Stop Turning Compost This INSULATED Bin Makes Composting TOO EASY

Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for you. Today I'm actually in my compost alley where I have, I don't even know, like eight composters going down the row. Link down below if you guys want to see my original video where I compare and contrast all my different composters that I have used. One update to that video that will change dramatically is that I no longer recommend the Joraform composter. A link down below to my most recent video why I no longer recommend the Joraform insulated composter. I personally had good luck with that unit for a number of years because it is made out of metal, was supposedly powder coated, resistant to rust, and more importantly insulated, and because I live here in one of the hottest climates of the country, the desert, it really helped to compost year round. Whether it was cold in the winter or whether it was hot, the temperature stayed just right in the Joraform. The problem with the Joraform is that it got excessive moisture collected on the inside because it didn't have enough venting, and then the units rusted, and this has also happened to many of my other followers that I have personally heard from as well as people I have visited where their Joraform tumbling composter that is actually quite expensive rusts and Joraform has not addressed it. When that happens, I no longer can support or recommend certain products, and then I look for new ones because here's the thing guys, I have a busy life, I'm not a master composter, I compost my stuff that goes in the Joraform, I spin it, if it doesn't drop out because it's all rusted through, it actually composts if I get my nitrogen, carbon, and mixture right, and I don't want to spend time because I'm a gardener, I'm not a composter, I want to learn how to be the expert composter, I have a pile, and the problem with having a pile here if I just had a pile like I know a lot of you guys do, which is fine in most places, the problem is this is a very arid climate, literally you just set a bowl of water outside and in a few hours it's evaporated off because it's so dry, moisture literally gets sucked out of the ground, out of the compost, and then I'd have to actually add additional water to keep compost going, that's why I like to compost in an enclosed system where I don't lose as much moisture, right, and so that's what brought me to this next composter I bought which is actually the Aerobin Composting System 400, this one I believe is made in, is it Australia, and it's actually from recycled plastic from what I hear, and it's actually insulated, so it actually has one and a half inch insulation inside this composter, that's one of the reasons why I like it because insulating, insulated composters have done quite well for me, it also makes it more rodent proof, and then next thing I like about this is that this is extremely large, this is 400 liters, or that's about I think 111 gallons, that's like two times like a 55 gallon drum, that's going to allow me to compost a lot of materials and trust me guys, I create heaping amounts of compost on a daily basis, just cutting up my food scraps and all the waste clippings from my garden, so yeah, number one it's insulated, number two it's huge, number three it's enclosed so it's not going to lose all the moisture so I won't have to add additional water to get my compost going because my food scraps are already quite moist, fourth reason why I like it is actually it has a system where it actually catches the leachate underneath which I'll talk about in a minute, which is a patented system, next one is that there is no turning required on this compost, or so they say, you basically just put your stuff in it, maybe layer it up with nitrogen and carbons, and it has an internal lung system which this is parts of it, you guys will see me assemble this in a second, where basically it'll suck up its own air from underneath the unit through natural convection, give the system air and so I don't have to sit there and turn it and add air to it, or I don't have to sit there and tumble it like a compost tumbler, and the final reason why I like this compost tumbler is because on the bottom it actually collects the leachate, so we'll show you guys in a minute, this is a little tray that is underneath the composter, all the leachate, like the wet liquid won't just go into the ground and then it won't get all nasty, it'll actually run out this little spigot here that then you can catch in a container and then use that as a fertilizer for your garden. So I think this is an ingenious setup, I hope it actually does work, it's been selling for over 10, 12, 15 years now, and it's gotten for the most part good reviews, so I hope to use it and be successful with it, this is my basically unboxing video or setup video where I show how to assemble it and I'll show me filling it for the first time and I'll give my further commentary on this because there are not enough reviews on this composter. That being said, I will say that this composter is not for everybody, I mean you can buy cheap composters on your favorite, you know, ship to you, big box store online for 50 bucks, this thing is at the high end guys, this retails for around $400, but you're lucky if you're a Costco member, you get it for a bit cheaper, and of course Costco has their forever warranty or guarantee policy on it should it fail or anything, but you know, I got it because it's plastic so this way it will not rust, because my other favorite plastic composter is a lifetime composter that I actually set up before the drawer forums and it's actually working well, it's not like insulated per se, but it has like a double wall which gives some insulation value, and that has been my favorite until now, but hopefully this may become my new favorite, but I need to start using it to see how it works first, alright. So with that, let's go ahead and get this unit assembled for you guys, I'm going to go over the process and assemble it literally right here where I sit. Alright guys, so the first step is you got to take the base, and I think this is like an older model because newer models are built a little bit different on the bottom, but anyways on the base, this is where the compost goes on to, you can see there's holes here, holes here, and holes here, holes here, that's where the leachate drops out, so they have this little bin on the bottom that basically, turn this over, and then you got to put it in the right direction, so you can see over here there's an area where the spigot comes out, and you're basically going to go ahead and turn this this direction, it kind of drops in place and there's little plastic kind of one way screws that you put in and then you just press this in, and it basically kind of latches in place, kind of like the bumper holders on your car, so we got all these clipped in, there's four points where it attaches, this is nice and stable, this is the bottom, this is going to catch the leachate once it comes through the little holes, and then I'm going to rotate this the direction I want, I want the leachate actually running out this direction, as it comes out, you can attach like a hose to it, I guess the newer ones come with a hose, this is an older one, so it doesn't include the hose, but yeah, then you can set this base down, I do recommend you set this base a little bit above grade, so you could easily drain out the leachate, I have this sitting on some wood chips to give it a nice dry area that also air could circulate, it does have some, like on this area over here, it has some holes, that's going to let some of the air flow through the convection, pull the air up, and what happens is the convection kind of pulls air up in through here, and then it goes up this center tube, which I'll actually set up right now, next up we're going to go ahead and set up the center tube, so the center tube it says up, you're going to just drop the tube inside here, it kind of goes in place, and that brings the convection air up, it then gets diffused through one of these diffusers right here, this just goes on top, and then you have another tube that then goes on top of that, once again you want to make sure it's going the right direction with the side up, this also kind of convects some air up, and then we have another diffuser, this also helps when you fill the composter, none of the compost that you put in will clog the tubes or clog this, so that air will continually run through it, they call it a lung, so that this unit could breathe, and that's why you don't need to spin it, turn it, or do anything, you can literally just fill it up and it will compost, alright, next up let's go ahead and continue to assemble, we have to put the sides on the base, so very important guys, these panels have little latches on the bottom that kind of clip in place, very important, there's these little tabs on the bottom of the pieces that have to correspond with the tabs, so if you try to put one of these pieces on this side, it's not going to snap in because there's no tab here, so we've got to line up the tabs which are there and there with this piece, and we're just going to go ahead and put it on, and just drop this in, if you put a little bit of weight on it, and it kind of just literally clips in, no noise, but if you try to pull up on it, it's actually nice and solid, so I mean that's how easy to get one side on, next up let's go ahead and put the other side on, put a little bit of weight on it guys, wow, and it snapped in, assembly could not be easier, now since mine is facing the back, we're going to put the bottom door on, the door is accessible from either side, you have doors that look like this, the bottoms don't have any hinges on them, so we're just going to go ahead and drop this in here, and it just kind of slides in place, it's kind of loose, it'll fall out of place because we don't have the next layer on there yet, so next up we got to take the next layer, and the next layer are basically the same panels that went on the first layer, they still have the notches, and instead of putting these directly above the ones you just assembled, that would not give it structural stability, you basically just put this on the other sides, so we're just going to go ahead, drop this in place, once again these little latches where this will latch into, and we're just going to snap it down, boom, it clicked in no problem on that side, and let's go ahead and click it in on this side, alright, that's how easy we got the back side on, next let's work on the front side, alright, next up let's go ahead and put on the front side, so once again this is the same piece, there's like four of them, and once again they got the little clips on the bottom, so once again we're just going to line this up, and drop it on down, alright guys, so I got that last piece in, I kind of had to finagle some things to kind of get it in, but I fully got them locked in, next up we're going to go ahead and put these pieces in, they look like the bottom doors, but they have latches, so I'll show you guys on this side, basically you kind of need to go here, and line this up, and then you may need to hold this together a little bit, and then slide this down, and it should just lock into place, alright it took some tapping to get it in there, but I finally got it in there, and the same with the other side, kind of like got to push them down, and then they lock into place, so basically now we got this whole composter built, finally we're going to go ahead and put the door on, so to get the door on you just kind of like slide it underneath, slide it up, slide it in, and slide it down, this is where you'll access the compost once it's done, it'll basically just come out here, you can shovel it out, you can get it from either side, but I have mine against the wall, so this is the side I'll be harvesting from, once again shove it up, slap it in, and then you want to push it down so it's firmly seated in place, very important otherwise it could just fall open, alright, so I want to go ahead and do a hand cam shot to show you guys what it looks like on the inside, alright so here is my finished Aerobin 400, this thing is a monster, it's about as tall as my 55 gallon drum composter that I normally like, but it's twice as big, because it's really fat, you guys can see, I could fill this baby up with a lot of compost, you got the plastic lung on the inside that does the breathing, and once again those holes on the bottom collect the leachate, I guess the final thing is we got to put on the insulated cover, alright final step is we need to go ahead and put on the insulated cover, this thing is quite thick, fully insulated, that's one of the reasons why I bought it, and we're just going to go ahead and slide this on, now the issue is it may not fit exactly right, so you may need to like push in the sides, and then drop it in there, alright, looks like I got a finished composter, now is the time to fill it, so let me show you guys how I'm going to fill it with my mostly food scraps, which I produce copious amounts of, as well as my carbon source, being some either wood chips, sawdust pellets, or shredded cardboard, alright guys next up, this can make you or break you using any composter right, here's the thing, compost is not rocket science, it requires four things right, number one, it requires enough moisture content, or the right amount of moisture content, think of it like when you're playing baseball, you want to hit the sweet spot of the bat to get a home run, you want to get the sweet spot of moisture, not too dry, not too wet, likewise you also need proper air flow, air flow is something you're not going to have to worry about in the Aerobin 400 because it has that plastic lung on the inside that brings up air, so you don't have to turn it, so this is impressive, that's why I like it, next two are the ones you can mess up a lot, and this is the carbons and the nitrogen, or said properly the browns and the greens, browns are carbons, greens are the nitrogen, or food scraps is what I use predominantly because I make lots of food scraps here, and so I'm going to show you guys the carbons and nitrogens that I'm using, alright, so I have a few options, here I get wood chips, I've been lining the bottom of my ground with wood chips so it looks really nice, also they decompose in place and can create some soil over time, so what I'm going to do with these wood chips, well you could add them to your compost, the problem with wood chips is because they're quite big and quite thick, they take a long time to break down, so if you just put in whole wood chips unless you have an industrial composting that happens at super high temperatures, you're turning it all the time, they're going to take a long time to break down and when you're done with your compost you'll see pieces of wood chips that may not be fully broken down, for that reason I don't necessarily use those, however I will put wood chips in the bottom of the AeroBin 400 so that I don't get fine particulate down into the lead chamber that just has a mesh screen on the bottom, alright, that being said what I use instead is I use this stuff over here, which basically this is just shredded cardboard and shredded paper bags, so the reason for this is that I shredded up micro shredder, link down below to my video on that, you want to make the smallest particle size possible so that you have more bacterial surface area so that the compost can be more made more quickly, I have a lot of that stuff because I compost or shred up a lot of cardboard and what not, the other thing you can use that is actually quite affordable and works quite well is these guys, these are basically just 100% wood pellets, you can get the horse bedding pellets which is what I prefer, the feed store is out so I actually got the wood burning stove pellets, once again they are 100% compressed sawdust, so this basically expands significantly to create lots of carbon for you so that your compost will actually work, the biggest problem I see is that people think oh I'm going to compost, they just take all their food scraps, dump food scraps, dump food scraps, dump food scraps, dump food scraps, they never consider the browns, here in my city we don't have a lot of trees that lose their leaves and turn yellow and pink and orange and all these cool colors in the fall and then I don't collect those because there's mostly palms and palms are not necessarily good to compost because they take a long time to break down, plus you'd have to shred them up, so that's why I use these browns and then I have the food scraps here, so every time I make a bucket of food scraps I fill the bottom with a bunch of the shredded cardboard because this basically is free for me and in this case because I'm starting a compost pile I'll also take maybe like two handfuls of these sawdust pellets, we're going to dump out all this, you can see all the compost come out, I got lots of lemon and lime peels, blood orange peels, yes you can compost citrus along with other things, I think some pieces of pineapple, some actually jackfruit, this is what I got in here, so basically what I'm going to do is we're going to go ahead and make a mixture up because I want to pre-mix, you know normally you would just layer in things, you know compost could work that way but if you pre-mix things so that the browns and the greens are touching, right, especially at the bottom of the chamber that I'm not really ever going to touch again until I harvest, you know it's going to work a lot faster, so I'm just going to sit here in this little tote here and especially because some of this stuff is juice pulp, I'm just going to mix this up really good, you see artichoke peels in here, orange peels, lychee skin, jackfruit seeds, jackfruit skin, pineapple tops, pieces of pineapple, pieces of onions, anyway as you guys can see I've got this all mixed up fairly well, so what we're going to do next is we're going to start filling up the aero bin, so I'll go ahead and give you guys an overhead shot to show you guys actually every load that I'll be dumping in there. Alright guys, so you guys can see inside the composter now and you can see the channels there, so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and take some of these wood chips and kind of drop them in the bottom to kind of fill up some of the channels, over the channels, the wood chips are larger so they won't necessarily fall through the holes, this will give me also a nice base of carbon, I'm not going to put a ton in there, but I definitely want to line the bottom with some nice carbon because basically I generally have a lot of nitrogen because I have lots and lots of food scraps. Alright guys, so you guys can see I've got a layer of the wood chips, next up we're going to go ahead and take that whole bin that I just pre-mixed with all my compost and we're going to go ahead and dump that in, alright and what I'm going to do now is I'll just leave the camera there and I'm going to just mix up a whole bunch more batches because I have at least like five more pails of compost to compost, alright next batch going in, third batch going on in, alright fourth batch going on in, alright fifth batch I'm going to put in some native soil and some other just garden waste, alright next batch dumping in, alright next batch food scraps going in, they're already kind of rotten, alright next up a bad watermelon I had, it paled it, oh look at that, it was a yellow one, all rotten, add in some moisture, tear this up into some pieces, oh here's the bad side, nasty, thank god for compost, alright next up I got a lot of garden waste, so my leaves from my garden, I think this is supposed to be sweet potato leaves, we're just going to basically dump all the leaves in, of course on top of this is going to be all new food scraps and the moisture, I should have probably mixed this with some of the wetter food scraps, but hey it's not perfect once again, more garden equipment from the fall that I had sitting around, it just kind of dried up because that's what happens in ambient air here, things just dry up, but this will be good when I add the new wet food scraps to it, I probably should have put these in and layered this in when I was putting the food scraps in for the first time, alright here's some clippings from my rosemary, my little rosemary, lots of rosemary stuff, mixed it up in the compost, I'm glad I got this thing built guys, I had so much compost laying around it wasn't even funny. Alright guys we're nearly near the top, got one more bucket of fall leaves here, going right in, as you guys can see I filled up a 111 gallon composter here, let's go ahead and finally put on the top, so as you guys can see I filled up the Aerobin 400, I premixed my stuff using the best practices, I got the carbon and the nitrogen mixed up, I set it up properly, the lid's on, it's fully insulated, I literally packed it to the top, probably the last few bins I probably should have put in like, I should have alternated, I should have probably put in wet stuff, the dry leaves, some of the wet stuff, the dry leaves, but hey I messed up, so it should still work nonetheless because I still, you know, every day or two I make another 5 gallon bucket of food scrap waste that then would just get put on top and as this stuff decomposes it'll smush down so I should always have a little bit of space at the top to keep filling up, I guess you could cycle this maybe like 4 times a year, this could be done in, I don't know, maybe 2 months or something, I'm gonna go ahead and throw a thermometer in there later on and monitor the temperature and I'll give you guys update videos on how my Aerobin 400 is working for me, I really see great hope and promise with this bin, it's gotten rave reviews and they would still be selling it after like 15 years if it was a piece of junk and of course I fully believe in the insulation, especially in my climate, that helps the compost work that much quicker whether it's cold out, keeps a bit warmer, or whether it's too hot out that moderates the temperature inside so that it doesn't get super burning hot, I like how it's gonna now aerate for me so there's no turning, this thing is huge, holds a lot of compost, the leachate will come out and you know I'm really looking forward to getting my first harvest of compost out of the Aerobin 400. Alright guys so I wanna give you guys a 6 day update after I built the Aerobin, you guys saw me build it, fill it, you guys saw where I filled it to and I think after 5 days I opened it up and actually I had to add more compost because I generate so much compost, if you guys notice one of the issues I do have is I have a lot of fruit flies, so let me straight up with you, you know there's gonna be bugs and critters when you compost whatever, that's just part of the process, they're helping do their part to break it down too, hopefully I get this stuff hot enough and get less fruit waste in there to get rid of them, but now I wanna go ahead and open up the top, open up the bottom and show you guys how this is working, let's go ahead and open up this top, we got the rush of fruit flies coming up, but check it out guys, look how much it went down, I filled it up to here, you guys saw how much I filled it up to here, it's gone down, now the caveat is a lot of the compost was stuck on this so I had to take a shovel and kind of push it to the side, but when I open this up instantly it's warm, you guys can see it's collecting humidity, this is excellent for my conditions here in the arid Las Vegas desert, this is gonna be wonderful during the summer time, of course this has one and a half inch insulation, and I want you guys to do, I wanna do a close up here on this temperature, check out this temperature guys, here's a thermometer, I stepped deep in there, I mean I can feel the warmth in here, it's freaking like 142 maybe, so it's nice and warm inside this composter, perfect place for the fruit flies to breed, anyways let's go ahead and close this up, as you guys can see this composter is 100% working, it's working great, I did zero turning, I just kind of moved the stuff because it was kind of stuck on that aeration lung thing, and I'm loving this composter so far guys, it's broken stuff down, it's dropped down significantly, of course I did add things and mix it up properly, all that dried stuff on the top kind of soaked up the moisture and kind of dropped down, now I wanna show you guys what the composter, what the food scraps that I added just five days ago looks like now that's on the bottom, let's check it out, hopefully this doesn't all just come out the bottom here, let's see, alright, check it out guys, you guys can see the steam coming off of it, literally the wood chips and all my little pellet things expanded, exploded, the steam's coming off it, there's I don't know those white stuff, I don't know what the hell that is, but nonetheless the whole goal of a composter is that it's supposed to be breaking down, this stuff is definitely compacting up, breaking down, and actually quite warm down in here, so we're gonna go ahead and close this up, finish up the composting, and I'm gonna share with you guys my final thoughts. Alright guys, so my final thoughts on this composter after literally six days, I'm loving it so far guys, trust me, I hate turning compost, I used to have to tumble my tumblers that were insulated that weren't supposed to rust, and of course they are the drawer form that I no longer recommend, so actually let me go ahead and show you guys what's happening to my drawer forms real quick. So this is what is happening to my drawer form composter, which is what I talked about a lot when I originally got them, once again they are insulated, but you guys can see the massive amount of rust happening here, here, you guys can see this panel is just like coming apart, it's just really terrible, and of course on these tumblers they are quite heavy, you have to spin them, now like you're thinking, John you must have composted wrong in here, well I'll tell you guys what, I have one of the drawer forms, a smaller one that I actually just have sitting off in the corner, because I have not been using it, and just exposure to the normal elements, the rain and all these things, that one is not rusting, yet all the ones that I'm using are rusting, now why would this happen? As you guys saw when I opened the Aerobin 400, it was really moist in there, the food scraps emanate moisture, it collects and then it basically goes to the seams, because it's trying to escape, the moisture sits there and then it causes rust, this is actually quite dangerous, the sad thing is, I contacted drawer form to say, hey guys what do I do with this now that it's rusted, how much are replacement parts, and I emailed them twice to give them the benefit of the doubt, and they don't even respond to me, asking them what can I do, I mean of course I recommend, if they made this out of plastic, right, it wouldn't rust, people would be more happy with it, but then it wouldn't be metal so they would have their, oh it's made out of metal, I'm going to say right now that I no longer can recommend metal composters to you guys, because they rust, even if they're properly powder coated and all this other stuff, the moisture build up is just too much for it to last, so these are good composters for a few years until they rust, then you're screwed, so let's go back to the Aerobin 400 and share my final thoughts. Alright guys, so the Aerobin, I'm 100% for it at this point, originally I didn't really like plastic composters, but actually after experiencing rusting metal, and some other plastic composters that I've had for as long or longer than the Jora are not degrading, not breaking down, I'm solid that this one, with no metal parts guys, you guys don't understand, you may think oh metal's good, no when you're composting there's high moisture and all kinds of stuff happening, things compost and degrading, bacteria gets in there, rust occurs, that could cause big problems if you get cut by the rust, so I'm 100% with the Aerobin 400 right now, and of course this unit is about $400, so it is not cheap, but you guys get what you pay for, you guys could get some cheap composter with four skinny sides that have all these cracks and holes and let the moisture out, then you may have to add moisture, I like insulated composters, I find they always work the best, for sure, and yes, spend a little bit more, get something that is going to last, I will update you guys in the future as to how my Aerobin 400 is working, so if you guys want to get the updates make sure you click the subscribe button right down below, and of course I want to show you guys the cheapest place to buy an Aerobin 400, which is Costco, Costco has it online on their website, it's not available in the stores, and of course Costco has their amazing return policy, should you not be happy with it, it did take a little bit of finagling to kind of get all the pieces together, but once it's together, once it's working, I could definitely say it is a solid composter, that's got my thumbs up at this time. If you guys enjoyed this episode learning about my Aerobin composter experience, please be sure to give this a big thumbs up, also be sure to share this with other people, there's not a whole lot of other videos on the Aerobin because it is so expensive, and not a lot of people have reviewed them, also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss any of my new upcoming episodes, I'll be coming out every 5-7 days, you never know where I'll show up, what you'll be learning on my YouTube channel, make sure you click the little bell so you get notified as many of these come out, and finally be sure to check out past episodes, past episodes are a wealth of knowledge, over 1700 episodes at this time on this channel, so you guys know how to grow the highest quality food and even compost it, I'll put links down below some of my videos I've made in the past with compost alley where I reviewed over a dozen different composters that I have sitting in this very alley, so that you guys could learn about the best ones out there. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time and until then remember, keep on growing and composting.