Composting indoors with old jars.

I have been experimenting with composting indoors. I fill the jars with banana peals, comfrey leaves and cardboard, and I put a few worms in the soil. The plan is for the draining of this to feed the plants. I stopped an ant invasion from my bananas as the ants built nests inside the jars and all I had to do was empty the jar outside and the ants were gone. But this should increase the number of the bacteria in the soil multi fold.

I have also added some earthworms to the mix so should get interesting.

I constructed a cedar box 12"x26"x16" for this purpose.   it composted kitchen scrap items but then I had fruit flies appear out of no where in the middle of winter (bananas seemed to be the culprit), and my roommate really disliked the fruit flies (no smell tho)....my apartment living composter experiments came to an abrupt end

You'll probably get questions about how this can compost when the glass jars stop air (and therefore N and O from entering). from entering your compost material......I'm more interested in how long one glass jar turns its contents into soil?

....I had another roommate who used earthworms to eat all the kitchen items, tangle balls of redworms, a pound or more of them....they worked really well also

Orin Raichart wrote:I constructed a cedar box 12"x26"x16" for this purpose.   it composted kitchen scrap items but then I had fruit flies appear out of no where in the middle of winter (bananas seemed to be the culprit), and my roommate really disliked the fruit flies (no smell tho)....my apartment living composter experiments came to an abrupt end

You'll probably get questions about how this can compost when the glass jars stop air (and therefore N and O from entering). from entering your compost material......I'm more interested in how long one glass jar turns its contents into soil?

....I had another roommate who used earthworms to eat all the kitchen items, tangle balls of redworms, a pound or more of them....they worked really well also

Hi Orin,

The glass jar keeps everything moist inside, so it keep on composting and as it composts the moisture leaks down and feeds the plants.

There are 3 different types of microbes  ( those that need air )   (those that don't need air )  ( and those that can survive without air or with air )    80 -90 percent of microbes are in the top 2 -4 inches of soil.

The fastest result I have had was with the comfrey that was chopped.    It turned to mush in very short order...

If you think about it  if a jar that has food in it breaks the seal,  the bacteria can goto work and corrupt the food.     the same is true with soil.    The bacteria are getting air from the soil  into the jar, and the jar has  some air in it,  and even if the oxygen was gone the anerobic bacteria can do their job.


I have had worm bins before and the soil that was formed by them was simply amazing.    I believe that I can grow plants and grow worms at the same time.