home made compost in doors

So I have some great compost that I started last fall. It has oak and maples leaves. vegetable scraps, alfalfa, bone meal and blood meal. It has been setting about a year and is beautiful. I want to use this in my indoor garden. Now most of what I read tells me to sterilize it. This will destroy all of the beneficial bacteria that has grown over the past year as well has the harmful bugs.
If you come up with a solution to using compost like this indoor with our heating it pass along your wisdom.

Thanks,

snew

You could sterilize it and re-activate it or you could use a fine mesh screen and sift through it only keeping the fine humus. it's still a bit risky

I would still kill the good active bacteria. I wanting to know who has done this? what kind of problems did you have?

You add life by re-activating it, you can add specifcally what you want....... I haven't done it with compost, but I've sterilized soil and re-activated it with great success, same principle.

have fun.

Thanks for the input upthearsenal, but I don't want to sterilize my compost as I said in the original post. I've spent a year turning adding stuff to create a good compost with loads of good natural bacteria that I would never be able to recreate if I killed them off. I have thought of screening to make sure that all of the bugs are out. I'll just use this outside in my vegetable garden and continue to buy supplements for inside. I just thought that the compost would bring some unique characteristics to the party if I could use it inside. Thanks again.

snew said:

Thanks for the input upthearsenal, but I don't want to sterilize my compost as I said in the original post. I've spent a year turning adding stuff to create a good compost with loads of good natural bacteria that I would never be able to recreate if I killed them off. I have thought of screening to make sure that all of the bugs are out. I'll just use this outside in my vegetable garden and continue to buy supplements for inside. I just thought that the compost would bring some unique characteristics to the party if I could use it inside. Thanks again.

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You could set some aside and make a compost tea out of it to reactivate it after sterilization. Or make a compost tea and feed your plants with it.

mayor juana said:

I thought this thread was going to be about composting inside...lol. Sounds like a good idea though, maybe use vegetable and fruit scraps, stems, big fan leaves, earthworm castings and any microbes you wanted to add. That way you'd get the huge benefits of compost w/o the bugs, a little tumbler in the garage would be ideal.

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I do compost inside also. I have 2 rubbermade tubs and red worms. They do a great job. My first harvest was about 20lbs of worm casting. I'm ready for a 2nd harvest that looks like it will be about 40lbs. They are in my garage, however, I would have no problem keeping them inside. Theres no smell if its not allowed to get to wet. And if there is light outside the box they will not leave through the holes.
I do, however, have about 2 2.5 yds of compost outside and it is very rich. I would like to use this inside but if I have to sterilize it I'm not going to use it so I would like to know if someone has tried it.

snew said:

Thanks for the input upthearsenal, but I don't want to sterilize my compost as I said in the original post. I've spent a year turning adding stuff to create a good compost with loads of good natural bacteria that I would never be able to recreate if I killed them off. I have thought of screening to make sure that all of the bugs are out. I'll just use this outside in my vegetable garden and continue to buy supplements for inside. I just thought that the compost would bring some unique characteristics to the party if I could use it inside. Thanks again.

Click to expand...

That's the best course of action.

Outside compost for the garden or outside container plants. The tea idea sounds good also.

Indoor compost (worm bins), for everything, inside or out.

Wet