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I am planning to start a terrace garden and to generate compost for it. I found two sellers Seller1 and Seller2 in my city. Seller1 has "patented microbes" and Seller2 has microbes, saw dust, dry leaves and treated coconut husk to help in composting. The problem is that I'll have to purchase these microbes and extra composting material every month, and the cost seems much higher than what I'll be saving from the vegetables I cultivate.

Problem specifics:

  1. Seller1 says that if I don't want to purchase the microbes every month, I could take half of the old compost and re-use the microbes, but I wouldn't be able to do that more than two cycles, and would need fresh microbes. Each handful of "patented" microbes costs Rs.300. (To compare that to your currency, a loaf of bread here costs Rs.30)

  2. Seller2 has cheaper microbes at Rs.60, but also requires us to purchase sacks of dry leaves + saw dust + treated coconut husk for Rs.140.

Questions:

  1. Is there a simple, safe way for us to culture and grow these microbes ourselves (and not have to spend so much money for other raw materials needed for composting), instead of depending on what looks like a clear business strategy by these sellers? Is it really so necessary to purchase these microbes?

  2. If I take the top soil from some land which has flourishing plants and use it in my flower pots, won't it already have the necessary microbes? If I water the soil regularly and provide sufficient shade, wont the microbes continue thriving such that I won't need to do any composting in the first place? If I ever need more microbes, couldn't I just get some fresh soil from that land again? The empty plot of land full of wild plants and weeds is just next to my house. If I throw organic kitchen waste there, won't the composting happen automatically, so that I won't have to buy any composting equipment or spend time on composting?

The cost kills the enthusiasm of doing composting for the sake of gardening.

Rodrigo de Azevedo
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Nav
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    Ask for the patent number. If it is patented, the patent file is public (it is the principle of patent) , so we can check what they do as "magic". But as you probably know, it is just a scam word (some people say "patent pending" (such files are not public, but a patent pending longer then two years (usually more then half year) is a failed patent. – Giacomo Catenazzi Apr 10 '18 at 09:59
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    @GiacomoCatenazzi, yeah it sounds more like a sales pitch. If you compost the right way (use the right combination of greens and browns), you don't need to add the microbes yourself. – benn Apr 10 '18 at 10:02
  • @b.nota: it is a terrace garden, so probably with less microbes (so maybe taking real dirt could help), but anyway I agree with you – Giacomo Catenazzi Apr 10 '18 at 10:13
  • Composting is also possible in plastic boxes or in barrels (with holes for air). I have a compost box (plastic box) myself on a balcony (without soil). – benn Apr 10 '18 at 10:20
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    I've got some guaranteed permanent-use microbes for sale if you're interested. Cash only, though. $1000/g. – Peter4075 Apr 10 '18 at 10:35
  • I've composted things by accident myself - I left some grass in a gardening bag. No additives needed. – Baldrickk Apr 10 '18 at 12:29
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    How did we ever get by before patented microbes? I mean, it is lucky anyone in the past was ever able to compost anything - ever. I jest, but really if you throw a bunch of organic matter together in the presence of moisture and air, it'll eventually decompose - even if it has been sterilized previously. C:N ratios and microbial boosts can boost the rate of decomposition, but I can't see it being worth paying extra for. – That Idiot Apr 10 '18 at 13:05
  • Looks like seller1 is selling Bokashi bacteriae. This isn't composting but fermenting. A bag of Bokashi bran inoculated with microbes lasts me over 6 months but I have no idea if the bugs are still alive! – Graham Chiu Apr 10 '18 at 20:26
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    Aren't microbes everywhere in our world? No need to pay money for them at all. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Apr 11 '18 at 07:18

7 Answers7

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Why do you have to buy compost resources? Are you not able to make it yourself? You need greens and browns, microbes will enter the process for free.

There are many posts about how to make compost, for example here. If you have space for compost heaps I would just start gathering greens and browns yourself.

benn
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    Wow! It's almost like those sellers are running a scam by convincing us that we need to purchase that stuff. The composting containers they sell are worth Rs.1500 to Rs.3000, when I could have just used waste plastic buckets. – Nav Apr 10 '18 at 10:28
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    Yes, maybe you should try it yourself first. It shouldn't be so difficult. I have a plastic box following these instructions [here](https://www.younghouselove.com/2008/08/younghouselovedotcompost/). But I didn't even used dirt or soil for it, just greens and browns. – benn Apr 10 '18 at 10:34
  • @Nav most stuff can be handcrafted by people (with varying degrees of difficulty). For some of them, the value of the product the companies are selling is the convenience of not - - - **1)** Securing the materials and - - - **2)** Doing said handcraft yourself. You need to understand this convenience to see if the price is worth the (saved) effort. – Mindwin Remember Monica Apr 10 '18 at 12:42
  • The link1 is about Bokashi. – Graham Chiu Apr 10 '18 at 20:28
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The way i was taught composting is, fence off a piece of soil, and just chuck stuff in. Nature will do the rest. Worms, bacteria, insects will do all the needed eating of biggies, sugars, etc.. and convert it to sweet stuff for plants.

Dig it up, mash it around once a week to properly mix everything and you have a nice compost stewing. Stuff will decompose on itself, provided it's moist enough to harbour life, but not too moist to drown it and has plenty of oxygen to sustain it(hence the regularly mixing it up)

Since you are on a terrace, you might want to go bughunting. Hunt down a few rainworms, woodlice, and other mulch fans and chuck em in the compost, they'll have a blast there.
If you do this, don't throw any garlic or onion family scraps in there as it will most likely kill your little helpers and then you have only the bacteria left to break down the big stuff, which takes longer.

Also, feel free to throw in some coffee grounds and tea in there, without bags and paper, to add some extra nitrogen, phosforous and potassium boost to your compost.

Tschallacka
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    We have been composting coffee grounds and used tea bags for almost two decades (*including* paper filters, bags, strings), and the worms in our three bins just love that stuff. We did buy some worms once when we started composting, and they have been propagating ever since (San Francisco Bay Area, so basically no frost) – njuffa Apr 10 '18 at 21:03
  • The problem is there are filters that have plastics/glue, and tea bags that can have nylon bags, cords, or glossy finish tags. Only throw in bags that are labeled compostable or biodegradable – Tschallacka Apr 11 '18 at 05:31
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    I agree of course that such plastic parts do not belong in compost. I would advocate the use of common sense in this regard. While the teabags we use do *not* have the kind of explicit labeling you suggest people look for, they do not have any plastic parts and rot away completely. – njuffa Apr 11 '18 at 06:05
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    True, but one might want to keep the following markers in mind. If the tag is glossy finish, you might wish to remove it. You might also want to remove the staple to prevent too much iron/copper/tin in your soil. Check if the bag is paper or plastic. Lipton here in Europe usually serves it flavoured tea in plastic triangle bags. Also make sure that when you have flavoured tea that the flavor doesn't come from sponges with chemical flavour enhancers. Those sponges might not be natural materials/compostable. When in doubt, call the manufacturer what those flavour buds are made of. – Tschallacka Apr 11 '18 at 07:11
  • Those are useful details and I understand your concerns much better now. I have never encountered flavor sponges or tea bags made from plastic, and when I checked our tea bags right now I found that they do not use staples to attach the tag to the (cotton) thread; most don't even have a tag or a string. – njuffa Apr 11 '18 at 07:37
  • nice. Over here in western europe the "normal teabags" have a glossy tag, cotton string, staple and paper teabag with the exception of lipton. Lipton is also the worst tea one can by(my opinion) because it tastes fake. It's coincidentally also made with plastic and the strange flavor pods. You might want to check if your teabags are glued together to keep the tea in and what that glue is made of/compost safe/not introducing potential toxins or microplastics. – Tschallacka Apr 11 '18 at 07:41
  • Tschallacka your methods for gardening are just not going to be successful. Chucking stuff willy nilly into the soil is find if that is where you are 'composting'. Compost is for soil tilth. Sheet composting might be closer to what you imagine. Compost is not fertilizer, Check this out; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilth – stormy Apr 12 '18 at 08:51
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    @stormy Not all fertilizers are made equal. Stuff like potassium, magnesium and other metals are very important nutrients also. They will remain in the compost heap, enriching the ground, producing healthier crops. I never stated it was meant as a fertilizer, but it will keep and distribute the needed scarce elements the plants need. A lot of the waste products left by bacteria are also beneficial to plants. – Tschallacka Apr 12 '18 at 10:16
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    Good answer but don't forget fungus. Some dead man's fingers will really get things going. Especially important if you compost anything woody. Woody plants might take a little longer. I just pull anything out that's not broken down and completely and toss it back in. I've also had a community of red wrigglers move in and they are really thriving. Never had any issues with onions or garlic. – JimmyJames Apr 12 '18 at 13:35
  • fungus usually comes in naturally, by rain, bugs, pollen, leaves. But harvesting fungus certainly won't hurt. Onions and garlic in small amounts won't do much damage, but if you eat a lot of onions, garlics (if you like spicy food), then you are slowly poisoning the crawlies. I find it better to err on the safe side when giving advice because it's hard to say, you can throw on so much, but that's the limit. it depends on too many factors. – Tschallacka Apr 12 '18 at 13:42
  • Did I not add Potassium and magnesium? The compost heap does NOT accumulate these critical chemicals plant need. The main chemical, element in the compost pile is Nitrogen which is quickly used up to do the work of decomposing. My point was to not expect or use compost as fertilizer. Tilth is important to plants just as much as the correct spectrum and intensity of light, water; not too much not too little...fertilizer, a balanced fertilizer not too much not too little is just as important. I am glad you err on the safe side of less is more. Throwing stuff on does not make a gardener. – stormy Apr 13 '18 at 02:15
  • The only ONLY way to improve soil is the use of organic matter. Nothing else. They say Epson salts, gypsum, gravel, sand, lime,added to the soil improves soil, especially CLAY. Then they jump in with a rototiller and water. This is the exact recipe used to make concrete. Spicy food or aromatic plants like garlic and onions do not poison the crawlies. These little often closely held views and myths and seemingly insignificant details can do a lot of harm. Just one errant belief or notion will cause failure. Only takes a few failures for humans to give up. I only err because basics work. – stormy Apr 13 '18 at 02:25
  • And some of these issues devoted to weeds or the act of buying microbes (for real)? is simply way down the priority list to learn about growing plants for beauty or for food. I have purchased Mycorrhizae, I have found an incredible (organic don't panic) fantastic lawn fertilizer with thatch eating bacteria. I am having a hard time thinking people actually go out to buy microbes when all one needs to do is dump DOM decomposed organic matter on the soil of your plant beds...that feeds the soil and stand back. Adding microbes is not crucial to a healthy soil. At all. Maybe not even good. – stormy Apr 13 '18 at 02:44
  • I agree with you @stormy I only disagree with the accumulation of magnesium and other materials. All plants have magnesium, calcium, potassium. Every time you throw on new greens or browns you are adding new base elements to the pile, which decrease in volume by decomposing and enrich the pile with every addition, giving it a healthy dose of magesium and calcium and potassium and other essentail base nutrients. These bases are used by bacteria/fungi, but they don't leave the pile, they are in a closed loop, making the lump sum enriched in these micronutrients. – Tschallacka Apr 13 '18 at 10:04
  • You are saying that materials easily decomposed such as greens (juicy chunks of fruit, cereal and milk, salad left overs, rice, noodles...kitchen food scraps and of course lawn clippings and the browns (dehydrated crispy leaves, fine fine twigs, chipped woody material, cardboard, paper, leaves that are green...) that these components of a compost pile have potassium and calcium and magnesium as well as 'others' to depend upon for the chemistry plants have to have to create enough food for us to eat...a harvest. Do you have soil tests that show these results? I've seen soil tests. – stormy Apr 14 '18 at 01:04
  • ...these soil tests have convinced me that soil, no matter the tilth, always is lacking in the chemistry most plants have to have that we need to produce food. Zip on Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium even though the Phosphorous seems to be accumulating faster. Decomposers aren't dudes we talk about when saying micro and macro organisms of the soil. Decomposers are everywhere including our own bodies just waiting for us to die. Decomposers decompose organic matter using all available nitrogen to do their job, nitrogen is their 'food'. All other life WAITS until there is DOM. – stormy Apr 14 '18 at 01:29
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilth – stormy Apr 14 '18 at 01:39
  • Check out soil conditioners mentioned in this otherwise great article; this is where people get confused. All of this stuff is non decomposed and/or all the ingredients used to make concrete. Not at all 'soil conditioners' or able to improve soils without very specific conditions most people including me shouldn't be worried about. The ONLY way to improve any soil is using decomposed organic matter. Otherwise, adding anything else is counter productive and usually problem making. – stormy Apr 14 '18 at 01:44
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You don't need to purchase microbes in order to compost stuff (the purchased products look like they're just supposed to speed up the process). Microbes are naturally on the vegetable scraps you put in the compost, in the air, in the soil, and all over other stuff. If there were no microbes, the food wouldn't rot.

Just look up how to compost stuff online. I'm not an expert on the subject, but I know people don't usually add microbes.

It should be noted that banana and onion scraps should contain FOS, which is a prebiotic—which may help the process along (potentially as much as adding microbes, depending on what the microbes are).

You also asked about microbes in garden soil. Yes, the soil naturally has microbes. It may or may not serve you well without compost for a good while. Some soils have more microbes than others. Avoid using things like Calcium nitrate fertilizer, which can kill microbes. There are more purposes for compost than the microbes, however. Organic matter and humic acid are very helpful in a garden.

In my experience, you can add scraps directly to the garden and they'll decompose quickly if you mix them with soil and cover them with soil. The soil microbes do seem to help decompose things. If you just throw the scraps on the ground it could take a couple years to decompose. However, you'll probably want to mix it with the soil at least a few months before you plant anything in it, or it may interfere. However, if there are rats or such nearby, be careful about this, and especially don't add meat to it (meat is said to attract rodents fairly well, and to be dangerous to use in compost anyway). However, I know people do use fish and fish products (e.g. Fish emulsion) in their gardens (I've never heard of people composting them in a compost bin, though).

The disadvantage of mixing and burrying your vegetable scraps is that there's no centralized place for it—your compost will be wherever you bury it, and you may have to choose a variety of locations. Other than that, it's actually my preferred method (since it's so fast)!

Brōtsyorfuzthrāx
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  • Seller 2 also sells bottles filled with a combination of cow urine, milk, ghee and two other cow-based liquids. This is meant to be sprayed on plants :-) – Nav Apr 10 '18 at 11:06
  • @Nav What on EARTH is that meant to do?? It sounds like an expensive way to end up with smelly plants. – BunnyKnitter Apr 10 '18 at 16:56
  • I don't have a clue of what that's supposed to do :-) This is at an outlet of seller2 where the guy seems to be getting all sorts of stuff from farmers and selling it to anyone who is willing to believe what he says. There's a lot being done in the name of the cow in India. – Nav Apr 10 '18 at 17:08
  • @SnyperBunny [Cow urine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomutra) is a snake oil of India. Seems to be partially religious based. – Carcigenicate Apr 11 '18 at 21:20
  • Well, urine can be used like a nitrogen fertilizer, at least, and ammonia (which is in urine) is supposed to stimulate microbes to break it down or something. If it's raw milk, it might have some good soil microbes in it already (but perhaps not the ones that turn scraps into compost). I don't know what to say about ghee. – Brōtsyorfuzthrāx Apr 12 '18 at 03:04
  • Awww, this urine thing for fertilizer is insane. Number one it is not balanced. The gardener has absolutely no idea what they are adding or why. Ugh. Feed the soil decomposed organic matter and the macro and micro organisms WILL BE THERE. Ask WHY some substance works before mixing it with other substances you don't know and adding it to a system one doesn't know. My goodness! Great, now we can add urine as another fad. The cool stuff is human poo mixed with sawdust and completely decomposed. Now THAT is powerful stuff. Urine? Full strength or mixed with milk? – stormy Apr 13 '18 at 02:32
  • Why oh why aren't we interested in what we KNOW WORKS instead we are trying to improve on a basic basic skill/process we know little about. One that actually works scientifically...successfully. Yet we keep trying to make something better...there is no magic to gardening. None. It is a basic basic realm that all humans understood in the past, far better than most of us understand and use today. Why is everyone so against learning the basics to grow plants? There is no magic. Again. Learning the rules and getting your nails full of dirt, hands dirty is far far easier, important. – stormy Apr 13 '18 at 02:37
  • Shule, microbes to include deomposing microbes are EVERYWHERE. Once there is DOM then the soil life can wake up, start reproducing because they have the only food soil life WANTS right on top of the soil. They eat, go back into the soil, poop it out and mix organic matter into the soil beautifully and quite quickly. Decomposed organic matter, not manure, straw, chips or non decomposed organic matter is what the soil life has to have for energy and to multiply. Un-decomposed, the life of a soil goes to sleep until that organic matter is decomposed....creates TILTH for all types of soil. – stormy Apr 14 '18 at 01:36
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Perhaps there is some confusion here in regard to what method of composting these 'suppiers' are talking about. If you're using the Bokashi system, then you do need to buy an activated mix when you refill your bucket - but you also need to bury the contents in soil when they're fermented enough.

It depends how much space you've got for composting - a compost bin or heap should be no less than 3x3x3 feet square, or an equal volume in a compost container. Depending on how much you're growing, if that's not a lot, it might take quite a while to fill up the container, as well as being able to source enough browns to greens.

When you say terrace gardening, it's not clear whether you mean potted plants on a terrace or paved area, or whether you mean terraced levels of open soil. If you mean potted plants, then you need to produce your compost aerobically so that it gets hot enough to kill off weed seeds and pathogens if you want to use the resulting compost in your pots. But if you mean terraced areas of open soil, then it's not so important to produce your compost aerobically, because any pathogens contained within it will be harmless used in open ground. With either aerobic or anaerobic composting in heaps or large bins, you do not need to purchase microbes.

Bamboo
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Another possibility, related to that suggested by @Tschallacka, is to engage in vermiculture inside your home. A box approximately 60cm x 60cm x 45cm, which can contain the food scraps and some shredded newspaper, with a lid, is about the size I used for several years. You'd want to locate some Eisenia fetida, and you need to make sure the box has good ventilation (not forced, but passive). You'd also want to make sure the box has vents in the bottom, but they need to be small enough that the scraps/worms don't fall through, and that means you'll want some sort of catchment underneath it.

I still do this today (though I have a very large box in my basement, so the scale is completely different), and I've only had to replace the worms once after a centipede killed most of the worms.

Derrell Durrett
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Prepared fermentation bacteria serve one purpose: to make processes reliable. You have a similar situation with sourdough: the "traditional" method is to take some of your sourdough for seeding the next batch. Now in a bakery, when due to changed temperatures or invading bacteria a batch goes bad, we are talking about tons of dough not being fit for baking and having to get thrown away and customers not getting served. So bakeries tend not to rely on the closed circle of existing dough or spontaneously fermenting dough since the risk of a batch going bad is higher than seeding (in multiple stages) in a one-way process using bacteria batches as starters from companies specializing on them and maintaining constant quality.

For private composters, the consequences of a batch going bad are much smaller. You can still bury rotten compost (there is a higher risk of rat infestation though) and clean out your compost container. I'd just use leftover compost as starter. Only when you get consistently mould, and icky rut and slime and stuff would it seem to make some sense trying to restart with commercially available starters/bacteria.

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Compost shouldn't be so hard. All you have to do is throw a handful of rich soil in with your greens and browns and keep moist but not wet and turned to aerate. You can add a little molassis or sugar to feed those microbes. That little bit of rich soil is where the good microbes are introduced to the mix. Once the earthworms come it's a party.

TauraBird
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