I get free produce and I’m trying to figure out the best thing to do with them would be. This round, I have cabbage, carrots, and cantaloupe. I think next time it will be broccoli and something else, but this is what I have on hand…
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The guy who makes Dr Earth Dry amendments does something similar to this with his product and makes those products with a lot of leftover organic produce.I’d try and find out what he does when he makes his batches if it’s not a trade secret
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Whatever doesn’t feed the local wildlife in an irresponsible way, that’s a lot of food to just try to get rid of in a compost pile. Maybe a big bioreactor with some hay and straw for browns?
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@OkieWormFarmer
You Could have the Largest Red Wiggler Worm compost pile I’ve ever seen… This would equate too farming worms for the poop. ( Worm Castings) Ya know the very thing that people pay $$ for as Natural Fertilizer…
Vidoe below about commercial Worm farming.
Do you already Farm worms?
You could farm for Worm Castings and other varieties that come from this type of setup.
Ps. Google " Worm Juice " and IF you actually do this, Sign me up to buy some from you.
@FattyRoots do you know of anything els that @OkieWormFarmer could do with this amount of produce?
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How do you get that much produce? I wouldn’t mind getting in on something like that. Like @Cadman says: worms!
But since worm farmer is in your name, I’m guessing you already do that.
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You could easily apply all the methods you mentioned. The melons, in particular make a good flowering cycle fermented fruit juice, but the rest would likely be best as worm food or compost. If you compost, you need roughly 15x the mass of that produce in carbon rich material like dead leaves, or finely chipped dead wood, with an ideal pile height of 3-4 feet, so your compost enclosure/pile would be gigantic, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue on your property.
I’ve also heard of people using worms to finish their compost once the thermal spike dissipates.
Hope you’ve got a Bobcat to turn your pile!
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Can also use all them boxes for “brown” part of the compost…
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That’s true, but I still HIGHLY recommend getting other carbon rich sources (wood ash is also killer, in moderation) because one season, in the absence of leaves (sort of hard to come by in the desert), I hand-shredded a pallet’s worth of cardboard for my pile. It sucked so bad! Even shredded, the cardboard wouldn’t wet properly, it took forever to break down, and the piles never went over 120 F/ 49C.
With leaf and other natural sources, my pile heats to 160/71 even on 40 degree nights; my understanding is that those temps kill many pathogens, as well as undesirable seeds in the pile
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Very true 
… My only compost pile was 110 liters in size lol 
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Check out the Rodale Book of Composting, it goes into windrow and larger batch composting (not a lot of detail).
If you have a steady supply, windrow might be right.
Cheers
G
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Brandy from the cantaloupes and all of the above with the rest. Totally what I’d do. Cantaloupe brandy sounds interesting. Do some trials with aging on oak, cherry and apple woods. What do you mean this isn’t a distilling forum?!
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Get yourself the same amount of horse manure (horse owners are happy to give it away and may even deliver it, otherwise they have to pay for it to get rid of it),
and the same amount of grass clippings and you got yourself a big pile of compost within a month.
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Here is what I noticed about my worm bins, mice love it! It might as well be a mouse hotel. Then, in the summer, I have been finding poisonous snakes like pygmy rattler and copper-heads. However, there is a pure black king snake species around and I’ve been sure to leave them alone because they control the bad population. Sometimes, I find king snakes in my chicken boxes eating eggs. They usually book it when they see me though and not usually aggressive. Still, finding a pygmy rattlesnake next to my kid’s power wheel is disturbing!
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Nice, I found free rabbit manure before but didn’t know that about horse owners. I live in the countryside where there are more feed stores than grocery stores, so I live in the right neighborhood lo…
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A lot of my KNF products turn out smelling of fine wine lol. A good batch of bokashi usually smells of a whisky or brandy. I recently found out that ferments produce amino acids that are beneficial in several ways. Thinking about it, KNF uses a lot of wine making supplies like carboy jugs and bubblers. I’m looking into a refractometer for testing Brix Levels. So, I’m def with you on the cantaloupe, I’ll probably make Fermented Fruit Juice(FFJ) with it.
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I’m lucky enough to live in the woods lol. I have compost beside my worm bins that I put carbon inputs into. Actually, I have 3yr old leaf mold with my current batch of finished EWC. I also recycle my soil into the worm bins and recharge it with produce. I was having the same problem with wetting boxes. What I ended up doing was soaking them overnight submerged in water. I bought 12x 55gal barrels online that I have been collecting rainwater and making JADAM with. Actually, I just made a 55gal barrel of bokashi too. The barrels are pretty useful in different ways that I didn’t expect. I drilled holes in one of the plastic covers and run my RO water on it. I mean, I mostly use RO for drinking but it’s nice to be able to catch runoff clean water when I forget to change 5gal jugs. The waste water is going to a pool that waters the wildlife and chickens/dogs. It also helps with wildlife in ways that I didn’t expect like in the summer I’ll have a swarm of dragonflies above my house and the frog population is pretty healthy too.
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This is a good post! So many things to talk about in just a small comment lol. Yes, melons I believe are a good candidate for ferments. Recently, I have used purple grapes and blueberries. I haven’t seen anyone else talk about this, but these foods are rich in anthocyanin which is the purple pigment in plants. From what I understand, fermenting keeps certain vitamins and amino acids in tact that might be destroyed in the compost process. From my soil tests, I have noticed that I am always low in manganese, and blueberries are rich in manganese. I was researching was to naturally raise my manganese levels, which rock dust and kelp are low in, and I came across acid loving plants that like a low PH. It slapped me across the face when I saw that blueberries can have manganese toxicity due to low Ph. Also, both of these berries are rich in antioxidants, but I don’t know how that plays into growing. Oh, there was something else that I wanted to respond to…
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The FDA passed a law that grocery stores can no longer “give away” expired goods. I beleive it had something to do with pig farmers feeding their stock with contaminated pork. It took a LOT of phone calls to find a source. One place that we were getting it from was considered a “salvage” store. They take old produce from big chain stores and sell it at a reduced price. Either they don’t fall under the same laws, or they don’t care. When it leaves the salvage store, it’s all just trash to them.
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I was getting weekly drops from this one store, then COVID happened. Things have not been back to normal since then. I had to change my approach and find a new source. I’m now getting produce that has been rejected by chain stores like Sam’s and Wally. I’m actually getting better material this way too and the packaging isn’t insane like those little salad kits, it’s 90% plastic bagging. There would be a lucrative job opportunity for being a worm farmer alone. There is a City compost facility that takes grass, wood chips, and cow manure from local sources. I think that all professional services are required to dump compostable material here. I noticed a lot of stuff that I would consider highway trash in it. However, I listened to a podcast where the founder of BioAg(Dr. Faust) said that the best thing to do with it is to let it age longer to allow all of the yard chemicals to expire their half life. The topic was how to make humic/fulvic acid. He was explaining that legnin is what produces it and it’s found in the cells of woody material, but it takes at least 2yrs to form. Shit is cheap though. I have a 16ft dual axle trailer and it takes only $10 to fill it up, free if I loaded it myself, but I pay the $10 for the loader. There is an option to have a dump truck delivery, but that is an investment for the future.
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If you don’t shred those boxes thoroughly they will impede airflow and lead to anaerobic conditions, but yeah if you have the means to do so might as well make use of them too. I believe the glues used in those cardboard boxes tend to have a bit of N as well, affecting the c:n ratio. One challenge I see here is the excess of liquid that will come from all those cantaloupes.
First thing that comes to mind is to vermicompost in a windrow system utilizing the cantaloupe and cardboard, and make a thermophilic pile or 2 with the shredded brasiccas & carrots.
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