started off with my mom.
She helped me make a presentation and then I did it at an all-school meeting and it was about how composting is important and a lot of people wanted to do it and how it's a pretty big thing and a lot of people are doing a great job at it.
And tell us what the school composts, because I imagine it's a little bit different from home, but maybe not.
So at home we use black earth compost and they take your compost and they turn it into dirt for about two years.
So at school, we decided to use the same one, and it has the same facility and all that stuff.
And it composts a lot more stuff than actually a lot of other compost companies do.
It composts chicken bones, which usually isn't get composted in other companies, but I does for this one.
So that's really cool.
I use them as well.
I love them.
Oh, cool.
So can you tell the kids listening how they might be able to do something like this in their school?
Yeah, of course.
Basically, it starts off super easy.
You just got to tell the person in charge and get that program started running and to let them know that you're going to do this.
And they'll usually say yes because it's a pretty good step.
And then you want to make sure you have dates for like pickups around the school or people can monitor what's going in the trash and what's going in the compost.
And you can just talk to a lot of people about it and say really interesting facts and it will get them pretty interested and it might start a pretty big thing.
So at my house, I have like a little green mini trash can that they pick up.
Do they do the same thing at your school?
Well, they have the same thing, but they have a bigger one because a lot more kids go.
Right.
But at our house, we have the small one.
And how often do they pick it up from your school?
It must get very stinky.
Yeah.
School, they have one week, but here it's two weeks.
Right, right.
Same with me.
Mine's two weeks.
But, you know, now that it's starting to get warm out, it's really going to get stinky.
Yeah, it is.
Does the smell of it bother you, or do you think the smell is sort of exciting?
Well...
The smell is pretty stinky, but it definitely reminds me that I've been doing a good job and that I made it this far.
So yeah, it's fun.
That's great.
And is there anything else you want to tell the kids who are listening?
I definitely think you should try doing this at your school, because it really made a difference in my school and I'm really happy with the outcome and how all of it came out.
And if you don't do it at your school, you should definitely start doing it at your house, because it's a really good change for the environment.
Thank you so much.
I'm very inspired by you.
And I hope that our listeners are.
Thank you so much for having me.
I had a blast doing this.
If you're interested in composting with a company that will pick it up from you, do a quick online search to see if there's one like Georgia School and IU's.
Or you can start your own compost in your yard.
A smelly compost pile typically results from anaerobic decomposition, which means the microbes breaking down the compost are active in the absence of oxygen.
When oxygen is scarce, harmful gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide are released, causing the unpleasant odors.
So make sure, if you're going to have a compost pile in your backyard, that you have enough air and the right mix of ingredients.
Do you want to hear a joke?
What's a compost pile's favorite holiday?
What is a compost pile's favorite holiday?
Earth Day!
All right, it's time to reveal our mystery sound.
Let's hear it again one more time.
For most composters, the last part of the process is sifting their finished soil.
What we just heard is the sound of someone using a hand-cranked soil sifter.
We heard the compost get poured in.
They start cranking the handle, which makes the whole thing shake.
And then we hear rocks rattling down a screen to a separate pile from the finished compost.
This helps gardeners identify bits of compost that need more time to break down and keeps rocks and other debris out of their gardens.
Thanks for playing along.
Thanks for listening to the Chop Chop podcast.
Here at Chop Chop, we celebrate ingredients, kitchen tools and recipes, while having a great time in the kitchen.
Chop Chop family is celebrating our 15th birthday all this year.
And our next episode is all about honey.
So make sure you tune in next month for some sweet info.
For more content, check out chopchopfamily.org and follow us on social media at Chop Chop Kids.
This podcast is written produced, edited and hosted by Harry Rosenblum and Sally Sampson, with engineering by Matt Patterson.
Stella Maiden is our intrepid intern.
Shout out to Tegan, Riker, Hart, Saper, Sarah, Cicely, and Anya.
Thanks for adding your voices to our show.
Music in this episode by Mr. Smith, Juanitos, Jazar, Beat Mechanic, and Lisa Hammer.
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And be sure to check out Jane Murner's podcast, The Composter, wherever you listen.
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Thanks for listening.
I just think to be aware that there's so much life beneath our feet in the soil.
And to be thinking about.
It's no different than animal life that you can see, but just to know that there's Billions and billions of little microscopic beings beneath us and to really honor that life when you're thinking about working in your garden and just even walking in the forest.
We don't even know the half of what these little beings are doing, but they're doing amazing things.
And we're learning just recently that plants are actually ingesting those little, those little beings and becoming part of the food.
And we know that makes the food more nutritious.
There's just so much science.
If you're excited about soil, it's just an untapped area to get into to research and work in.
And it's really fun.
So.
There's life everywhere and to honor it.
