Solutions to composting queries
Sharing what we learned from your feedback
While it can work in either, Bioverter works better when positioned to account for the climate you live in.
In Australia, the sun can get scorching hot, so try not to put Bioverter in full sun for the whole day. Shade it from the intense midday and afternoon sun if you can.
Shading Bioverter in summer also helps to slow the loss of compost juice by evaporation. You could use potted plants or other barriers to shade at least its base. On very hot days, adding one or two cups of water can help to rehydrate your materials before harvesting compost juice the next day.
On the flip side, catching some morning sun can help to take the chill away in an area with cold nights.
Don’t forget to consider ease of access too. Bioverter's weather protection allows you to sacrifice some shade for a more convenient location.
You should continue to put garden waste in compost bins. These standard systems are well suited to garden waste and make a perfect companion system to Bioverter. Kitchen scraps will stink and rot in a normal compost bin if mixed inadequately, but Bioverter can handle them without any outside help.
Compost bins are handy for dealing with hard waste such as corn cobs, avocado and mango stones, and food-stained pizza boxes. Excluded from Bioverter, these wastes usefully diversify garden waste in compost bins.
An excellent food for earthworms is fresh compost made from nutrient-rich kitchen scraps.
You can use the compost to nourish earthworms and grow their numbers. Put it in a safe space in your garden and let earthworms burrow their way to the food.
We suggest you leave compost harvests in a safe space like a worm pop-up. You’ll magnify the benefits through a build up of earthworms, worm casts and rested (mature) compost.
Fun fact 1: Free-range earthworms dig tunnels which help water and air flow deep into your soil. Plant roots can extend further along the tunnels to obtain minerals from your soil.
Their activity also loosens the soil and relieves areas where the soil has compacted together.
Earthworms excrete worm casts which are clumps of plant nutrition, beneficial microbes, mucus and swallowed soil. The casts are good for your plants and soil.
Fun fact 2: Worm farms use only surface feeders like red and tiger worms. Farmed to produce castings without soil, these worms are unable to improve your garden.
Bioverter is well suited to small space composting. You can use its compost juice to water plants, and use compost harvests to enrich your soil or soilless potting mix.
Freshly made compost has limited applications compared with its mature form. Bioverter simplifies the process of harvesting and resting in a plant pot, enabling you to produce nutrient-dense improvers of potting material.
Compost flies are a problem only when your Bioverter is fed unbalanced wastes for a while.
They are tiny black insects that don’t bite or carry disease, but can breed incredibly fast and are a real nuisance in large numbers. Adults lay eggs on moist food waste.
You may first notice small larvae crawling over your waste. They are whitish in colour at first, and change to dark brown when mature. Take corrective action before you see too many larvae.
The larvae thrive on food rich in nitrogen. Their rapid increase indicates there is a lot of high nitrogen waste in your Bioverter, so start to restore the imbalance with a top layer of carbon waste. For the next 4 weeks, starve them out by adding waste mixes with more carbon than nitrogen waste.
It may take several weeks to get rid of the larvae and adult flies.
Some larvae may make it to the next life cycle stage and form a protective casing or cocoon. You may see cocoons in your compost harvest.
To stop them from appearing, use balanced feeds to make compost year after year.
You can feed Bioverter as normal right up until you leave. Composting will keep going at a gradually slower rate as the microbial communities inside Bioverter adjust themselves to a slowdown in food supply.
Just remember to empty both your compost collecting Basket and liquid Tray before you leave to make sure they don't overfill.
When you get back, resume feeding and the compost microbes will come back to life.
There are natural compounds which can cause compost juice to froth when you add water to dilute the juice.
These natural frothing compounds can be found to varying degrees in food such as legumes and vegetables like beets. They will not harm your plants.
A little bit of seepage is to be expected. You can spray some water on your Bioverter and wipe the area with a cloth or soft brush to remove the dribbles.
However, if your Bioverter is weeping regularly and developing a bulge, this indicates that you have a sticky mass of matter causing a logjam.
Here’s how to fix it:
- Remove the tray and place a piece of cardboard in the cavity to catch the compost.
- Slide out and empty your basket.
- Wearing plastic gloves, pull out as much of your sticky compost as you can reach from underneath. You want to get rid of the blockage.
- If your Bioverter is full, remove sticky compost from above too. Use a garden trowel and a bucket to collect fresh scraps before taking out the gooey materials. Be gentle with the inside walls of your Bioverter - leave some gooey matter on these walls to get your returned scraps cooking quickly again.
- If your Bioverter walls are still bulging after you’ve cleared the problem, pop a $5 luggage strap around the middle join to get it back in shape.
Rest your sticky compost:
- The sticky compost that you have removed can be rested in the usual way. It may look lumpy for a while and will take longer to rest.
- Keep it in the shade and covered in a damp cloth. Resting will turn it into super compost.
Keep Bioverter running smoothly:
- Whole dry leaves, paper and cardboard are high carbon materials that take a long time to break down fully. Inside Bioverter, they can form a very sticky mass when added in excess and disrupt the flow of compost down into the collection Basket.
- Follow our feeding suggestions to help you achieve balanced composting.
Coffee grounds are a good compost feedstock. Simply add coffee grounds to your kitchen waste but limit the amount of coffee grounds to less than a quarter (25%) of the total waste fed to Bioverter.
Tip: Break up compacted coffee grounds to ensure everything is used to make compost.
You could apply coffee grounds as a thin layer of mulch on soil surfaces. Take care to ensure the flow of water and air into your soil isn't blocked because coffee grounds mat easily to form a barrier.
Fun fact: Coffee beans are the processed seeds of a fruit tree. During roasting of the beans to develop coffee flavour, their thin skins detach and are collected as waste chaff.
Coffee roasters generate vast amounts of chaff and may be willing to give away their waste for you to reuse its valuable nutrients.
You can recycle these two types of coffee waste together. Mix 1 lot of the moist coffee grounds with 2 lots of the dry chaff to form a layer of coffee waste in Bioverter separate from your usual feed.