I'm a master composter, trained by Denver Recycles. Our Community Garden here in Salida has been approached by a local who makes his own wine. Next year, he expects to generate 400 gallons of grape waste: skins, stems and seeds, and wants to compost it for our use. We're trying to prepare for the onslaught, planning to collect grass clippings and autumn leaves and many varieties of manure so that we can make a decent pile when the time comes.
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Correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't balsamic vinegar made from the grape sludge? And isn't balsamic vinegar VERY expensive? I'd look into making the grape waste into something salable. PS. You can send me the first bottle if this works out.
Adding grape skins can also raise the PH of your soil if I'm not mistaken, which will make nutrients more available but may take nutrients away as well?
If you can't get enough, why don't you plan to cold compost the grape waste in a separate pile? It may take longer to break down, but will be an easy way to take care of the overload. You can use the compost directly or, if you like, you can add the composted grape waste in layers with your regular compost pile at a later time to mix nutrients.
Try talking to the wineries in Napa,Ca. or elsewhere to see who takes their waste and how its handled. Maybe they can be emailed? Good Luck!
I am in the Paso area and am a viticulture manager, not many people around here use the grape skins as compost because the soil is slightly acidic in most places. However it all depends on the structure of your soil and what you're trying to get out of your plants, most wineries here simply let the squirrels eat them.
I had Master Composter training, too (E. SF. Bay Area) but wonder if the winery knows how valuable the discards are? The grape seeds might be used to make oil, and grape skins have a chemical/property that repels Canadian geese.
You might also consider seeing if you can make some compost tumblers for some of the waste. www.instructables.com has some tutorials for using the plastic drums you can usually get very inexpensively locally, then you need some wood and some piping--all which (if you couldn't scavenge,) you could easily get from the local home center.
You might try doing this with some of the gardeners in the area; and let everyone try their own "recipe" in the tumbler, and see whose turns out best. You could do a workshop on making the tumblers and then divide out the grape waste among them.
Cold composting also sounds good. Maybe, since this is the first (of hopefully many) opportunities for this waste, trying several methods experimentally and seeing which is the most efficient and workable is the best thing!
What an interesting opportunity!
I know that this is an old post, but I just want to inform people that grapes are toxic and potentially lethal to dogs. Here is a link to some additional info> dog-care.suite101.com/
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