Composting

[Chris Hennes]

I finally got off my rear last weekend and built the compost bins I'd been telling my wife I'd build since we bought the house a year ago:

It's just treated lumber and chicken wire (itself recycled from the garden fence I just took out). Each chamber is a cubic meter, which seems to be the recommended minimum size. I've been doing some reading about "ingredient" balance (nitrogen-rich "greens" vs. carbon-rich "browns"), but would love to hear your tips and tricks about managing your compost heaps. In particular, what kitchen scraps DON'T you put in yours?

[Darienne]

Very nicely done, Chris!

We have two plastic 'certified' compost things outside and an indoor old stock pot under the sink for immediate use. It gets emptied into the two outside bins. Why two? Because we are too lazy to empty them. Shameful, but there it is.

We do not put any heavily protein scraps into our bins. That means obviously nothing with meat in it,no egg shells. Can't think of else at the moment.

DH puts coffee grains into our in-house compost pail. I am too lazy and put them into the garbage.

We do not put leaves and suchlike into the bins. Too lazy and too many leaves on our farm. Boy. Do we have leaves.

(We also have a doggie compost bin. Dig a deep hole and put the plastic bin thing over it and that's about it. We have moved it once in 15 years. Filled in the old hole with a couple of feet of earth and dug a new hole. Right. It is not near anything like water or houses or septic system or growing garden (of which there is none at the moment.)

Oh, also, our bins are animal proof (so far) and outside the dogs' fenced-in acre of backyard.

[Doodad]

Our community garden has three bins going strong. We put our summer vege that we all pulled in it, and household veggie scraps, egg shells and such. We are getting spent barley from a local brewpub as well.

We don't put animal products, weeds or diseased plants in the bins.

[snowangel]

At our former house, we had an idea set-up, which we have been unable to replicate here because our yard is so shady.

We had three chicken wire rounds (we didn't bother with a wood frame) -- one for new stuff, which would get turned into the second bin, and finally into the third bin, by which point it was ready to use. One year, I planted some morning glories around the base of one of them, and they self-seeded every year after that!

We included all manners of kitchen vegetable scraps (except corn cobs -- they just take too long to compost), egg shells, coffee grounds, etc. Although we never bag lawn clippings, our next door neighbor did, and added that to the pile. I did not compost tomato plants (disease prone) and if I was including brussels sprouts stems, I made sure to cut them up first.

Any extra potting soil (from annuals planted in pots) was added to the compost, and if it was extremely dry, we made sure to water it.

[Peter the eater]

Nice work Chris, what's the floor made of?

We've got three compost heaps:

1. 
   1. a fancy box for prime organic waste to be used on the garden -- veggies, coffee, egg shells, etc.
   2. a messy pile of woody stuff, lawn clippings, weeds, etc. just to get out of the way
   3. a 25 cubic foot plastic container for curbside pick-up of all the other stuff like bones, seafood debris, etc.
   

Fortunately, my municipality has green bin pick up for the nasty stuff (no.3) every other week. Some neighbors don't use it because of raccoons, bears and rats. I've only seen the raccoons trying to get in.

[butterscotch]

if your pile is too damp- great kickstarter or sub for "browns" is the dregs of your cereals and leftover bread dried and crumbled. too much brown, too dry? puree your veggies scraps w/ juice and or water and pour in while mixing.

[pedie]

We have two black plastic compost bins that we purchased at a great price through the city, after attending a compost class. One. bin 1, is a closed compost bin where we have put a good amount of brown and green and just water it and turn and let it decompose. The other, Bin 2, is the active compost bin where we continue to add new ingredients. After we take the compost out of Bin 1 and put it into the garden, we will make it the active compost bin and consider Bin 2 closed until it is ready to go into the garden. When we started composting I was compulsive about what went into the compost. I have relaxed a bit now and anything that is not meat, fish, or dairy goes into it. I put the lint from my clothes drier, the shredded paper from our document shredder, coffee grounds and brown, coffee filters, crushed up egg shells, all vegetable scraps and fruit peels, trimmings from our plants, old stale dry cereal, stale bread. My only requirement not is that it be cut as small as possible. I do not put in large branches nor hard twigs. I also do not put in weeks or diseased plants. If I put in fruit scraps, I bury them in the compost to reduce fruit flies that will settle if the scraps are left on the top. and then...water and turn, water and turn.

I wish I had leaves like Darienne. I have heard that leaf mold is wonderful. Just fill a plastic trash bag with the leaves, water it well and then let it sit on the ground. Turn the bag over periodically and the leaves inside will turn into leaf mold...a wonderful amendment for soil. I plant to put some bags in my car and if I drive by a neighborhood with lots of leaves in the gutter, you will see me stuffing them in my bag! :-)

Now there are also advocates of "golden water" added to your decomposing compost but I have not yet reached that level of commitment.

[maggiethecat]

I wish I had leaves like Darienne. I have heard that leaf mold is wonderful. Just fill a plastic trash bag with the leaves, water it well and then let it sit on the ground. Turn the bag over periodically and the leaves inside will turn into leaf mold...a wonderful amendment for soil. I plant to put some bags in my car and if I drive by a neighborhood with lots of leaves in the gutter, you will see me stuffing them in my bag! :-)

Just brilliant. I have leaves, I have garbage bags and I'll be doing this next week. Thanks!

[helenjp]

I use a modified bokashi system, mostly because Japanese houses are so close together that putting your compost in an out of the way corner of your own balcony or garden just means you are sticking it right under your neighbor's nose.

Bokashi is a kind of pre-fermenting starter that is mixed with kitchen waste as you go, so that unpleasant bacteria and the insects and vermin attracted by rotting vegetation have less of a chance to get to work. Since it's based on bran, it also helps to absorb the excess liquid that is a problem when kitchen waste rather than garden waste is your main compost ingredient.

I have a special bucket which has a mesh strainer a few inches above the bottom of the bucket, and a spigot at the bottom. The idea is, again, to get rid of excess liquid. The spigot is only necessary if you are going to compost in the actual bucket (you need two or three buckets to rotate).

Currently, the kitchen bucket gets emptied into the outside closed plastic compost container once every 10-15 days (again, neighbors are too close for an open heap). The plan was to have two containers and rotate them...but darn it, the stuff rots down so fast with rice bran that it never fills up. Current plan is to transfer contents to a woven polythene sack at the end of fall, let the old compost mature in the bag over winter, and start accumulating fresh compost again in the container.

Some people in apartments just mix rice bran, leaf mold, and commercial soil mix, and add some to each day's compost in a small woven polythene bag which is closed tightly when half full and left lying on top of a few bricks out on the verandah for aeration, shaded from direct sunlight for a couple of months.

This year has been my best composting year ever, thanks to good advice as follows:

Browns - you gotta have 'em, and they help to reduce bugs and smells as well as making better compost. I buy plain old garden container soil, and sometimes leaf-mold, and save my Amazon boxes (too many...but they have little printing on them). I tear up cardboard and layer it in my kitchen collecting bucket. The first layer goes in the bottom (over the strainer, in my case), and stops the strainer clogging with waste or mold/bacterial film etc.), and then I add more cardboard every 2-3 days until the kitchen bucket is full. I knew you *could* compost cardboard, but making a real effort to include it has made a huge difference.

Bran - I gave up using bokashi mix, and started adding a handful of rice bran every time I added kitchen waste. I compost fish waste etc., but not fat or fatty meat waste, bones, or very salty waste. Wheat bran would be just as good...grain heads have plenty of yeasts and other organisms ready to start fermentation, so they are just as good for compost as they are for beer. Part of the compost plan involved buying a small electric rice polisher and switching to brown rice, polishing just what we need to cook every day.I think fresh rice bran is best, but bran from a rice shop or mill would second best, with supermarket bran a final resort as it is likely to be heat-treated.

Advantages of compost - I did get a bit slap-happy with raw compost in containers and beds where I wanted to grow greens, and paid the price - woodlice proliferated, and ate every single seedling! However, I usually plant tomatoes in hip-high garbage containers, with a bucketful of raw compost mixed with earth right at the bottom. That has never caused problems.

[Kerry Beal]

Anyone do the worm composting thing? That always fascinated me.

These days the city collects our compostables every Monday in the green bin. It can get rather disgusting in a week in the warm weather. It pays to put down a good layer of newspaper in the bottom to absorb liquid, but that does nothing to stop the maggots etc. I long for the days when I had enough property out back for a heap.

In my last house, the yard went back for what seemed like miles, so out of site behind the shed I had a great big compost heap, never bothered to put any wire around it. Put everything but meat on it, gave it a water now and then, and a turn a couple of times a year. The best rhubarb grew right next to it, and volunteer potatoes from the heap were better than the ones I planted.

[Darienne]

You all have such good ideas I'll have to look into some of them more closely and modify what we are and aren't doing.

I didn't realize that egg shells are perfectly acceptable.

We have deer, coyotes and bears, plus raccoons and porcupines (who ate part of our sun room roof while we were in Moab), not to mention large dogs, so everything must be animal-proof.

Our daily lives are so complicated at present, and we are all incapacitated in some way, that our answers must be easy to follow.

We are basically vegetarians so we generate a tremendous amount of vegetable and fruit refuse. (Our dogs eat real meat. Dogs are not vegetarians. Just reassuring all dog people.)

We have more leaves than anyone wants to think about.

Thanks for all the good stuff. I'll download and print it all out and rethink our position.

[llc45]

You all have such good ideas I'll have to look into some of them more closely and modify what we are and aren't doing.

I didn't realize that egg shells are perfectly acceptable.

We have deer, coyotes and bears, plus raccoons and porcupines (who ate part of our sun room roof while we were in Moab), not to mention large dogs, so everything must be animal-proof.

Our daily lives are so complicated at present, and we are all incapacitated in some way, that our answers must be easy to follow.

We are basically vegetarians so we generate a tremendous amount of vegetable and fruit refuse. (Our dogs eat real meat. Dogs are not vegetarians. Just reassuring all dog people.)

We have more leaves than anyone wants to think about.

Thanks for all the good stuff. I'll download and print it all out and rethink our position.

Darienne - We have the animal issue too and eat pretty much the same way you do(we do eat meat but mostly veg so lots of compost). We just have a heap in the wooded area behind our house and use the compost leftover after the animals eat their share. We go back and forth about putting in an enclosed bin system but, for the most part, we seem to generate enough waste for us and the deer. The bears don't seem to bother with it too much. We hope that by providing the pile, the deer will stay away from our landscaping but they pretty much eat everything anyway!

[Darienne]

Darienne - We have the animal issue too and eat pretty much the same way you do(we do eat meat but mostly veg so lots of compost). We just have a heap in the wooded area behind our house and use the compost leftover after the animals eat their share. We go back and forth about putting in an enclosed bin system but, for the most part, we seem to generate enough waste for us and the deer. The bears don't seem to bother with it too much. We hope that by providing the pile, the deer will stay away from our landscaping but they pretty much eat everything anyway!

Well, we have the two enclosed bins and after many years, they are still not full. I know, I know, it is no way to treat compost. We need a young garden-obsessed person to come occasionally and take care of them. We used to have someone...but she moved away, bought her own house, has her own garden. Really, some people have no consideration!

Our biggest fear is the bears. There are a number of smaller children in the area who must walk a fair distance on the road through the woods to get the bus and about 5 years ago we had a really serious bear problem. Don't get me started! Our local Ministry of Wildlife mishandled it SO badly. And we know they are around. We see their scat. I got involved in a fairly major way and we don't even have children at home.

Oh, we have minimal woods...we are almost completely under cultivation.

Oh well, that does not excuse my laziness on the subject. We'll try harder. (We do recycle like crazy.)

[Kouign Aman]

I only compost in the yard in winter. If its not on the ground by about March, its going in the greenwaste bin.

Here, the city picks up greenwaste and composts it. We can get the compost free.

Helps alot w local fly and smell control in the warm summer days.

This year we had a few volunteer tomatoes and a stellar volunteer cantalope from last years incomplete composting. In theory, compost gets hot enough to kill seeds and pathogens. Clearly, mine didnt!

My neighbor composts everything and I wish they would stop because it STINKS of rotting meat, and makes part of our yard unusable.

[KarenDW]

Anyone do the worm composting thing? That always fascinated me.

I have a worm composter, purchased from the City for about $25, including the worms. Mandatory workshop before receiving the bin. Said bin sits on my balcony, on the southwest side of the apartment. Sides of the balcony are solid concrete, so provide both shade and consistent temperature. My concerns are mostly around maintaining the bin temperature between 5º and 30ºC.

During mid-summer, I made the mistake of adding more than 1L (1qt) of fruit trimmings to the bin (more like 4L, actually...). A major fruit fly infestation occurred. This was remedied by taking the bin off the balcony and down the road to the community garden, stirring contents and leaving open for a few hours, then adding a little soil and shredded straw/dried plants to cover the remaining fruit. The flies abated. Things are good.

My DH continually wonders why we bother. He finds that the effort to compost is negated by the small volume of resultant garden material. I don't think it's a big deal. I put only non-protein items, trying not to overload the bin, and put the rest into the garbage. That's just the way it is, in the city core without organics pickup. I'm willing to do what we can, in small steps, to reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill.

Compost can be used in houseplants, too, although I would probably roast it in the oven for a bit to kill the nemotodes and fruit fly eggs.

[Darienne]

My DH continually wonders why we bother. He finds that the effort to compost is negated by the small volume of resultant garden material. I don't think it's a big deal. I put only non-protein items, trying not to overload the bin, and put the rest into the garbage. That's just the way it is, in the city core without organics pickup. I'm willing to do what we can, in small steps, to reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill.

Compost can be used in houseplants, too, although I would probably roast it in the oven for a bit to kill the nemotodes and fruit fly eggs.

Wow!. You and my DH. Roasting garbage in the oven. Now that is worth of praise. I am NOT telling Ed about that one.

I, like your DH, wonder about the end result. My DH cleans, opens and flattens every can we use. He cleans EVERY plastic bag and dries it in the garage and adds it to our recycling...even the gucky ones. (Of course, he usually leaves them in the sink for you-know-who. His heart is in the right place...the rest of him is elsewhere. ) He puts the coffee grounds in the compost...I put them down the toilet or in the garbage. He is good: I am bad. But I make Szechwan Chinese food and that makes up for just about everything in life.

[HungryC]

In the bins pictured, why would you need a floor? Just curious. In my soggy climate, that floor would just rot away in a couple of months. Plus, the floor prevents interaction with the good stuff already in the soil (worms, microorganisms, friendly buggies). My pile is literally a pile, or more of a heap, about 4' deep by 10' wide. It is tucked into the back corner of my fenced yard, using the existing wire fencing as two sides. The third side is hardware cloth held up by a metal stake. The front side is open, with a raised bottom edge made of branches, sticks, and leftover concrete edging, with an apron of spare bricks laid on the ground in front (keeps your shoes relatively clean). I put lawn trimmings, water oak leaves (live oak leaves take forever to break down), kitchen veggie scraps, and any/all garden waste. At this time of year, my grass is still growing wildly, and the oaks are dropping leaves like mad. So the contents of my lawnmower bag are a nice, chopped green/brown mix. I do toss stale bread on top from time to time, as well as leftover cooked plain rice, but the birds scarf those up long before any decay sets in.

I wish I had the energy to turn the whole pile 3-4 times a year! It's too big, and I'm too lazy. I'm entranced by the revolving-barrel composter...do these things really work?

[Special K]

I plan to put some bags in my car and if I drive by a neighborhood with lots of leaves in the gutter, you will see me stuffing them in my bag! :-)

Just brilliant. I have leaves, I have garbage bags and I'll be doing this next week. Thanks!

And the both of you are doing a good deed - keeping the street drains clear and the street from flooding!

[Chris Hennes]

In the bins pictured, why would you need a floor? Just curious. In my soggy climate, that floor would just rot away in a couple of months.

The floor is constructed of treated yellow pine, rated for full-time ground contact: it won't be doing any rotting anytime soon. Despite some concerns about those chemicals leaching into the compost and from there into the plants, the most recent studies I have read have shown this effect to be extremely minimal, so I decided to forge ahead. I put a floor on them because that's Bermuda Grass around them. It's weed. You can't kill it, it will grow in anything, and the last thing I want after going through tremendous effort to remove it from my beds is to reintroduce it by letting it grow through the compost. Man I hate that grass.

[annecros]

Bermuda grass is obnoxious. However, the compost heaped on top of it would in fact kill the beast. Any Bermuda grass in your compost heap would be the result of the grass going to seed and sowing itself on top.

A good reason for your wife to nag you about mowing the lawn. I've given up and just mow it myself.

[Chris Hennes]

Well then, let's just call the floor a structural component .

[annecros]

Absolutely. Adds stability, and just looks neat.

I wouldn't post a pic of my compost heap on the internet. There is an old waterbed mattress serving as a cover.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

[Chris Hennes]

I shoulda built more bins:

And that was last week, before I did some more lawn cleanup. Now they are packed full. This was not in the plan, I was supposed to have enough space so that I could scoop the uncomposted stuff off the top of the one bin and into the second bin so I could get at the actual compost at the bottom. Now what do I do? How do I get at the good stuff?

[Lapin d'Argent]

Ah, yes...welcome to the infinitely multiplying compost bins...

All gardeners start out this way. First one small bin or two, then suddenly three much larger ones, then one of those fancy rolling or spinning kinds...then comes the chipper/shredder...

Now you need some holding pens. These will not be so pretty; probably just large circles of fencing. The thing is, nature takes its own time, and you can only rush it so much. Smaller pieces break down quicker. A proper mix of green to brown breaks down faster. A reasonable amount of moisture and turning helps to break down faster. Heat breaks down faster. But unless you want another full-time job, having enough space to hold stuff while nature does the work for you is usually much easier.

We are fortunate in that the previous owners of our property had a semi-sunken above-ground pool behind the stone wall in the woods. We just keep filling that with the large scale stuff. The kitchen waste goes into three "infinite" plastic bins by the garage that I haven't turned in more years than I can remember. On the other hand, it sprouts some beautiful wild hyssop in the summer, and I never have to deal with it.

When I need compost, my garden is on the scale that I order it by the half-truck load. But I am happy to be able to dispose of all our green waste safely and with a minimum of fuss. And somebody is going to strike it rich someday...

- L.

[heidih]

I would leave that big stuff on the ground outside the bins with a little moist stuff until it starts to compact and break down a bit. The fluff is taking up space but not able to do its thing cuz it is in fact too fluffy.