When you make the adjustments, it may take several days for the adjustments to balance between all the compartments.

dcarch

I'm afraid I can't make any suggestion about the vegetable cooler Sooz, I'm lucky that my very old fridge seems to keep everything at just the right temperature. But I hope you can find a solution. Nothing worse than frozen vegetables when you want fresh ones.

But I keep the vegetable and fruit peelings together with coffee grounds in a large old (chipped) mixing bowl just beside the kitchen sink, covered with a plate. We seem to fill it each day and it's my husband's job to take it outside and dump the contents into the composter while I'm washing the dinner dishes. :-)

It's a routine that seems to work and it's important to have the compost pile or container within easy walking distance from the kitchen, or it won't be used. Ours is an inexpensive square plastic lidded bin. The gardener adds dry leaves, sweepings and cuttings to keep the balance between greens and browns.

SharonCb

Get a smal composter (closed) and keep it outside the door. Doesn't take long for the stuff to break down and you can bury the stuff out of that when you have time. I keep my peelings in a little closed plastic bucket I got from the PA DCNR when I went to a composting workshop. Once or twice a week I take it out to my FREE compost bin that I got from the city. I swish it out with water and also dump that into the bin. You can go all out for composting or you can just let the stuff sit there and rot on it's own and just use the compost less often. Works for me. I get compost out of my bin every spring and fall, and occasionally in the middle of the summer. I'm a lazy gardener!

Sooz: Can you slow down the cold air that feeds the
Veggie Bin.
Use a thermometer to get it right ( some where around 38 )
I don't know how your Refrig. is made.
Maybe you can try covering the intake with a piece of Plastic or Duct Tape just to experiment, until you get it right.
Lou

Sounds like you might need a service call on the fridge if things keep freezing no matter what the setting. That should not be.

I compost like crazy for my garden. Years ago I bought a small step on to open the lid trash can with a pull out bucket. It cost me $35 from Gardeners Supply. One week later I saw the same thing at Target for $10! The step on is great when my hands are full with materials.

I dump all organic matter in there, and to control odors, add torn up newpapers. If your mix of greens (grass clippings, lettuce, potato peels) and brown(dead leaves, newspaper) is right, you should have no smell. Check over at the composting site for great info. When the bucket is full, out it goes and I just give it a rinse in the basement sink.

Then there is always this toy.

Here is a link that might be useful: In home composter

Thanks everyone for your help and input on both my questions.

Much appreciated!
Smiles,
Sooz

Sooz, I've gone low tech, I just have a plastic 5 quart ice cream bucket with a lid.

Most food scraps go to the chickens anyway, but what little I have goes into the compost pile at the farm, so I keep stuff for a week or so until I take it away. The lid on that little plastic bucket helps keep spills and odor contained.

Peppi is right, the proper mix of compost has no smell. However, that bucket full of scraps in my garage waiting to go to the compost pile does! That's why I have something with a snap on lid. (grin)

Peppi, I want one of those!

Annie

That composter is very cool!
Back when I taught composting, I heard from a family that composted in the city with just a small rotating barrel/bin and kitchen scraps and shredded up newspaper for the browns.

You can get specialized bins but you can also just buy a plastic trash bin (with a lid for urban situations) and drill drainage holes/air in the bottom or sides and that will work. I have seen models that have trays for collecting moisture at the bottom, but theoretically it shouldn't ooze much water, you don't want wet compost anyway, just moist. The holes are also for aeration.

I used a completely closed system back when I had a line on some free barrels. I bought a special tool to aerate it, and also rolled it around once and a while and mucked about in it with a pitchfork every once and a while. I had two barrels going, the fresh barrel and the finished barrel. Every fall and spring I would empty the "finished" barrel and it would become the "fresh" barrel, while the "fresh" barrel cured for a season before getting used. I just drilled a few air holes in the barrel lids for aeration and maybe a couple in the bottom.

We are still fiddling with our fridge temp. Our compost complex is pretty set. We toss stuff (all kitchen garbage that hasn't mingled with meat or fat (paper napkins, paper towels,wilted lowers etc.)into one of those white 5 gallon plastic buckets. I keep a 12 inch round that has holes in it on top. It used to get really smelly when I just used a solid top. In the sink I keep one of those triangular things that is a seive on the bottom. (Vermont country store) that gets dumped into the white bucket that gets dumped into the compst bin.
I love my compost. Im mixing it into beautifu; potting soil to fill containers that will soon be full of flowers and tomatoes.

That composter is pretty cool but it seems a little spendy for something you are going to use outside anyway. but maybe it's because I'm pretty messy and I spill things so I need to keep dirt outside as much as possible.

Be careful with paper towels in compost. If you used it to wipe a counter with a cleaner, you do not wnat it in your compost heap. The chemicals will kill the "zoo herd" or bugs that you want in compost.

I have a good sized 2 bin system going, like Lpink. I spent Saturday afternoon emptying out last years side. After 10 wheelbarrows full of shoveling out and then onto the flower beds my arms gave out. I am not even close to the end!

Compost=gardeners gold!

Another composter here! And someone who's lettuce always freezes if I keep it pushed too far to the back of the fridge! Can't help you on that tho - sorry!

I try and compost most of my kitchen scraps but I find that I really only do it in summer and I should be doing it all year long. My other problem is this - I have enough trouble from hubby when my orchids in winter, or bringing in just picked produce in summer, attracts those little fruit flies or fungus gnats - not sure which they are. Anyway, I've seen special containers for keeping kitchen scraps but I'm afraid I'm going to attract those tiny flies and I'll never hear the end of it. Does anyone who saves their scraps (I'd probably dump them in the bin daily) ever run into problems with those little flies?

Lisa

I am really bad about emptying my compost bucket in the winter. I have never had those little flies. I get them in the summer, not the winter. You might get a fly problem if you used an open bucket, but not a closed one. My bucket gets really knarly, so if flies could be a problem, I would have experienced it! I get the flies in the summer if I leave fruit out too.

I keep my composing scraps in the frigde in a container-- (not sure what volume of food scraps you're handling).

Do you have extra space in the veggie drawers? I would put a closed container of water in there with the veggies. Water should help moderate the temperature, and should also save energy costs (water moderates the temperature of the air around it, and takes less energy to keep water cold than air). If your veggie drawer gets overloaded, you can toss the water and put it back in when it empties out.

It isn't the vegatables that are convertable. It's the drawer. It is convertable between storing meat and storing vegatables. There's a slider that controls which function you want the drawer to do. http://whirlpool.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/850 hth

Here is a link that might be useful: Sudbury Seniors Concert