Very suitable for domestic quantities of organic food waste, garden and small orchards. Marketed composters of all sizes and materials can be used or built according to simple indications. There is a variant of this composting (vermicomposting or vermicomposting), which is developed with the help of a species of worm called California red (Eisenia foetida), which is very voracious, but which we will not discuss in this manual.
The chest of drawers or silo is very simple to prepare. A drawer made of any type of material with sufficient volume to contain all the organic waste that we produce for at least four months. It has no bottom since direct contact between the earth and the remains is essential; It must have ventilation holes on all sides. The upper part will be covered to better control the humidity although it is also convenient to have small ventilation holes and some environmental humidity inlet; For this part the waste will be poured.
One of its side faces will be ready to open and to better access the pile. At the bottom of this side we will incorporate a small trapdoor where you can take out the compost already prepared.
Composting in these drawers or silos can work continuously respecting the humidity and aeration conditions that we indicated above.
The operation is very simple. The unpleasant smell (not to be confused with the usual smell of each type of organic remains), will indicate compaction, excess or lack of moisture and lack of aeration that will be resolved by turning the waste. If we observe that an excessively whitish coloration begins to appear (presence of a large number of filamentous fungi), we will be faced with a moisture defect that will be resolved by soaking the residues. If we are careful to mix the most aqueous with the least aqueous and the most nitrogenous waste with the least, it will never give us problems.
It is advisable that before settling the composter, we will remove the vegetation from the base that will be used. Also at the beginning of the activity it is convenient that we put on the ground that we have previously stripped of vegetation, some branches of thin bushes to facilitate the initial aeration and some mature compost to accelerate the activation of the decomposition.
There is another type of composting in drawers or silo based on successive flips of the waste. In some of them two or three spaces are used in which they turn around and remake the piles progressively. In this system, residues of higher nitrogen content are needed as it is lost in successive turns.
