It's compost Go Time...tell me what you do for composting?

[Halftime Hope]

In my area, this is the perfect time to hit the ground running with a new compost pile. The grass is still growing decently, leaves are falling (I'm actually about half-way through leave drop), I have all the greens that I'm pulling out of the fall garden, and there are pumpkins to be had if I'm careful to glean them from people's seasonal displays. Starbucks always has coffee grounds, and I will add kitchen waste all through the winter.

Honestly, though, I think it's the pumpkins that provide the magic! Fungi and bacteria love the natural sugars in chopped pumpkins -- it's like Halloween for them!

I emptied out and screened the compost from last year, made primarily of oak leaves, grass, coffee grounds, eggshells, and pumpkin, plus a year's worth of kitchen scraps and every kind of rind and veggie waste I could add from our grocery purchases, trying to add bio-diversity (for what it's worth.) The pile was absolutely laden with earthworms; amazing stuff!

What do you do for your compost? I'd love to hear all the tips and tricks, as this was my first go at it!

ETA: I started with a roatating barrel-style bin, but that was fiddly with all the leaves we get, so I had dh build me a proper cube-style bin. I don't really enjoy forking it over, but I'm learning to enjoy that work even though I'm not young and abounding in excess energy. (Mostly I'm thankful to be able-bodied enough to do such things!)

Edited November 22, 2023 by Halftime Hope

[TheReader]

We're still amateurs, but here's what we do: 

In the house, we keep a throw-away container on the counter, with a stand up oversized brown paper lunch sack. Throughout the day, all veggie/fruit/compostable waste goes into this bag.  This includes carrot peels, apple cores, stumps of carrots or squashes, etc. as well as the used coffee grounds and any used tea bags. All that kind of thing.  

We use natural coffee filters, so those with the coffee grounds, and the brown paper sacks themselves, become the "browns" for the compost. We don't get a ton of leaf drop here, but DH I'm sure does add those when we get them. 

Once that is full, DH takes it outside. Last year we invested in one of the stand alone rotating compost bins. Ours is a dual-sided one, so he tosses the scraps in the one side, rotates the bin a few times and comes in. One side is thus working and when it's worked, move to the other side. I don't have much to do with that side of things, so can't say much there, but he seems to really like it. 

Then when one side is ready, tada, dirt! He puts the compost on the fruit trees in the spring, and then we often have volunteer plants b/c it doesn't get hot enough to break down seeds here, so each spring/summer we get surprise garden plants -- tomatoes, sweet potatoes, assorted melons/squash, etc. That's always fun (and those do better than the ones I plant on purpose, so....). 

 

[JustEm]

I just put all of our compostable material in a pile in the back of the yard and either have grass or leaves as the top layer.  I mix it up once in the late winter and once mid summer.  

[JustEm]

I did get a big worm compost bin from my aunt's house in the summer and I'm pretty excited to figure that thing out

[Laura Corin]

It's picked up from my door and composted by the local council/government as low-cost fertiliser to allow farmers to improve soil structure. 

[marbel]

We put all our kitchen scraps, including coffee grounds, tea bags, eggshells, into a container on the kitchen counter. We used to use a plastic container but for Christmas last year I received a stainless steel compost bucket with a filter... I love it so much.  

We have a compost bin that we got from our township. It doesn't spin; it's the kind you put the stuff in and turn it over periodically. Next to the bin are two "silos" (chicken wire enclosures) full of the many leaves our trees generate, plus other brown stuff, which we add to the composter. We also sometimes put grass clippings in. There is a little door at the bottom that when opened, shows us our lovely compost! And then we shovel it out. 

[Pawz4me]

We have the double bin, rotating tumbler composter thingie. It works fine for us. We have a ton of raccoons, possums, deer, foxes, etc. here, so I've always been leery of an exposed pile (and that's not even mentioning all the field mice). I know what "they" say, but still . . .

We have an Oxo bin for kitchen compost. I save the usual fruit and veggie scraps, coffee grounds and (natural) filters. Sometimes I throw in some egg shells. We mulch leaves in the fall and store enough in lidded totes that we can throw those in with the scraps all winter, and often have enough to last until the next fall.

[Faith-manor]

I have a pile of mulched leaves (mulched with the mower) that I have in a sheltered area so it won't blow away. I mix grass clippings, vegetable/fruit scraps that so not have seeds, and coffee grounds in it, just turning a little once a week with a shovel. I don't turn it as much as I should, and leaf litter takes a lot of time to break down, so one year in, it is still not ready to use. But I do have a small amount that looks like it will be okay to put in the raised beds this spring, and then in fall 2024, I think all of it will be ready.

Leaf litter needs more green matter than I have been giving it in order to break down faster. I read that I could go get a bag of alfalfa pellets that are used for rabbit food and add that. Since mowing weather is over with, I went to TSC to get a bag, and found it was $20.00 for a very small bag. $20 will actually buy a fair amount of compost from the local farm, so I decided it wasn't worth the expense. I will try to be better about raking up grass clippings this coming summer so I have them for the 2024 fall leaf mess.

I don't do all of the leaves in our yard we have 8 mature maple trees which is more leaf matter than I can handle. I mow them, and leave most of mulched leaves on the lawn. I really don't care if it kills the grass in the spring or not. Mowing is just such a waste of time and energy for a lawn of short grass that doesn't provide much good for the environment. 

[Carrie12345]

I have a tumbler. I want to go bigger and more open, but our wildlife would have way too much fun. 

[kbutton]

We were gifted a tumbler and also have a pile hedged in on three sides with cinder blocks. Sometimes we have a leaf pile beside that too—we eat a lot of veggies, lol!

We have garden stuff in our borders right now instead of in a larger area, and if we have enough leaves after we shelter the fig trees, we mulch them up and put them directly on the garden beds.

When we had an actual garden plot, DH used to build a frame that sat on top, and he would compost directly onto the garden, turning it now and then all winter.

We aren’t awesome at turning the compost, but even lazy compost decomposes.

We were able to get rabbit and alpaca manure one year—amazing stuff. It was a large pile for a yard, and forking it into the truck bed and dumping it out stirred it enough that I thought we might end up with a manure fire—we hosed it down because it was steaming so much. Our garden the next spring was amazing, lol!

[Pawz4me]

1 hour ago, Halftime Hope said:

trying to add bio-diversity (for what it's worth.)

I've been wondering about that, too, in a geeky sort of musing way. It seems to make sense that more diversity is better. I get a tiny little thrill when I get to add something new.

[regentrude]

Have been composting for decades, and I don't  "do" anything. I make a pile. Nature makes the compost. I don't turn since I am not in any hurry.

To be precise, I make three piles separated by walls made from old pallets. A current one that gets added to, the one from last year that is rotting, the one from two years ago ready for harvest.

I compost veggie peel, kitchen scraps, weeded weeds, a bit of cardboard, grass clippings (most of them in situ as mulch on the beds), some leaves (most of them are left in situ mulched with the mower where they fell).

Never had trouble with critters. In the summer, several turtles live in the pile and eat the veggies. Once or twice saw a possum; it doesn't do any harm, just eats apple cores. For mice and little birds, the brush pile is the more attractive habitat.

Edited November 22, 2023 by regentrude

[Miss Tick]

We have three 3 foot cubes built mainly from an old deck that we disassembled. I have a large bin for kitchen waste collection that goes out once a week. I use shredded paper in the bottom of the kitchen bin. In the spring, as I plant the garden, I put down a few layers of newsprint as mulch between rows or around plants, then I pulled in enough compost to cover the paper and hold it down. That provides a good weed barrier and soil enrichment. Then we can tip the remaining bins into the empty spot. The last couple of years I've been struggling to be interested in the process though, leaving me with quite a jumble of emotions.

 

ETA DH designed the bins using an old This Old House article, and they are very nice looking in addition to being quite functional.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Miss Tick
DH brag

[wisdomandtreasures]

Throw it all in a big pile with leaves and some dirt and just let it sit. I dont check temperature and only rotate once or twice a year. The first pile started 2 years ago is almost finished. This year we dug a bunch of trenches about a foot deep. Every time the compost bucket is full, it gets emptied into a trench and buried. My sons raked up all the fallen leaves and spread them over the trenches that have been filled. 

[Rosie_0801]

The Weedy Gardener on Youtube has some mightily inspirational compost videos. He's a videographer by trade so it's all pretty.

[popmom]

For turning compost: I have a nifty little tool called a Tumbleweed Compost Aerator. So much easier than shoveling. 
 

https://tumbleweedgardening.com/products/aerator

Edited November 22, 2023 by popmom

[GailV]

We have 2 large black plastic bins -- I think maybe 80 to 90 gallons. The first one was from a program our city got a grant for - providing nice, large bins plus accessories for about $35. The second is a cheapy I bought this fall when I decided I needed more room.

Bin one is currently full of leaf plus grass clippings from me mowing up the grass/leaves in the past month -- currently mostly sweet gum, plus some oak. I also throw in kitchen vegetable scraps, facial tissues, etc. "Watering" is leftover lemon water, tea grounds, pickle juice, etc. I stir at least once a week - I stopped using the aerator the city provided, and now use a pitchfork, often taking out a couple of bucketsful out of the bottom, stirring what's left, then throwing the buckets back in the top. When I did this last week I discovered that the center was anaerobic. I'll stop adding to this in the next month (it's already so full of leaves I can't add much more).

Bin 2 has everything composted from last April through October - mostly oak leaves cleaned out of the landscaping in the spring, which I then threw on the lawn and mowed up. Plus all the kitchen scraps, kleenex, tp roll cardboard, etc. It seems to have stopped cooking, but I'm waiting until spring to use it.

In late December I'll start using a trash can I've drilled holes in for whatever else we have for the winter -- kitchen scraps and paper products.

I also dump lawn-mower bags of leaf/grass clippings in the 35lb buckets from the kitty litter - I pry the lids off, stuff them full, pound the lids back on. I'll use those in late summer through early autumn to provide brown material.

I also put out several barrels of leaves per week for community pick up.

I'd love to do huge piles that are just fenced in (we definitely have enough leaves for that!), but I have neighbors who apparently live to eradicate every leaf and generally subjugate nature. It drives the woman next door nuts that my back lawn is currently solidly covered with oak leaves  (prevailing winds blow from her yard to mine, so it's just plain silly that she gets so wound up about this). And then she trucks in huge piles of bark mulch in the spring, after blowing away all the leaves in the fall ... sigh.

[Halftime Hope]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

The Weedy Gardener on Youtube has some mightily inspirational compost videos. He's a videographer by trade so it's all pretty.

Yep, I just watched his 21 Day Compost video. I know he's making turbo compost intentionally, but that particular method is a bit much for me since I 1) work full time, and 2) don't have the upper body strength of a guy. I'm interested in watching his other videos for a method that falls within my capabilities.  🙂 Thanks for the recommendation!

[Halftime Hope]

52 minutes ago, GailV said:

We have 2 large black plastic bins -- I think maybe 80 to 90 gallons. The first one was from a program our city got a grant for - providing nice, large bins plus accessories for about $35. The second is a cheapy I bought this fall when I decided I needed more room.

Bin one is currently full of leaf plus grass clippings from me mowing up the grass/leaves in the past month -- currently mostly sweet gum, plus some oak. I also throw in kitchen vegetable scraps, facial tissues, etc. "Watering" is leftover lemon water, tea grounds, pickle juice, etc. I stir at least once a week - I stopped using the aerator the city provided, and now use a pitchfork, often taking out a couple of bucketsful out of the bottom, stirring what's left, then throwing the buckets back in the top. When I did this last week I discovered that the center was anaerobic. I'll stop adding to this in the next month (it's already so full of leaves I can't add much more).

Bin 2 has everything composted from last April through October - mostly oak leaves cleaned out of the landscaping in the spring, which I then threw on the lawn and mowed up. Plus all the kitchen scraps, kleenex, tp roll cardboard, etc. It seems to have stopped cooking, but I'm waiting until spring to use it.

In late December I'll start using a trash can I've drilled holes in for whatever else we have for the winter -- kitchen scraps and paper products.

I also dump lawn-mower bags of leaf/grass clippings in the 35lb buckets from the kitty litter - I pry the lids off, stuff them full, pound the lids back on. I'll use those in late summer through early autumn to provide brown material.

I also put out several barrels of leaves per week for community pick up.

I'd love to do huge piles that are just fenced in (we definitely have enough leaves for that!), but I have neighbors who apparently live to eradicate every leaf and generally subjugate nature. It drives the woman next door nuts that my back lawn is currently solidly covered with oak leaves  (prevailing winds blow from her yard to mine, so it's just plain silly that she gets so wound up about this). And then she trucks in huge piles of bark mulch in the spring, after blowing away all the leaves in the fall ... sigh.

Sorry about your neighbor!

[Halftime Hope]

1 hour ago, popmom said:

For turning compost: I have a nifty little tool called a Tumbleweed Compost Aerator. So much easier than shoveling. 
 

https://tumbleweedgardening.com/products/aerator

That looks cool, but I have a hand injury that won't allow it. For most people, that would definitely be a nifty tool! (Ironically, the motion of a pitchfork doesn't bother the injury.)

[Halftime Hope]

4 hours ago, kbutton said:

We were gifted a tumbler and also have a pile hedged in on three sides with cinder blocks. Sometimes we have a leaf pile beside that too—we eat a lot of veggies, lol!

We have garden stuff in our borders right now instead of in a larger area, and if we have enough leaves after we shelter the fig trees, we mulch them up and put them directly on the garden beds.

When we had an actual garden plot, DH used to build a frame that sat on top, and he would compost directly onto the garden, turning it now and then all winter.

We aren’t awesome at turning the compost, but even lazy compost decomposes.

We were able to get rabbit and alpaca manure one year—amazing stuff. It was a large pile for a yard, and forking it into the truck bed and dumping it out stirred it enough that I thought we might end up with a manure fire—we hosed it down because it was steaming so much. Our garden the next spring was amazing, lol!

Boy, I'd love to get some! I should look to see if I can find a local source.

[Lucy the Valiant]

We have worms! And chickens. I love compost!

[livetoread]

I used to use the three bin method - one adding stuff, one cooking, and one ready, but they were open and dh didn't want to attract mice or rats. Now in the summer when my veggie beds are in use I add everything to a lidded trash can that had holes in the sides and bottom. I have two, one to add stuff and the other to cook. Once I clean out my veggie bed for the season I dig furrows and then just add all my kitchen scraps directly to the soil and cover as I go. I plant on top of that in the spring and go back to the trashcans until fall again. I use the trashcan compost whenever it is ready. 

[Bootsie]

We have two large trash bins with holes punched in them that we throw kitchen scraps and some yard items; we will place scraps in one barrel for a while and then switch off to the other.  (We have a small bin under the kitchen sink to collect items.)  We have a small yard but constantly seem to have a large amount of debris from neighbors' trees.  We don't collect grass clippings, we just let them fall on the ground.  Our city collects lawn debris for mulching/composting each week--our bin is often full year round (although we allow the leaves to pile how on the side of the house over the winter months).  

[popmom]

For people who use worms… do you have problems with flies? Even when I cover the fruit and veggie scraps with cardboard or strips of brown paper, the flies still breed. Little flies. Bigger than fruit flies but smaller than regular flies. 

[Melissa in Australia]

We have compost bays. 4 in a row. 2 metres high, by 2 meters by 3 metres deep.. We put anything  we can source in there, cow manure, grass clippings, chook poo, garden waste,  cardboard, etc. Takes about 12 months to mature. Sometimes we turn the bins but mostly we just let the worms do it. 

[marbel]

14 hours ago, GailV said:

I'd love to do huge piles that are just fenced in (we definitely have enough leaves for that!), but I have neighbors who apparently live to eradicate every leaf and generally subjugate nature. It drives the woman next door nuts that my back lawn is currently solidly covered with oak leaves  (prevailing winds blow from her yard to mine, so it's just plain silly that she gets so wound up about this). And then she trucks in huge piles of bark mulch in the spring, after blowing away all the leaves in the fall ... sigh.

Similar story here. When we moved here, our elderly neighbor was friendly but in the fall, she made it clear that she didn't like leaves from our trees blowing into her yard. (If she actually paid attention she'd see that leaves blow both ways.) When we planted a maple tree she groaned "another tree? More leaves!" I should note here that one of the features of this neighborhood is the large number of beautiful mature trees. But a few people seem to hate them.

Anyway, the neighbor died and her grandson moved into her house and I guess her leaf hatred was genetic because he blows leaves darn near every day. I'm sure he hates us. We mow most of the leaves into the grass but where there are just too many we put them in our little silos for compost. We leave them in the planted areas (which are growing each year as we slowly remove more lawn) and sometimes they do blow out of our yard, stupid leaves don't obey property lines. 

[KungFuPanda]

The best thing I did was just placing my bin in a different raised bed each year. I can move some of the compost if I want to, but I can also just leave it all in that bed if I’m unmotivated. It takes up half of a 4x8 bed. 

[GailV]

2 hours ago, marbel said:

Similar story here. When we moved here, our elderly neighbor was friendly but in the fall, she made it clear that she didn't like leaves from our trees blowing into her yard. (If she actually paid attention she'd see that leaves blow both ways.) When we planted a maple tree she groaned "another tree? More leaves!" I should note here that one of the features of this neighborhood is the large number of beautiful mature trees. But a few people seem to hate them.

Anyway, the neighbor died and her grandson moved into her house and I guess her leaf hatred was genetic because he blows leaves darn near every day. I'm sure he hates us. We mow most of the leaves into the grass but where there are just too many we put them in our little silos for compost. We leave them in the planted areas (which are growing each year as we slowly remove more lawn) and sometimes they do blow out of our yard, stupid leaves don't obey property lines. 

EXACTLY! My goodness, they could be sisters!

Huge trees lining the streets, plus two huge oaks in the back, and when dh planted a couple of maples in the back HEAVEN FORBID she complained that if he wanted that many trees he should've moved to the woods. 

Her son has moved in with her as a caretaker - she's in her late 90s and determined to age in place, mostly so she can "garden" - he tends to be more environmentally aware, and has lowered the amount of pesticide she uses (her gardening mostly involves spraying Roundup on everything, and blowing leaves daily), but I think he's just going with her on the leaves to keep her from griping about it 24/7.

OTOH she wrote a cranky letter to a neighbor who cut down a tree on their property that she liked, so it appears to be mostly a control issue for her - like Yertle the Turtle she needs to control all she can see.

 

Edited to add an apology for this digression into crazy neighbors, but it's so affirming to hear we're not alone that I got all excited!

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by GailV

[Lucy the Valiant]

On 11/22/2023 at 8:29 PM, popmom said:

For people who use worms… do you have problems with flies? Even when I cover the fruit and veggie scraps with cardboard or strips of brown paper, the flies still breed. Little flies. Bigger than fruit flies but smaller than regular flies. 

Ours are indoors, in our furnace room (perfect temp). Sometimes little flies do come into the box sometimes, but they don't come out of the box. (Our furnace room is off of a workshop.) We bury the food scraps under a layer of dirt, though? In addition to shredded newspaper. We've only had the vermicomposting box a couple of years, but I am just over the moon for them. (And I can't say that out loud to too many people IRL, ha.) 

[popmom]

24 minutes ago, Lucy the Valiant said:

Ours are indoors, in our furnace room (perfect temp). Sometimes little flies do come into the box sometimes, but they don't come out of the box. (Our furnace room is off of a workshop.) We bury the food scraps under a layer of dirt, though? In addition to shredded newspaper. We've only had the vermicomposting box a couple of years, but I am just over the moon for them. (And I can't say that out loud to too many people IRL, ha.) 

Same! lol

I'm not too bothered by the flies right now because I can keep the bin outside on the back porch. I might try a layer of dirt. Thanks.

[City Mouse]

I tried for many years to do composting here, but the climate is so dry that I have to constantly water the pile to get it to break down, and even then it takes forever. I took a class last spring on worm composting which I am considering, but with all the craziness of the past year, I haven’t gotten past thinking about it.

[Faith-manor]

We have a neighbor, retired, who spends his every waking moment April - December, making his very boring lawn perfect. He probably hates us though he never says anything about it. We do no-one May so I am sure he has to fight dandelions because we refuse to treat and keep them cut down. We have let milkweed pod go bananas because it attracts butterflies which we have enjoyed immensely, and I noticed this year he had his first large milkweed plant which is was viciously murdering. We mulch the leaves and don't rake except for the small amount we want to compost. I wait until the trees have dropped A LOT before mulching so on windy days, I am sure they blow across the road. He has NO deciduous trees on his property - cut all of those lovely carbon sequestering beauties because leaves - and only has a couple of small pine trees. So he has to have a leaf blower because of us since we refuse to cut ours down.

I guess that makes us very rude neighbors in his eyes. But I consider it a moral thing at this point due to the current conditions on earth. I won't become a polite neighbor by sacrificing what I know to be better practice. And he burns his leaves. He could compost them or he could put them in the paper bags the trash pick up provides so they are taken to a compost facility. He burns them because he can't stand to have them around for even a few days. It just seems like it would get so old to be that stressed about short grass and leaves on it.

Thankfully most of this little town love their tree lined streets and while many do mulch the leaves, they don't get obsessive about removing them, only two or three people burn them. We do have township rules about burning leaves due to some folks years ago making massive piles next to the road and creating visibility and breathing hazards on top of not having the common sense to not do it on high wind days.

My angst is that I wish they would compost faster without my intervention. I want to be a lazy composter. 😁

[Halftime Hope]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

My angst is that I wish they would compost faster without my intervention. I want to be a lazy composter. 😁

I think that's the magic of the pumpkins, they really jumpstarted the microbial life.

The one thing I wish we didn't have was all the pumpkin seed husks. They all germinated and I turned the little seedlings back under to decompose, but the seed husks are tough little buggers, and small enough that the screening didn't strain them out.  Oh, well.

 

[KungFuPanda]

I forgot to mention, I grow comfrey specifically for breaking down my compost leaves faster. 

[Eos]

10 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

I forgot to mention, I grow comfrey specifically for breaking down my compost leaves faster. 

How do you keep it to just this task and designated area? 

[KungFuPanda]

I have the blocking 14 Russian comfrey that’s sterile and doesn’t spread. I keep it in a garden with some elderberries and cut it down a few times a year to toss into the compost. I didn’t entirely trust that it wouldn’t spread so I put it near some English Ivy that could use the competition but it hasn’t traveled. Now I need more of it so I’m going to have to propagate it myself to get some. 

[GailV]

17 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

I forgot to mention, I grow comfrey specifically for breaking down my compost leaves faster. 

Well well well, my composting and gardening is about to undergo a big change. 

How did I miss this little gem of knowledge?