We're a veteran-owned business focused on making great compost and soil blends. We operate 2 compost facilities in Aberdeen, Maryland and Alexandria, Virginia and have a third under construction in Lothian, Maryland.
Everyday we collect food scraps from homes, offices, and businesses throughout Maryland, Washington DC and Northern Virginia. We compost those food scraps along with wood chips and make some pretty good stuff.
You can learn more about our compost operation and products at www.veterancompost.com
Got questions or suggestions? Leave a comment or shoot us a message.
Happy Composting!
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Thank you for sharing this… great education for those who do well dabbling but want to maybe grow it a bit.
What about brands like if you care unbleached parchment? I looked up other websites that says it’s ok for that brand to compost
Whaaat? Problem?? Since i was a child: just put a stone on the hole. Simply
Like how he's worried about soil falling out, but he dumps all the soil on the floor
Oh look! A fix for a problem no one has ever had! Sweeeeeet.
How dry and dusty is your soil if it just drops out a 1" hole?
Love seeing another vet out there on the same mission! We're doing the same in rural Oregon, using it to support our veterans programs. We've been building up as we go and just got into more equipment. Your advice is appreciated and valuable.
That's awesome to hear! We're all about bootstrapping to the top of the compost world!
Any thoughts if a guy could make a bit of cash (even minimum wage once all expenses/taxes taken into account) doing a small operation by myself or do you think scale is needed? TY
If you focused on making really high-quality compost and blends and managed your costs well - then you could do well even on a micro scale. In this business, you tend to move up to different plateaus. (You start collecting with a pickup truck, but eventually need a bigger truck, etc). If you focus on quality products - then you should be able to make a good living at each of those plateaus. Use an ASP system, invest in a used skid loader, and figure out how you're going to screen everything - those are the most important items getting started in our experience.
@@veterancompost Thank you so much (!) for taking the time to give such wonderful advice. You made some really good points there and really a blueprint for success for a guy like myself with a pick-up truck and passion for soil and realization that many of the things we need to get by and thrive are right in front of us. I can't thank you enough this is the best comment I have ever received on how to be successful! God bless and I love what you have built, a great company with great people.
My grandmother just used to put broken pieces of other pots in the bottom to keep the soil in.
Also same here
dang that’s legit a good idea
Wow! A genius. 😂
i did this for 5 years, went out in my boots in the pouring rain and marched and stomped all over that dirt! I loved working in my compost while I was singing and feeling the stress drop!❤
Place looks great. We need more of these in this country but I gotta ask, the walking backwards, is he trollin?
Thank you!
Great video, Justin! - Cory from Greener Bay Compost
Hey, thanks!
Cory from Greener Bay Compost here. The paraffin wax that coats most wax paper is made from petroleum-based. Even if the paper is coated with wax made from soy and, say, BPI-certified as compostable, the problem for composters like us is that the paper tends not to be clearly and individually labeled/watermarked as such, which means that we can't possibly know whether it is truly safe for composting or not when/if we receive it from someone. For this reason, Greener Bay Compost does not accept any wax, baking, or parchment papers. The material itself simply isn't valuable enough for us to deal with the headache of it potentially contaminating our finished products. Check with your compost service in your area before giving them any coated papers like this. They'll likely tell you they don't want them. It is best to toss them in the trash. 🚮
The biggest issue is to watch out for is grazon. It will ruin your garden for @ least one season. It happened to me 5 years ago.
Grazon is a tough one, that stinks! The top of the label says "Hay from grass treated with GrazonNext HL within the preceding 18 months can only be used on the farm or ranch where the product is applied unless allowed by supplemental labeling" but some farmers go ahead and sell their hay at auction or on Facebook Marketplace, etc to unsuspecting buyers. So, we try to source manure from farms where they grow their own hay and know 100% that no persistent herbicides were used.
@@veterancompost You did a great job of fully covering the topic. I warned a friend 3x about the compost he was making for his garden, but the info just didn't sink in. His garden is going to suck next season. He uses hay for his chickens. I know the fields where he gets his hay. The field is perfect, no weeds. You know it was sprayed just by looking @ the field.
Can someone explain the “carbon stealing nutrients from my soil” statement? I was always taught the larger the carbon pool the better plants can fight off pests, pathogens, and stress. Would love to learn more about this.
Large amounts of carbon, such as uncomposted wood chips, in compost will require nitrogen from the soil you add it to to break down, and the microbes will take the nitrogen from the soil to do this, which will make it unavailable for your plants. This is why much compost is screened to a smaller size before use, so big chunks of unprocessed/unbroken-down wood aren't in it. Really woody compost is fine as a topdressing/mulch, but not as a garden bed filler/soil blend.
I use it n the compost pile and also in a bucket of water to make a liquid fertilizer.
You make manure tea? How do you use it after you make it? Like a soil drench or something else?
We do spoiled hay, shavings, and tree/garden waste (through a chipper), and minimal kitchen scraps with our horse manure. Consistent turning 2-3x per week and I can get temps upwards of 150 with no weeds…. I can make a lumpy; well composted product in about 45-90 days depending on rain.
Thats great! We've been conditioned as consumers to want super finely screened material because that's what the national brands sell. But, lumpy compost is awesome. The larger particle size will help create tilth in soils.
Thank you Justin
Never had a problem with horse manure, seems like a scare campaign to buy commercial compost.
Glad it worked out for you! Wasn't trying to scare anyone into buying other compost - just want to make sure folks know some of the issues. When things go right with horse manure composting - it does make some good stuff.
Thank you for your video from Australia.
Good to know!! I pulverize my egg shells and feed them to my worm farms!🪱🪱🪱
Oh cool! Good way to add nutrients to your castings!
Great info!!🪱🪱🪱
Never had pigweed in my garden until I used composted horse manure. It also screwed my garden because of Herbicide sprayed on the hay. Had to deep turn all the beds. NO HORSE MANURE ever again. Even in the quote Big Box stores compost. Not worth it.
That's terrible! The downside to horse manure compost is that when it goes bad - it can go really bad. I hope the garden recovered! We haven't handled it in our compost piles for about 10 years but are looking to get back into handling it. However, we would ensure weed seed destruction and only recommend the finished compost be used for turfgrass where potential herbicide risk wouldn't be a problem.
@@veterancompost Yeah it recovered after rolling the ground over deep. By the way I'm on the Eastern Shore, do you bring anything this way? My garden just keeps getting bigger LOL
@@8ema533 We cover parts of the Eastern Shore for delivery, or we can recommend some folks who cover areas we don't. Shoot us an email or message via our website. Glad the garden recovered!
Pigweed is a type of amaranth that is edible and commonly harvested intentionally in many areas as food. My household eats it. You should, too. Many "weeds" are edible and highly nutritious! Other examples of such plants: Common plantain, lamb's quarters/goosefoot, purslane, curly dock, wood sorrel, blue violets, dandelions, and lady's thumb.
@@TheCoryGroshek Sorry man, I 'm not a yard grazer. Hope you don't have dogs
I haven't run any windrows with manure yet but I'd like to try it out as an experiment. Right now we're focused on food waste and that seems to be the "low hanging fruit" for now.
We have only composted manure in ASP systems, but have had really good results in the past. We haven't handled it for the last 10 years due to the herbicide risk - but we might open a site to handle horse manure and food waste in the future. The mixture of food waste and horse manure/bedding does make some great compost when done well
Threw a dead groundhog in a large compost pile and kept it hot & aerated…. Was GONE in just weeks, hair, bone, and all
Mortality Composting (ie. composting dead animals) is an awesome way to handle animals lost on farms, roadkill, etc. In the past, folks had paid to send these mortalities to rendering companies (very expensive) or buried them in the ground (potentially bad for water quality) but those options aren't as effective as composting
How big a of space would I need to start my own business?
If you look up "community composter" on the internet - you can find lots of stories of folks who started a compost business out of their garage or backyard. With a simple aerated box system like the Microbin from O2 Compost, you could handle a good amount of material quietly in a small space like a backyard.
Thank you for informative channel, Sir. I am trying to do something like this in another part of the world, and your channel is very informative. I have a question, don't you crush the input waste material before sending it to the piling and curing area?
There are some operations that use rotary mixers (like you would use for cattle feed) to blend and crush their initial mix. However, we see this as just another cost and another machine to have to repair. So, we just ensure that our loader operators get a good mix when then are doing the initial mixing of feedstocks
@@veterancompost I see. Thank you for the information.
Dangit, i've been throwing those things out for years. Cheers for clearing this up. You're the most commonsense voice I've seen on composting, so if you say a thing's okay, I'm gonna be chill about it.
Glad we could help. Our motto is "Compost Happens". So, there is plenty of math and science behind feedstock blending (Cornell University has great calculators on their website) but we try not sweat it unless we are dealing with a tough feedstock. At the end of the day - as long as you add things in moderation and have enough carbon and good moisture content - you're going to end up with great compost!
Damn, that is a good idea I would never have thought of.
I think we got the idea from a KZread video we saw, so we can’t take too much credit 🤣
So glad you put this out there!! Lots of great points! Citrus does just fine in worm bins as well, just like life, everything in moderation...to include moderation!!🪱🪱🪱
Good Call - Moderation is a good theme in composting!
What do you do with the larger screened out pieces after you remove the worms?
Since we feed our worms prescreened material, what usually is left as "overs" (aka the portion of material that didn't pass through the screen) is clumps of material that didn't break apart as they went down the screener drum. So, we simply place that material back in our worm bin with the worms and give them a good soak. Then we add the first layer of "Worm Food" and start all over again. Usually those clumps will break apart over time and hopefully screen out next time. If we see any odd pieces of woody material in the "overs" we will pick those out since the worms won't be able to break those down. But, by pre-screening what goes in as worm food, that helps us avoid too much of that happening.
Thanks for the reply! What are your thoughts on collecting it and selling it as “vermimulch” … or perhaps it would take too long to collect a large enough quantity before losing freshness?
@@bryang.thomas3630 There would be a market for that. Most mulch is full of artificial dyes - so an all-natural product with microbial life like you are suggesting would have buyers. You would just have to figure out the price point that is viable.....
Succinct and makes sense. Shame most people don't get understand the dangers of the wrong bacteria and toxo. Looking to get into composting one day but was curious about this bit. You made it click fast.
Thank you
You're welcome! Happy Composting!
Government over regulation is a scourge on the people the people need to stop voting for
To your point about commercial businesses that adopt your service based on principle but really look at your service as another expense is a great point.....it all boils down to money.....on the other hand the challenge is the opportunity and while i dont have the full answer, i have a glimpse of a vision that is mostly a pipe dream, but the point is we as a society have to complete the circuit.what i mean is our food supply and food growing system is all wrong. We need to move away from big factory farms that dump chemical fertilzers to grow food and move back to using a system that relies on the food scraps going back to the farmers to feed the soil or the livestock that the resterraunt needs to feed its customers. Right now the food is flown in & trucked in from far away, the chef isnt required to send it back because the farmer doesnt operate that way. In our closed loop the chef supplies the farmer with the fertilizer, instead of a big chemical company. The chef literally has no incentive to send his scrap to you in order to make the fertilizer aka compost that the farmer need to raise the produce. If it is possible to create local food supplies that operate in a cyclical way and cut the reliance on sysco and northern haserot, farmers would raise the meat , fruit, and veggies locally, sell to the local restaurant or market to feed the local population, and those people would send their waste to you, and you compost the waste to send back to the farmers as "fertilizer" to replace the nutrients in the soil that grew the food the first time..... To put a fine point on it, the use of chemical fertilizer brought in fromoutside the local ecosystem is the outlier that is disrupting our loop from re connecting itself
Do you guys do anything to get rid of microplastics that screening doesn't get rid of
The material we get is 99% free of non-compostable items - but we are always working to make it better so that our compost is even better. The challenge with accepting outside material is that once it's on our site - it's now ours to deal with (the compostables and the non-compostables hidden in there) Micro Plastics are terrible, and getting plastic out of our inbound material is our top priority this year. We are attacking plastics in a couple of ways: 1. Reaching out every month to the Top 2 customers who are putting non-compostable material in their collection bins. Offering more signage and training to help reduce contamination at the source 2. Litter pickup each day - each employee who works on-site spends 15 minutes each day patrolling for any litter or plastic around the site 3. Building a platform on our "overs" conveyor where and employee can stand an pick out any trash, rocks, etc that they see on the screener belt. We are also working on building a new site where we will only handle pre-consumer material for turning into OMRI listed compost. That way we have the cleanest possible inbound material to make the cleanest possible outbound material.
Thank you very straight forward to follow for a novice gardener like me..👍
Happy Growing!!
why recycle anything that can be used as free compost to grow plants at your house, even just tossing it in a pit/trench to use for planting in a year instead of buying unnecessary compost or soil nutrients
Thank you so much for the information here. We are thinking about starting a composting operation on some land my family owns in East Texas not too far from some major cities and have been trying to work on the economic model for it. This video along with others definitely helps me make sure I take things into consideration that I hadn't before. One question I have is whether or not you have looked at composting via Johnson-Su bioreactors. They seem to be a mostly "build and forget" type of model which would have a lot lower production costs for high quality compost.
Those reactors are pretty cool and look to make some great compost. If your goal is to make small-batch compost, they would work well for that. But, for scaling up production or processing larger amounts of production (tons per day) - Aerated Static Pile or Windrow composting are probably more cost-effective.
So what were the results??
Overall, things broke down very well. We can't speak to specifics as part of the conditions of the testing agreement - but you can read the full report here www.closedlooppartners.com/does-compostable-packaging-actually-break-down-composting-consortium-reveals-groundbreaking-findings-from-largest-field-test-in-north-america/#:~:text=Composting%20Consortium%20Reveals%20Groundbreaking%20Findings%20from%20Largest%20Field%20Test%20in%20North%20America,-By%20Composting%20Consortium&text=Data%20in%20new%20report%20reveals,that%20meet%20reasonable%20operating%20parameters.
Rip teabags before putting them in food caddy/ compost bags. People are not going to empty teabags when putting them in the above.
The central tube is simply an awning tube with tubular motor. Because I suspect that torque is irrelevant in this application, it allows Choice of motor from 14rpm to 48m ( thats only from my experience in blinds trade). Awning motors can also be reversed and could also have a mosfet power control for speed
Thanks for the tour!
Any time! Happy Composting!
Poor audio. Try a microphone.
So much trash 😢.
We estimate that the material we take in has a contamination level of less than 1%. But, even then there are materials that need to be sorted out and disposed of. It’s often “soft plastics” like bags, Saran Wrap, etc. We dedicate several hours of staff time each day to removing these contaminants. Can’t wait for the day that single use plastics are eliminated!!!
That green types just believe lies... Think that we, wormcomposters are better for the earth than idiots with solarpanels and electric vehicles who believe co2 is bad
What it the diameter and length of the trommel?