How to harvest compost made at home?

Harvesting Compost is THE MOST exciting phase, we would have waited for months together to see, smell, and feel this BLACK GOLD.

It is the ultimate bliss, because it is YOU who has converted the waste to something so rich and nutritious for the earth.

YOUR effort to payback to the Earth has reached this point of harvesting it!

So take a moment and celebrate. YOU have made a difference! :)

(Pic Courtesy : Internet)

[PS : The term "Harvesting Compost" means - to prepare it to be used for the garden right away]


I have tried three ways of composting :

1. Khamba Composting
2. Vermicomposting
3. Bokashi Composting

Each one has a difference in harvesting technique.

When is the compost ready for harvesting?

Generally the compost is ready to be harvested when you dont see any raw food particles, it is black in color and when you smell it, it should smell earthy (Remember the wonderful aroma of first rain of the season? Yes, "smells earthy" means that way!)  

If you are still unsure, you do the test on if the compost is ready to harvest.

1. Harvesting from DIY Bins or Khamba

Depending on quantity of compost generated, spread out the compost onto a newspaper, or a  tarpaul sheet, if it is too moist, let it dry in shade for about an hour (not in direct sunlight!) and you could either use it directly in the garden or you could sieve it for finer texture and use it. Put back the bigger pieces in the bin for another round. If you need this khamba compost to be more nutrient, feed the compost to wormbin (Red Wigger Earthworms). Earthworm castings would be much more nutritious for the plants.

Is it mandatory to Sieve the compost? 

No. 

Compost is sieved for finer texture (usually it may have bigger particles that need 2nd round of composting. Example : Mango seeds) 

Compost is also sieved to get rid of bigger dry leaves, that have not yet decomposed 100%. If we use unsieved compost, with bigger leaves for germination of new seeds, the leaves may block the way of the seeds.

If you are using unsieved compost as addition to existing potting mix, these dry leaves in unsieved compost act as a good mulch! 

So, it totally depends on your preference. Nothing is really "right" or "wrong"!

2. Harvesting from Vermicompost Bins

There is no harm if you use the compost from your worm-bin directly into the soil, which contains worms. Do you remember "Earthworms are farmer's best friends" thingy back in school? However, we too need the worms for the next round of compost pile right? Hence harvesting from wormy-bin.

Knowing the shy nature of the worms (they always settle at the bottom of the pile, they do not like sunlight), the traditional method is to spread out the compost from worm bin as small piles (see below pic), let it stay undisturbed for an hour (so that the worms settle at the bottom most portion of the pile) and then remove the top portion of the pile with hand. (Do not expose this to direct sunlight; Beaware that rats and rodents LOVE earthworms, so ensure you are around somewhere)

This is the traditional way, but time consuming. 

Vani Murthy showed us a hack for a faster and easier process. The trick is if we know what the worms like the most, we can attract them to it and the worms would move towards it, automatically emptying the compost pile for us to use them directly without much effort.

                         

So you could use either a WORM TOWER (video)or a generally available FRUIT BASKET (with holes) (video), fill it with moist mature cow dung (do not use fresh cow dung. Use which is about 15 days old)

(Click on the hyperlinks above to see the video by Vani Murthy. You should be the member of Organic Terrace Gardening (OTG) Facebook group to be able to view them.)

3. Harvesting Bokashi Compost

Bokashi Composting has 2 stages. 

In Stage 1, we keep filling the bins with veggie waste and bokashi bran powder until the bin is full. We drain out the leachate using the taps in the bin once in 4 days. This leachate finally drains out and none is produced. Then this bin is kept air tight for 2 weeks or so, until fermentation takes place (white fungus like substance is formed on top) and this Stage 1 is then called 'complete'.

Once this stage is completed, we can either transfer the contents directly to the pot, as bottom most part of the containers for a fresh seed sowing (do not mix in potting mix yet, it is too strong for the plants and can burn them). So that by the time, the seed germinates and grows roots, this compost would have decomposed within the pot itself. This is excellent way of handing waste and not waiting for compost process to complete and shift it to the pots. 

If not, go to Stage 2, where you follow the process of "Layering" and after about 50-60 days, the compost is ready to be used in the garden. If you want to enrich this even more, toss it to the vermicompost bin and the worm castings would make the best compost for your plants! 

[Click on pic above to see Bokashi Compost Stage -2 Progress video. This is ready to be harvested.]


I HAD to put this below picture in my blog to beautify the post even more. This is a collage of just a few's harvested compost / "Black Gold"  from my radomly picked OTG friends.

[Pic Credits : Asha Balakrishnan‎,Bharath Rajashekar‎,Prabhath Vijayan,Priyanka Khaitan‎,Rakhee Chowdhary‎,Sanjana Rao,Uma Hoysala,Vani Murthy,Varsha Samuel Rajkumar‎,Amrutha Joshi Yuvaraj‎,Uma Karnu,Shashi Thorwath‎,Senthil Velan Ekambaram,Kiran Pattar,Rajagopalan Raman,Pavithra Ch‎,Renu Mittal]

The good news is that more and more of us have started to practice it and benefit the soil. We need not have a garden to start composting. Composting is a responsibility to manage our waste at home itself.

A few of them are really keen on HOW TO COMPOST, we just need to spread the word. Awareness and Education on it will fill up the gap.

So, kudos to you all of you who already practice it and like I always say Keep Inspiring!  :)