196 Indoor Composting Machines. Garlic Harvest Tips. Artwork

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred

Tips for beginning and experienced gardeners. New episodes arrive every Friday. Fred Hoffman has been a U.C. Certified Master Gardener since 1982 and writes a weekly garden column for the Lodi News-Sentinel in Lodi, CA. A four-decade fixture in Sacramento radio, he hosted three radio shows for Northern California gardeners and farmers: The KFBK Garden Show, Get Growing with Farmer Fred, and the KSTE Farm Hour. Episode Website: https://gardenbasics.net

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196 Indoor Composting Machines. Garlic Harvest Tips.

May 24, 2022 • Fred Hoffman • Season 3 • Episode 196

You’ve heard of the benefits of adding compost to your garden soil. You may even have a backyard compost pile. Or a compost tumbler. Or, a bin full of worms who are making compost out of your garden scraps. But what about the new indoor composting machines that are on the market? Today, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, and I answer one listener’s questions about these modern devices. Also, if you’re growing garlic, you may want information on the best time to harvest the garlic. When will that garlic be ready? We get the answer from Master Gardener and long time garlic aficionado, Dan Vierria.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots. And we will do it all in under 30 minutes. Let’s go!

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California Early White Garlic

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Green Cone Composter
Beyond Basics Newsletter: Compost Tea
Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, Saturday Aug. 6
Book: Growing Great Garlic by Ron Engeland
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GB 196 TRANSCRIPT Kitchen Composting Machines. Harvesting Garlic.

Farmer Fred 0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred 0:31

Farmer Fred 1:32

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. There's a lot of ways to get in. There's speakpipe.com where you don't have to use a telephone. you just yell at your computer and I hear the question like magic. speakpipe.com/gardenbasics, or you can call us at 916-292-8964 and leave a message. 916-292-8964. You can use that to text pictures over, as well. You can leave a question at our website, gardenbasics.net or the the old farmer Fred email, Fred at farmerfred.com. A lot of ways to get your questions in here to the Garden Basics podcast. As always, Debbie Flower is here, our favorite retired college horticultural Professor. Nay! America's favorite retired college horticultural professor.

Debbie Flower 2:19

I hope nobody gets mad at me for that.

Farmer Fred 2:23

We've trademarked it. Anyway, here's a question that came in. Via SpeakPipe. From Joshua, let's give it a listen.

Unknown Speaker 2:33

Hello, Farmer Fred and Debbie Flower. I'm very grateful for the podcast and all the knowledge and experiences you guys share. And especially when Debbie's there the science behind gardening, as well. And it is the science that I wanted to direct my question towards today. There are these instant compost makers that you can keep in your kitchen that you put your kitchen scraps in, and it supposedly turns it into instant compost. One example of a brand name is Lomi. I see that marketed a lot. What is the science behind that? Is it really making compost? Is it something good for my garden? Or is it just dehydrating my kitchen waste and not something that's really worthwhile? Thanks for all you guys do.

Debbie Flower 3:16

Great question. I have to confess I didn't know there were countertop composters. So I learned a lot that was triggered by Josh's question.

Farmer Fred 3:26

How much did you pay him to send in that question?

Debbie Flower 3:31

Nothing, yet.

Farmer Fred 3:34

Yeah, this was a new world to me, too. I mean, I've heard of keeping little garbage cans under your sink to put compost in, to take out to the pile or to the worms, and things like that. And there's even here in Folsom, California, there is a law going into effect this summer, where you have to further separate your kitchen waste and add it to your green waste. And so okay, that means you have to have another little container on the kitchen sink.

Debbie Flower 4:02

Which I do already. And it's not that hard, folks,

Farmer Fred 4:07

Well, the important part of that is keeping the container for the worms separate from that container that goes in the green waste, because the green waste kitchen scraps can include oils, and meats, which you don't want to give to the worms.

Debbie Flower 4:23

They're doing a fermentation process. What I learned from the research I did about this is that there are basically three ways that compost is created by these countertop machines. And there are places that have ramped that up, that have giant machines that handle lots more stuff, but that these kitchen ones do a similar process. The first one is, as Josh speculated, is that it just dries out what you put in, it grinds it up, and that's what you get. Ground up dried stuff.

Farmer Fred 4:45

So it's using heat and blades?

Debbie Flower 4:57

Heat and blades, correct. The second one uses a micro organism that typically it's a bacteria that needs a certain environment and the machine provides the environment, it might be certain humidity, temperature, aeration, and it, those microbes work very well, very fast, in the correct environment to produce this compost after 24 hours. The quality of the compost, I could not find out from anything I researched, I would assume it's fine, that it would go in the garden, and it would do positive things. The third is a fermentation process. And fermentation is typically done with a fungus. And that one can take oils and meat products, and you can ferment the food. And some of the fermentation processes take longer than these countertop machines advertised, longer than 24 hours. So I don't know how many of the countertop ones ferment the food. I think they're primarily the drying, grind kind and the bacterial ones.

Farmer Fred 6:05

Well, in the case of the Lomi, it does have that bacteria component to it, as well, correct. And that may even be an add-on subscription service to this. And one thing I learned, reading about the Lomi and reading the reviews of it is: read all the information before you order. read it very carefully. Because there may be some surprises, like waiting several months before you get your machine.

Debbie Flower 6:34

I assume this is a fairly new technology, fairly new product, at least some stuff I read indicated that they've been doing this in Japan for quite a while. But we might be a new market and that companies go through growing pains when they add a new market for their product. So that may be part of the the slowness of it. They are not cheap machines, several hundreds of dollars. They use electricity. And in some cases, you need to purchase your bacteria on a regular basis. Some of the machines say if you just leave some of the already composted material in the machine and can continue to add fresh material, then the bacteria continues to thrive. If you go on vacation, it's all going to die and then you would have to re- inoculate it. So it's it's a can be a tricky thing to use.

Farmer Fred 7:30

The other thing, too , with whatever machine you're thinking of getting is: go online and do a search for reviews. And read the reviews because some of these machines have some rather scathing reviews attached to them about interesting billing practices or the machines that fail. Just read it all, do as much research as possible on the particular machine that you're looking for. You know, there's nothing wrong with keeping a small garbage can under your sink.

Debbie Flower 8:02

Right. and vermicomposting you can do indoors. I have a green cone composter outdoors, and that works very well. It does not take meat products or grease or fats. There are techniques for gardening where you actually do the composting right in place in the garden in a hole in the middle of the garden. So there are other less expensive, not as fast and if you are just throwing the kitchen waste into the garden, maybe they attract vermin,

Farmer Fred 8:34

Talk about your green cone, because I saw that set up in your yard. And it's an interesting little structure. It does look like an upside down, green, ice cream cone. And you're literally putting your kitchen scraps in that, out in the yard. And nobody can get to it.

Debbie Flower 8:51

Correct. This is the third residence where I've had a green cone composter and it's worked very well in all of them. No, they're not paying me for this. They only build them when they have enough orders. So you have to get online and order it and it is called the green cone composter. It's tall enough, which it's about three feet tall. A raccoon was my initial fear. It cannot get into it. It has a lid with a hinge and a lock. I'd say I've broken every hinge and lock that has come on them. That's kind of the weak point of the thing, but I just put a rock on top, only because the lid blows away. Nothing has tried to get into it. I have lots of worms that come out of it. One thing people don't like about it is that you don't harvest from it. Everything just disappears, because the worms come to it from underground. You have buried a fairly large sort of laundry basket underground and that's where your compost goes, and the worms come to it and drag the stuff away. I had my best one for 15 or more years, never emptied it. So I went to move. That's when I found out that the tea bags (that I use) was not biodegradable, at least not by the worms. So I had a lot of tea bags, empty tea bags in it.

Farmer Fred 10:08

So it probably would pay you, after the first month or two of filling this, is to dig it up and see what's still there.

Debbie Flower 10:16

Yeah, it would be very easy. You don't really have to dig it up, you just take the top off. And there is your laundry basket full of stuff. And you could see what's in there, whether your tea bags are biodegradable or not. I should say that whether your tea bags would be broken down by the things that are in the soil in a reasonable amount of time. Biodegradable, can have a very long definition.

Farmer Fred 10:38

Yeah, I wonder if you have to move it around your yard?

Debbie Flower 10:42

I never did. You could. You're creating a very microbe rich area right there.

Farmer Fred 10:49

And how far do the worms travel normally?

Debbie Flower 10:51

Good question. I can't answer that.

Farmer Fred 10:53

Yeah, I don't know either. But you certainly wouldn't want a backyard full of green cones but...

Debbie Flower 10:59

New landscaping!

Farmer Fred 11:00

yeah, there you go. Maybe you could play croquet. Construct a little miniature golf course with it. I mean, there are many ways to make compost. I would think that if you say, "I live in an apartment. It's the only way I can make compost." What are you going to do with the compost?

Debbie Flower 11:18

Yeah, good question.

Farmer Fred 11:20

For your houseplants?

Debbie Flower 11:21

You better have a lot of house plants or you don't eat a lot of vegetables?

Farmer Fred 11:25

Are Fritos biodegradable? Not as far as I know.

Debbie Flower 11:29

I have to say that the yard I had this in for 15 or more years backed up to a Greenbelt that had coyotes and foxes and raccoons and people said mountain lions, and nobody came into my green cone.

Farmer Fred 11:40

What about ants?

Debbie Flower 11:42

I've never had any problem with it either. It's pretty amazing thing.

Farmer Fred 11:47

Well, we didn't sell any kitchen composters here, but there'll be a run on green cones.

Debbie Flower 11:52

Tell them Debbie sent you.

Farmer Fred 11:53

Yeah, see if that helps us out. I doubt it. But you never know. Yeah, I'll stick with my worm bin and just keep mulching away.

Debbie Flower 12:01

Right. I am hopeful that this countertop composting system maybe will meld with the worms and composting and that it'll get better, and that more people will be able to afford it and more people will be able to compost in their own kitchen.

Farmer Fred 12:17

I guess you could feed fine compost to the worms in a worm bin good.

Debbie Flower 12:21

You could certainly put the dehydrated and ground stuff in there. Yeah, I would think so. I was gonna say they're very adaptable. But I honestly don't know that. Their populations ebb and flow, depending on conditions, temperature conditions, food conditions, moisture conditions, so their population is adaptable. But I don't know if the individual worms can handle many different environments.

Farmer Fred 12:45

We delved into similar weeds in the "Beyond Basics", Garden Basics newsletter that came out on Friday, May the sixth. We were talking in depth about compost tea, but there was a lot of good knowledge there just about compost, and the pros and cons of creating your compost, not the least of which is the water you use. In this case, we're talking about compost tea, but in any situation that involves compost, if any of these kitchen machines involve adding water to it, if you use municipal water, you better know what's in it. Because if there's chlorine or chloramine in it, that could have an adverse effect on bacterial production.

Debbie Flower 13:23

Yes, definitely. So they sound like they're potentially persnickety machines.

Farmer Fred 13:29

Yeah, hard to say. Good luck to all of us. We don't know.

Debbie Flower 13:32

But thanks for the question, Josh. It was interesting to look into that.

Farmer Fred 13:37

Yes, you're dragging us into the 21st century, Josh. Thanks so much for that Debbie Flower. Thanks for your help.

Debbie Flower 13:42

Oh, it's a pleasure. You're welcome.

Farmer Fred 13:48

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Farmer Fred 15:43

We got a quick tip for you. We're here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It's a project of the Master Gardeners of Sacramento County. We're talking with Master Gardener Dan Vierria. Dan loves garlic. He grows many, many varieties of garlic. But there's a lot of questions, Dan, about when and how to harvest garlic. So when garlic harvest season arrives, you really got to start taking notice a month before you think you're going to harvest.

Dan Vierria 16:09

Yeah, I just plant hardnecks now, and they'll produce a scape, which is the flowering part of the garlic, which gives you some indication that they're getting close to harvest. Once you see that little curly cue come out of the garlic, you want to cut it off, because you want the energy to go down into your garlic head rather than setting a flower. Whack that off, you can cook it, a lot of people stir fry it. It's good, tastes kind of garlicky. I've used it before in salads and stir fries. And then you want to watch the leaves on your garlic. They will start turning yellow in little layers at the bottom. Usually after about two or three leafs start turning yellow, about halfway up, get a digging fork or a trowel and carefully lift one up, just to look at it and see if the cloves are formed and are defined. If they aren't, I'll carefully put it back in the ground because I don't want to waste that head. And I'll wait a little longer. And then also, once you get the leaf startint to turn yellow at the bottom, all about halfway up. You also want to shut your water off. I usually do that about 10 days before harvest, you can do two weeks, you don't want your head rotting in the soil. So turn your water off, check it again. And once it's ready to go, you can lift gently with the trowel or a digging fork, just be careful you don't puncture the head because it won't store. You can harvest your garlic then. Do not pull it up by hand unless you have a really light soil. But I wouldn't recommend pulling it up at all, I would gently lift it up and get it out of there, you're going to have to cure it, which basically means tying some garlic heads together with the leaves, and then hanging it somewhere where it gets pretty good circulation. I usually hang mine under a citrus tree, just hang it on a branch, maybe eight or 10, garlic heads tied together, and let that cure for maybe two weeks, that hardens them, it gets it ready to store. And then when it's all ready, you can cut the stalks off and then clean it up a little. I usually put mine in a basket, y like one of those old Easter baskets, or something like that. And then I'll tuck it under a kitchen cabinet in a dark cool place. And I still am using garlic from last year. The hardnecks that I grow store a long time; and softnecks store even longer, according to some people. But I found they both store pretty well if you keep them in the right place.

Farmer Fred 18:50

For those who don't know, define the differences between a hardneck and softneck garlic.

Dan Vierria 18:55

Well, a hardneck has a hard stalk that comes out, it usually has fewer cloves sometimes. And it'll produce scapes which softnecks don't. You can either plant your garlic in the fall or the spring. I always plant mine in the fall.

Farmer Fred 19:09

With the softnecks, then, what you'd be watching for is the leaf turning color. And then there's always been debate among garlic heads about how many leaves need to turn brown before you start the harvesting process. Some say three, some say four ,but basically keep an eye on the leaves.

Dan Vierria 19:10

Yeah, that's the key. When the leaves start turning brown, yellowish brown, then lift up one or two and check them. That works great. You don't really disturb the garlic head if you do it gently and put it back gently.

Farmer Fred 19:41

For those who have never grown garlic before you said that when you dig it up, you're looking for a well defined head. And I guess that's when the cloves are starting to bulge and there's like definite borders to them. Because before that, it would be almost like a smooth, white orb.

Dan Vierria 19:57

Right. you want to see the definition in the cloves When you lift it up, you want it to look like what you buy in the supermarket. Basically that kind of definition on the clove.

Farmer Fred 20:06

We as you can tell, we're at an Open Garden Day here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center where the big event is the first Saturday in August, at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It's Harvest Day. This is a beautiful facility, anything you might grow in your backyard garden, you could probably find growing here. And you'll get a lot of good advice from the Master Gardeners. Harvest Day brings out all the garden experts to help answer your questions. It's really a great event, the first Saturday in August, at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in Fair Oaks Park. We'll have a link to harvest day in the show notes today. Dan Vierria, thanks for helping us harvest garlic.

Dan Vierria 20:44

My pleasure.

Farmer Fred 20:51

We've talked on the Garden Basics podcast and in the Farmer Fred Rant blog page in the past about the heart-healthy benefits of growing garden crops high in soluble fiber, such as blueberries, beans, artichokes, apricots, peas and more. In Friday’s Beyond the Basics newsletter, we veer onto a scenic bypass: how a healthier diet - including growing and eating many of those homegrown crops - along with regular exercise and a positive outlook, has kept me alive and well since my quadruple coronary artery heart bypass surgery and a diagnosis of full blown diabetes ten years ago. Yes, the surgery was a success, but I knew there had to be changes in my life to keep the heart healthy and to control the diabetes. Mission accomplished, And, in that first year of recovery it went so well that by the end of 2012, I was off all prescription drugs for cholesterol control and diabetes, with the doctors’ blessings, of course. How did I do it? It’s in the newsletter that goes beyond the basics, the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, Beyond the Basics newsletter, out Friday, May 27th. Find it via the link in today’s show notes, or visit our new website, Garden Basics dot net . There, you can find a link to the newsletter in one of the tabs on the top of the page, also, you can listen to any of our previous editions of the podcast, and read an enhanced transcript of the podcast episode you are now listening to. That’s at Garden Basics dot net, where you can also link to the Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics, and it’s free. Look for it on Friday, May 27th. Take a deeper dive into gardening, with the Beyond the Basics newsletter. Find it at garden basics dot net or at garden basics dot substack dot com. Thanks for listening and thanks for reading.

Farmer Fred 22:51

Garden Basics With Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics dot net. That’s where you can find out about the free, Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you so much for listening.