In conjunction with chopping down the garden for the year, I’ve built a compost bin. I cut up all the plants, mixed in some grass clippings and dirt (threw in whatever earthworms I found), tossed in a couple of eggshells and old bread, and chopped it all up with a shovel. What else should I be doing with this? Anything thats good to add? How often to stir this stuff up?
Add water occasionally if you don’t get rain.
Add water on occassion and mix the old with the new to get good Black Gold.
Put a bucket in one of the bathrooms at your clinic. Take it home at the end of each day.
Put a bucket in one of the bathrooms at your clinic. Take it home at the end of each day.
Or invite Duffy over and tell him it’s a public compost.
it is best to alternate layers of green and brown material. so plants and grass clippings 2-3 inches thick, then a 2-3 inch layer of leaves, chipped branches if you have them. throw in a couple shovels of dirt like you said as it will have live organisms to speed up the composting. water layers if dry. Repeat green, brown, and dirt layers. I have a soil thermometer I can check mine with and if it cools down I take that as a time to use a pitch fork and move it to another bin, mixing it up good and getting more air into mix. Lack of air contributes to off-smells.
I bought my wife a composter from Lowes. About $100 and it will spin so that you can rotate it periodically.
Put some poo in it.
Don’t put any type of poo in your compost. Compost does not get hot enough to kill dangerous organisms that can be in poo. You should not use this on food gardens.
Cool, thanks. Is 2 bins that big of a help?
Cool, thanks. Is 2 bins that big of a help?
I made simple wood ones made from pallets. I have 4 and that is not quite big enough to work with a 1/3 acre lawn, 1/3 acre of tree leaves, plus garden matter. I am adding a couple more bins. so it depends on how much you compost. It will make stirring easier. The more often you think to stir, the quicker it will produce good compost and the quicker it reduces in volume.
Don’t put any type of poo in your compost. Compost does not get hot enough to kill dangerous organisms that can be in poo. You should not use this on food gardens.
What do you think fertilizes organic produce?
BTW, I was just kidding about the poo. You need to be following a string of several threads to get the joke.
Don’t put any type of poo in your compost. Compost does not get hot enough to kill dangerous organisms that can be in poo. You should not use this on food gardens.
Manure…
http://www.ota.com/organic/foodsafety/manure.html
Oh, yeah. Human poo too…
http://www.totalityofbeing.com/FramelessPages/Articles/organic_vs_nonorganic.html
Don’t put any type of poo in your compost. Compost does not get hot enough to kill dangerous organisms that can be in poo. You should not use this on food gardens.
What do you think fertilizes organic produce?
BTW, I was just kidding about the poo. You need to be following a string of several threads to get the joke.
In a residential setting I am thinking you are talking about dog and cat poo. Plenty of research saying that if you compost this in a home setting to not use on your vegetable garden. But feel free to if you want to risk it.
Don’t put any type of poo in your compost. Compost does not get hot enough to kill dangerous organisms that can be in poo. You should not use this on food gardens.
What do you think fertilizes organic produce?
BTW, I was just kidding about the poo. You need to be following a string of several threads to get the joke.
In a residential setting I am thinking you are talking about dog and cat poo. Plenty of research saying that if you compost this in a home setting to not use on your vegetable garden. But feel free to if you want to risk it.
We have to lay down chicken wire covering our entire garden to keep the damn cats from crapping in our carrots!
Rabbits are my scourge. I fenced my 2 4x8 raised beds, but took it down to connect and expand the 2 beds. Little bastards ate the strawberries.
So you’re saying I should install a commode seat over the bin and begin doing urine drug screens in my backyard?
I find living in Maine I need a lot of bulk to get it good and heated. I use leaves. Just get bags from friends and such in the fall and then mix in with grass clippings over the summer. Still takes 2 years for me to get decent finished compost.
Some other posters have correctly alluded to the fact that you need more carbon or “brown stuff” (dead Leaves, sawdust, wood chips, newspaper, etc.)
Grass clippings, fruit and veggie scraps from the kitchen, garden waste, herbivore manure are good sources of nitrogen, or what I might call “green stuff”.
Keep it as moist as a wrung out sponge and mix on occasion to supply oxygen to the pile.
The pile should never be slimy or have a rotting smell. That means you don’t have enough carbon/brown stuff in the mix.
I would keep all cooked food out of smaller compost piles. They usually contain fats, which can attract pests, and are more likely to add bad bacteria to the pile. Smaller compost piles aren’t good places for human or animal waste from carnivores/omnivores. There are plenty of resources out there on humanure though if that stuff tickles your fancy. Of course, there is one caveat - never hesitate to piss on your compost pile. Urine is literally fertilizer gold. Urine would be considered a nitrogen source, so don’t piss on a slimy pile of grass clippings, unless you can add a healthy dose of carbon as well. You’ll deserve all the bad smells you get as a result of that.
Chicken shit, horseshit and cowshit are great additions to a compost pile, but usually aren’t worth the hassle for the average home composter.
And if you use sawdust or wood chips, make sure it doesn’t come from pressure treated lumber.
A lot depends on how patient you are too.
I put pretty much all the weeds, plant trimmings, tree trimmings, leftover plants from my fish pond, leaves, brush, extra straw used to cover strawberries and roses, etc. over the winter, unburied victims, etc. I picked up a chipper at an auction a couple years back that I run a lot of stuff through. The smaller you can chew it up the quicker it breaks down.
If you have the time and the space you don’t really need to do a whole lot other than put it in a pile. I usually have two piles working. One is this year’s wast, the other is last year’s.
In the Spring I use the pile that is going on 2 years old. The only care I give the piles is that when I pee outside, I try to pee on the piles. It is almost entirely broken down by that time.