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This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com today with have another exciting episode for
you and I'm coming at you on a field trip from all the way in Averdeen, Maryland and
we are about a half hour away from Baltimore right now, on the field trip today and I'm
excited to show you guys is actually we're here at Veteran Compost, so Veteran Compost
is a facility that composts food scraps to make compost for people that live in the local
area, so that I'm really excited to be here. We are going to get to show you guys there
whole facility, how they make standard composts. Also how they make the worm composts, but
more importantly how they're taking a bite out of all the waste that would normally go
to the land fill. So I guess without further ado, actually lets head up on to the facility
here and show you guys what they are doing. Now we are here at the Veteran Compost facility
and the first place the compost starts is actually with the truck here. They make actually
regular pick-ups six days a week of the input material, so this is basically the food scraps
and food waste with the small amounts of cardboard that they are actually going to turn into
the compost. Now they have just done a pick-up, so actually I'm going to unload a green bin
which is full of the compost. But why is it important that you reuse the
food scraps and make it into compost instead of letting it just go to the landfill? Well
if you put food scraps in the landfill it basically just rots. It does not make any
compost. It creates methane gas which is not good and we want to try to remove things and
not put that much stuff in the landfill. There is so many different things going in
the landfill, that does not necessarily have to be there, like the food scraps, like yard
waste trimmings, like cardboards, like many plastics, can be recycled, but many places
in the country don't actually have program to do this, so I'm glad that a place like
Veteran Compost is filling the void, or filling the niche and more importantly than just filling
the niche, it's actually an American owned business. It's actually a Veteran owned business.
So actually this owner, Justin came back from overseas after his stint in the Military and
didn't have a job. Instead of trying to go find a job because finding a job could be
tough in this day and age for Military or Vets or anybody, he created his own job to
fill a need to make a successful business doing the right thing, by removing food scraps
out of land fill, but by also enabling farmers, especially organic farmers to grow more nutrient-dense
crops by using compost and even the worm castings. So anyways let's go on a journey of how the
food scraps come off the truck, through the composting facility, to make compost and actually
also feed worms to make worm castings. So now we are on the back of the truck and
these are all the different bins that they get in like six days a week to take out into
the field and compost. Now you guys might think that composting is really easy. But
it all starts with the source material so you got contamination in your source material
including plastic straws, utensils and all that kind of stuff, it's not going to work.
So I really like that Veteran Compost here does education with the institutions from
Pre-Schools to Supermarkets and large Businesses to take the ways to train them properly so
that they only get a good input. Now if you're composting in the home It's really easy to
sort and sift through all the different things you're going to compost, but when they're
dealing with tons of bins coming in every day to compost, it can be quite challenging.
We are just literally going take one of these off the truck now, and take it up and dump
it to show you guys what they mix the food scraps with to make some of the best compost
in Maryland. Alright so we are going take a ride on this
lift gate down and dump this guy out. So this is composting on an industrial scale.
This wind row or row of compost which is really about half the size of a foot ball field,
it totally huge they got a all kinds of stuff composting on top, i don't know if you guys
can see it but its steaming off the top because it's so hot, its obtaining like a hundred
and fifty degrees and we about to dump this on to the pile to feed the compost pile. A
good compost pile is always going to have some good inputs and lets go ahead and put
this nitrogen input on the compost pile and we will share with you some other inputs you'll
need for a successful compost pile in an industrial setting like this or even at home.
So before we dumped our *** here on to the massive compost pile, I want to share with
you guys the two essential elements to composting. When your are composting on a small household
scale like hopefully many of you guys are or will after this video, or whether you are
composting on a large industrial scale, like we are here at Veteran Compost, Two agreements:
Number one - you need the food scraps or other yard and waste clippings which is the source
of the nitrogen. The nitrogen is very important so that compost will happen effectively.
Aside from that, Number two - you need what is behind me and
what they're getting free from the local tree service company and what that is, that's the
wood chips, so you can see the pile of wood chips behind me, this is the carbon element,
so when you mix the appropriate amount of carbon with the appropriate amount of nitrogen
inputs you're going to get some compost happening. Which is what you can use to rebuild you soil.
So next, looks like they are piling up all the wood chips here and they are actually
mixing the wood chips off on the pile and I'm going to show you guys next with the food
scraps so that makes a complete system so next we are going move the bin over and dump
it on their pile. Now I'm ready to dump this bin here with all
the food scraps on to the large wind row with all kinds of wood chips and food scraps sitting
here composting down. But before that, I've actually been saving my own compost for the
last couple of days here, so we going to go ahead and make a contribution. All my organic
food scraps. Now I always encourage you guys to eat a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables
where you'll generate a good amount of compost to go back in to the soil to grow your plants,
and next lets go ahead and open this guy up only food waste and let's see what we got
inside. We're rich! We're rich in oranges! So orange juice is definitely one of my favorite
things to consume and it looks like this is a whole tote of oranges we are going to go
ahead and mix this up with the wood chip and then pre lay it down and then we will share
more with you guys about how this specific composting is working here at Veteran Compost.
Alright lets dump it over. Aaah! Best work out I've had all week. Alright got all of
those guys out, now the cool thing that sets Veteran Compost apart from other companies
that pick up compost or food waste is that every time after they pick up the food waste,
they actually take the bins and clean them out. So when you get your bin back you get
a nice clean bin. I don't know how many times I compost my own bins at home and they're
just kind of funky and they smell bad. They literally take the smell out of composting
by cleaning the bins and they are running a really clean operation here. When I drove
up I smelled no funky smells even though all this composting is happening. Next let's take
a look at the mixture and what they have been dumping on their compost piles.
So you guys can now see all the oranges that I've dumped here and besides the oranges they've
got to add the wood chips in here. What's the ratio of wood chips to food scraps? Well
in general they use about three parts of wood chips to one part of the food scraps. So since
I've dumped like one whole bin of the oranges, they'll put like three bins of the wood chips
approximately. And they adjust this, depending on the load they are getting in.
Now besides just the oranges they could be getting things in like different paper towels
and different things like that or even things like the green stripe and this is actually
a eco-compostable cup made out of the PLA material which is corn based.
So these guys will compost down if you have a hot enough pile. Unfortunately most people
do not have a really hot pile and what we are going to talk about next is how they maintain
a hot temperature of a hundred and fifty degrees in this pile so that it all breaks down faster
and sooner rather than later. I know many of you guys out there may have a compost pile
that's been sitting there for years and you haven't got any compost out of it. That's
because it's not active. So next we are going to show you the two most essential components
to ensure you have an active compost pile that's going to work sooner, so you can make
compost now rather than later. One of my favorite mottos is that compost
happens, but it only happens if you do it right. Because I know many of people including
myself, back in the days had compost problems. It just wasn't working properly. So beside
the carbon to the nitrogen ratio and it generally always needs more carbon than the nitrogen
inputs. You also need a few other things. You need the right moisture percentage. So
it can't be too wet. It can't be too dry. They can adjust this by adding more. Something
like a dry material like the wood chips instead of a wet material like a wet food scraps and
they could also adjust this by maybe watering the pile if it gets too dry. The other thing
that's very critical, that's missing from most piles from what I've seen is air. We
need some air, the oxygen which is going to encourage the breakdown of the waste inside
there. So how they're doing that here is that they got these perforating tubes going through
the bottom of the pile out on every ten feet or so, and they've got these blowers here
that will blow oxygen through. now if you don't have a big industrial pile like this
you may not need a blower, you just simple put in some perforated tubes to the bottom,
to get some air flow is definitely a good thing you could also do a similar thing by
actually turning your compost pile I'm lazy these days so I don't like turning my pile
instead I like the compost tumblers So be sure to check my past videos on videos on
how to use a compost tumbler properly, for the best results in mixing compost, in just
about a month or so, from what I've experienced. So after the compost mix in for about one
or two months it's ready to be sifted out. What the sifting does is remove all the large
fragments and all large materials, including the trash that may have gotten into the compost.
They are taking a loader here. They are loading up and putting into the Compost Sifter. It's
going to sift out all the bad stuff and only keep the good stuff. Let's take a close up
look on some of that fresh compost coming out.
As you can see, the compost is coming off the top of the conveyor there, into another
pile. Now making a good compost is like making a fine wine. It gets better in most cases
After the compost have been aged for the appropriate amount of time it's all ready to go, now they
do sell the compost by the cubic yard here, but the loader drive up your truck and go
fill you truck with it or more conveniently for you guys who don't have trucks you can
actually buy it by the bag, so they just been bagging it up here with a scoop and the bag
and you just take this and scoop and fill up the bag, one scoop full at a time. Now
just before I came up to this trip I was actually sifting my own compost for the three good
large bags of compost. Now I want to encourage you guys always to use compost as your primary
source of nutrition to add it back into your garden. That's of course along with things
like the rock dust and the trace which provide your plant with trace minerals. But the organic
matter in the compost is imperative in my opinion to having a healthy garden.
So as I continue to fill up this bag and the one thing I want to share with you guys is
that before you buy any compost you want to take a whiff. Wow! It should have a nice neutral
smell, I mean if smells too strong, like gross or something, it's probably not a good compost.
Besides that, you want to ask or find out what's in the compost that you're buying.
I see the stock they are using here. They're using the wood chips and the food waste, which
is my favorite inputs to use in a compost. Many composts may use high amounts of animal
manure or other things going in the compost. I think the food waste and the wood chip and
other yard clippings is some of the best compost you can make. I definitely would agree that
this is some of the best compost that I have seen here on the East Coast. So far it's very
similar to the compost I've used on the West Coast. Now I always encourage you guys to
source your compost locally. You know, it's almost a waste to ship compost throughout
the country, I think I should be made locally and there should be a business such as Veteran
Compost in every city. Hopefully run by Veterans to make compost distribute to the local area
and more importantly to keep food and other things that can be composted out of the land
fill and back into people yards that they can grow some food in their front yard, instead
of having to be dependent on the grocery store. So I'm just about done bagging up this bag
of compost, we're going ahead and tie this bag off here. And now next I'm going to do
something special. We're going to sign the bag. It's going to get my autograph. This
is the growing the green bag and we're going to autograph it. So one lucky viewer that
comes that visit Veteran Compost, maybe the next one, is going to get to buy the bag that
I filled myself. And you guys have seen on this very episode. You got to Veteran Compost,
if you live anywhere near the area, even if you're not the first one to pick up this bag,
I can definitely say if I lived in the area this is the compost I'd be using to fill my
garden. Now one of the reasons why I like them here
at Veteran Compost, is that they are always thinking now beside just making the compost
there are going to actually turn this compost into another kind of compost that you've heard
about many times on my show. It's actually happening over in the barns, so let's go ahead
and show you guys what they are doing to this compost, to make a whole different kind of
compost that in my opinion ??? more beneficial in your garden than the standard hemophilic
compost that we just saw. Now we are going to get to show you guys the
last part of the compost facility here and we are literally in an old barn, and inside
this old barn they're making some more compost and actually here is one of the cool composters
they have, they have at least three composters on site, you got to see the big one, you got
the smaller one then you got this other cool one they have all kind of cool gadgets that
I've just been geeking out on here. Anyways, let's go into this barn and show you guys
the other kind of compost that they are making here at Veteran Compost.
The other way they make compost is they make vermicompost or worm compost. With their finished
compost, this is really cool, most people will use food scraps and other things to feed
their worms to make compost, but when you use food scraps you could attract bugs and
different things and can be all messy. This is one of the cleanest worm composting
facilities that I've ever seen 'I mean' they are using their finished compost which provide
the worms rich organic matter, and there is really no bugs or no flies and nothing happening.
And now what they do they simply put their screen finished compost down here. They make
sure the moisture level is right. They need to be like eighty percent moisture and they
literally let the worms compost the compost they already generated that was made from
food scraps and wood chips. This is probably the finest worm compost or worm casting you've
ever seen anywhere. Man it looks awesome! Oh and there is a worm stuck on me! And once
again, smelling this stuff, there is no odor! It smells totally neutral. That's definitely
a good sign of some definitely healthy worm castings. I personally believe worm castings
are actually more important to your garden than just the standard compost so I would
recommend adding as much worm casting or vermicompost to your garden as you possibly can. And if
I was starting a garden I would probable use like one bag of the worm casting to like six
bag of the regular stuff, to fill a nice raised bag to grow some delicious food.
So the last thing that we are going to do in this episode today is that we are going
to sit down with Justin, the owner of Veteran Compost here who started the business, because
he was a Vet that came back and didn't have a job, and he's really excited about the composting,
the vermiculture and I've shared with him a lot of ideas that hopefully he'll implement
soon in the future, to create even a better product for local gardeners and people here
in Maryland and the East Coast. Now we are here with Justin, the founder of
Veteran Compost. Glad he could share a minute out of his busy day with me.
John: Justin, so why did you start Veteran Compost?
Justin: I got home from being an Active Duty Service Member, for five year I was a Competent
Engineer Officer so my day to day job was construction
and explosives, however there's just not that many jobs for guys that dynamite on the outside,
so I had to find something else to do ??? is a field and as I looked at different recycling
business models I came across Composting. A lot of potential material, two thirds of
what gets thrown out every day is compostable and the day I opened in Maryland with a shovel
on my hand and mud in my pocket I was number three, so I got a bronze medal just for showing
up. So how can you beat that? It's a business.
John: Wow that's great! So currently like what a hundred percent of your work force
is either Veterans or families of Veterans, is that
correct?
Justin: Correct, several. When we hire, we have preferential hiring for Veterans or immediate
family members of Veterans, since typically, anyone
in the family that can support a veteran is good by us.
John: Awesome, awesome. You know so another part of this is so I want to teach others
to do what you are doing. I mean other veterans and other states and far off places could
do what you're doing, literally start a company and use the food wastes and wood chips in
their area to create a business like you've done. So would you recommend this as a course
of action for other Veterans or other people out there that want to do something productive
and help the earth and help people and make a living at the same time.
.Justin: Sure! I mean I think that if you have a bucket and a shovel you're pretty much
in the compost business, so it does have low barriers to entry. It's not like watching
the next face book, so I think there is a lot of potential benefits or opportunities,
I mean it tends to be very specific to your local area, so I think if it's something you're
interested in you need to pay attention to what are the local rules, or permits that
that might apply to this. What are the market conditions? Is this something that people
around me are interested in? Is there enough people that want food scraps collected or
enough people that want to purchase compost? You know, just like any business I would look
at just a general kinda' what's going on, the lay of the land and then just try to get
smart on compost. You know it's a little bit of leap from the back yard to the commercial
side but at the same time I think it's pretty straight forward. There is a lot of materials
out there. You know, places like Cornell University have free resources on the Web. So you can
go and find a lot of material out there on how to duplicate things like this if you're
willing to do all the leg work.
John: So Justin let's talk more about your input that you just mentioned. Your inputs
are food scraps and wood chips. And so why don't you use yard waste and things, 'cause
this is pretty much yard waste free right.
Justin: Yeah I think compost is a lot like the food that you eat. If you use the right
ingredients and good ingredients, then you know where they came from, you're going to
have good results, So what we try to do is stick to food scraps that we collect so we
know all the sources that provide it to us and typically we only use wood chips because
it's chemical free. Yard waste in this State comes in plastic bag so to remove it from
the plastic bag is nearly impossible and then just the concerns about everyday insecticides
and pesticides and fertilizers that are available, I mean you can walk into places, large box
stores and you can buy scary amounts of long named chemicals then apply them to your yard,
then mow your grass and then put those grass clippings in the green bin at the end of your
drive way. So we just have a lot of concerns about keeping chemicals out and that why we've
chosen to only use the ingredients that we do.
John: Wow! So if somebody is not in the local Maryland or surrounding areas and come here
and pick up some compost from you guys what would you say you recommend they look for
when they are buying some compost and make sure they are getting some good stuff and
not just some wood chip that are lightly composted in a bag.
Justin: It is, the definition of compost is very vague, depending on what State you are
in. A lot of the labeling is strict in some States and vague in other States. So what
I would just look at, is when you flip a bag of any product over, it's going to say derived
from what the ingredients are. So i would look at what materials went into that product,
what chemicals, if any, were added, what types of materials were used in the making of that.
I would also look and see where it was made or who made it, a lot of times the most popular
labels whether they be the store brand or other very popular brand names, didn't actually
make the product. so if you could do, depends on how much research you want to do, but understand
that what may be on the front of the bag may not the person who made it. So I think it's
important to look at what was in it and also just basic chemical analysis. Any compost
should be a neutral ph so there are other things out there that's the best, easiest
way. Either looking at the ph or smelling the product or touching it, if you could find
an open bag just to get a feel for what's in it in, it should smell earthy it should
look like soil and touching it, smelling it, the product will also help.
John: I definitely agree, I have smelled the stuff that he's making here. The compost,
it's excellent stuff. I wish I lived in this area because I would probably buy a whole
bunch of this stuff to have in my garden, and I have an amazing garden. Plus I've been
talking to Justin throughout the day. Maybe give him some more tips and tricks on what
he might be doing in the future. Hopefully he'll be adding some rock dust in with his
compost to make it a one stop shop with the rock dust with the compost built in already.
Justin if someone wants to purchase you compost, from you, your worm castings, let my viewers
know how they can get a hold of you so they can do that.
Justin: Sure,they can go to our website at veterancompost.com, we are on our facebook
page facebook.com/veterancompost. You can order stuff and pick it up all the way from
Philadelphia, to Northern Virginia, we also do sell worms and compost teabags and vermicompost
through the internet and ship it to 48 States in the Caribbean. If you go to the website
we are pretty flexible guys, so if you have a problems we have to compost.
John: Awesome, If you guys come out, Justin has a special offer for you our growningyourgreens
viewers, if you come out ti pick up compost here you get a free compost tea bag so you
will be growing your own compost tea from the worm casting that they actually made here
plus to be the first viewer to get that signed bag.
Justin: If I don't frame it.
John: If he doesn't frame it. So in any case I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode
about how compost can be made. There are two points that I want you guys to remember is
1. If you're not already, make your own compost 2. if you're not making compost you need to
buy compost. Make sure you know what's going in the bag, what's in the compost. Try to
visit the facility and hopefully they will have an open door policy to show you guys
what's going in it so there is nothing going on behind closed doors. I like that Justin
was able to show me the whole facility here. He has nothing to hide and he is always doing
great work.
Final thing is I want to reduce the amount of things that are going to the land fill,
so composting and recycling is the primary ways to doing that and try to use things that
are already on site, in your garden, reuse things instead of even recycling them. so
hope you guys enjoyed this episode once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
I'll see you next time and remember keep on growing.