Composting

[KarenDW]

Could you just run over the fluffy stuff w/ a lawn mower or something, to break it down even more? And then drop it into a whole in the ground, and ignore for a year or two. Or store under a tarp, to use as Brown Layer between the other garden waste and kitchen scraps throughout the year.

[Chris Hennes]

I don't own a lawn mower or a chipper-shredder, so I don't really have a way to break it up except be hand (too much work!). So I'm just slowly mixing a bit of the "fluff" into the denser pile.

[helenjp]

If you have more than you need for aerating the main pile, you could BURN it, and then mix the ash into the compost or sparingly onto your soil.

[Amy D.]

having just used some of the compost from my bin for the first time i've noticed that even after two years of rotting a few things haven't really decomposed (and wont be added in future)including advocado skin, advocado stone, lychee stones, & mango stone, & from now on any egg shells will be crushed a little before adding to the pile.

[Rebecca263]

We have a teeny tiny plot of land here at the Coop (our home is on a 50'x50' LOT!) and we recently got our very own Billy the Bin for the yard.We're Earthy Like That! I do not put meat or bones in the beast, but we do put in egg shells and coffee grounds. I'm going to add the dryer lint now- we have very little in the way of leaves! Does anyone here know anything about the time frame for un-shredded newspaper? We don't have a working shredder, but I'd like to add paper to our bin.

[sadistick]

If I may suggest.

One key ingredient in composting is heat, and the retention of heat.

I would suggest some type of plywood 'lid' that you can compress everything and leave on to retain more heat - which will speed up the composting process.

Hence why many composts you can purchase are black plastic with lids, to keep the heat.

Looks good though.

[Chris Hennes]

Oh, interesting idea, sadistick. Do I need to punch holes in it to keep good airflow, or is a just a plain sheet of plywood (probably treated, I guess) good enough?

[sadistick]

Well given you have the chicken wire, you should have sufficient air circulation.

Plain plywood cut to fit is a good idea, as well, have you tossed any worms in there? You may want to add a bit of compost to 'start it' along with some worms.

[Chris Hennes]

I haven't deliberately put in any worms, but I have added some leftover compost from last year's garden. Will the worms survive the high temperatures? I think I read somewhere that the middle of a healthy pile is supposed to be around 150°F (but that could be wrong!).

[Chris Amirault]

Those who can stand cutified composters will enjoy the Rolypig, which we just got for our school. It adds a gross motor component (the rolling part) to the saving food scraps part. Putting it together now and will report back.

[Kouign Aman]

The worms will move away from the areas that are too hot.

[HungryC]

Dude, your super-nice looking bins with yellow pine floors are just too tidy. The microorganisms/fungi/insect life needed to break down the organic matter move through the soil, not the air. Unless you've got some direct contact with the ground, it's gonna take years for that stuff to reach brown, crumbly goodness. I'd take the bottoms off, reload, and sprinkle a few handsful of "compost starter" (really you just some 4-4-2 or 8-8-8 organic fertilizer) or worm castings, etc to get it going. Your pile also looks pretty brown--you need more green stuff and less brown stuff, as the high-nitrogen green stuff will get the low-nitro brown stuff going. Again, all of the beneficial soil creatures will find the bottom of your pile naturally if they could.

RE: bermuda, I know it's pernicious, I spent several hours digging it out of a flower bed about three weeks ago. Thus, I also know that it spreads through running roots. Once your compost is well-rotted, it's easy to see any root mass and remove it before you spread the stuff around your beds. I routinely pick out clumps of oak tree roots (the water oaks send up hairy root masses right up into my pile) before I spread.

I was lazy this year and didn't dig home compost to top up my raised veg beds as I usually do each spring & fall. I (gasp!) bought some. Now I'm paying the price--an odd new tomato blight I've never seen before, and some very slow-growing peppers that should be several weeks ahead of their current size. This fall, I'll suck it up and dig it myself.

[ScoopKW]

It sounds like an oxymoron, but gardening in Las Vegas is a very rewarding experience.

I don't bother with composters. Rather, I just dig a hole in my garden, cover it with a trash can lid to keep the pigeons at bay and toss most of my organic waste into the hole. (Large bones don't go in, for instance. They don't break down quickly enough.) When the hole is mostly full, I cover it with dirt and dig a new hole. By the time I return to that spot in the garden, everything has broken down.

Right now, I have 50 heads of romaine lettuce popping up, more dill than I can possibly eat (any eGulleteers in Vegas need some dill?), parsley, sage, thyme, marjoram, basil, etc. In a couple months, it will be heirloom tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini.

But I like the spring lettuce harvest most of all.

[Doodad]

It is our duty this week in the community garden to turn/stir the bins. They are looking good at this point with the warm days we have had lately. Last week's gardener was a little too zealous I think as they kept turning all the bins and moving the material back and forth. I stirred them all every other day this week, capped the best one with straw to retain heat and moisture, moved some mature compost into the rawer bin and called it all good.

We have three bins each about 36 cubic feet.

[Lapin d'Argent]

It is our duty this week in the community garden to turn/stir the bins.

Now see, we could all have perfect compost, if we just had Lovely Assistants!

[Jmahl]

Growing out of our composting pile all by itself.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

[Kerry Beal]

Growing out of our composting pile all by itself.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Gotta love those volunteers. Some of my best potatoes and tomatoes have grown in my compost - all by themselves!

[heidih]

That is why they tell us not to put invasive weeds in the compost bin- they "will survive" and run like crazy. I love the good volunteers like the squashes.

[Chris Hennes]

We also had squash volunteers this year, but they didn't survive the hot, dry weather we had in June. Oh, well.

[Lapin d'Argent]

I get lovely wild flowers that I've never planted and never seen anywhere else on my 2 acres...or on any of my neighbors land either, for that matter. There's a hyssop that is particularly beautiful every year.

If you work it right, the volunteers at the front of your compost pile will actually screen the pile itself from view, turning it into an attractive feature. Sort of. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

[CKatCook]

It sounds like an oxymoron, but gardening in Las Vegas is a very rewarding experience.

I don't bother with composters. Rather, I just dig a hole in my garden, cover it with a trash can lid to keep the pigeons at bay and toss most of my organic waste into the hole. (Large bones don't go in, for instance. They don't break down quickly enough.) When the hole is mostly full, I cover it with dirt and dig a new hole. By the time I return to that spot in the garden, everything has broken down.

Right now, I have 50 heads of romaine lettuce popping up, more dill than I can possibly eat (any eGulleteers in Vegas need some dill?), parsley, sage, thyme, marjoram, basil, etc. In a couple months, it will be heirloom tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini.

But I like the spring lettuce harvest most of all.

I trench compost and I love it! Just this morning I put a bunch of spent bush bean plants in to "stew'. A few months ago I put some leftovers (vegetable) from the kitchen in the garden and forgot I did it, came back to that spot a couple months later and had the best soil ever in that spot! It was nice!

[Toliver]

Growing out of our composting pile all by itself.

...

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Some friends who have a composting pile had volunteer pumpkins last year. They didn't get a great harvest from it but it bore some fruit.

[JAZ]

I heard a program on NPR today about a kitchen scrap pick-up service in Boston -- Have kitchen scraps, will travel.

The proprietor travels around Boston on bike, collects scraps from people all over the city and takes the scraps to a local farm for composting. His customers can either trade in their scraps for compost after 15 weeks, or if they have no need for it, they can opt to donate theirs to a local community garden.

It sounds interesting -- anyone in Boston heard of it?

[dcarch]

I have different way of recycling.

All kitchen scraps goes into a small container, air tight so there is no smell or insects. Meat, grease, small bones, veggies and fruits, everything.

Larger bones get ground up with my garden shredder.

shredder

I use a hole digger which I converted from a rototiller to dig a deep hole to bury everything.

digger

Leaves in the fall and all garden plants, including diseased ones, just get ground up by my lawnmower and spread right on top of the soil without being composted. I don’t do compost plies.

I don’t seem to have any problem the many years I have been growing not composting diseased plant matter.

Just lucky I guess.

dcarch

[Jmahl]

This year growning out of the compost pile melon vines with four melons. Last year we had butternut squash growing out. They produced over twenty squash and were very vigorous. This year we planted butternut from the package and they were weak and did nothing. So lets see how these melons work out.