Discussion Board

Hi Faith et al.

I LOVE compost. I love to collect the materials for it. I love to layer it. I love to mix it. I love to run my hands through the decomposed beautiful soil at the end. And I love the results when my sweetie uses it in the garden.

It took me a while to get it right, though. I spent a fair chunk of change on a rotating bin once and it was a total waste of money. It absolutely would not keep the moisture at the right level. Now I simply have two big rubbermaid compost boxes with lids and ventilation slats - picked up for $10 each at a yard sale. As long as I add some moisture periodically in the summer months, it works fine.

A HUGE key to successful compost is adding animal manure. I know that's a little trickier when you live in the city but, with care, you can do it. Aged horse manure has little odor. I also found that goat manure, especially with old bedding straw, was pretty benign. Cow manure STINKS. Chicken manure has some smell but dissipates within a week and would probably be okay if you used it in small quantities.

Even in the city, you can likely round up some free manure. Check craigslist in the free or farm/garden listings or put an ad in the wanted section of it. There could be someone with miniature goats even in your area, Faith.

For households that include males, it's commonly advised to have them urinate on the compost pile. This adds nitrogen and moisture. Don't worry, urine is sterile as it leaves the body and, providing there is sufficient carbon in the pile, there will be no noticeable ammonia odor later.

For carbon sources, I use all my shredded paper including the Sunday paper minus the glossy colored sections, torn up cardboard, dried leaves, old garden plants (including nightshades), weeds that haven't gone to seed, and other plant material. I've picked up bags of pine needles from craigslist and just got a dozen huge bags of alder sawdust from there as well. Any paper napkins or papertowels from the kitchen go in the compost bin. Even worn out cotton rags get tossed in there.

For those wanting to go even further, check out Humanure. The author goes into a lot of detail about chemicals and contaminants breaking down in a properly managed compost pile and has the tests to back it up.

For me, I'm currently happy to stick with my kitchen and garden scraps, paper, scavenged plant material, and I hope to go talk to the folks just around the corner from my new home about their HUGE pile of animal manure (goat, horse, cow, and mule). Eventually we'll also have our own chickens for pest management and to get eggs for the dogs, so I'll be able to get homegrown manure, too.

My farm I used horse manure and it is great. I don't have a pick up darn it. I'll have to think on this. It did help. I use to throw so much in ours. We didn't have trash pick up so I utilized my compost and it was large.

I had heard about the male urine. Hmmm I do have a adult son. LOL It's better than asking a male neighbor.

Thank you great ideas. Luckily my $25 turning composter is doing good on moisutre, I think. We get rain here so that helps.

I know a source for horse manure in WV. I just got to think how to get it home.

Whenever I look at a bug I haven't seen before, I remind myself to stay calm--something like 96% of insects in the world are beneficial or harmless with regard to humans and their crops. So, chances are good you're seeing 'friends' there. To find out, scoop some into a bottle and take them to your county extension--they will have somebody who specializes in identifying bugs.

More information is always better than mysteries.

We've been successfullly composting for years without animal products! We save all our kitchen scraps in a big stock pot with a lid. Then dh buries it in the compost pile. We have plenty of room, so he has a "new" area for burying fresh scraps and an "old" area that is nearly ready to use. I don't know how often he mixes it up. You can also plant legumes to add nitogen to the soil.

ETA: I apparently started on page 6 and didn't see all the other pages of wonderful info in this thread!! Sorry, I didn't add anything new! Someone mentioned organic - which we use to the point of dh only taking leaves from yards where they don't spray!

If you use chicken manuer in your pile be sure to mix equal parts of shreded paper to manuer to get a good PH ..Chicken Manuer tends to be very strong.Nitrogen wise. IT makes a wonderful addition to your pile.

Thanks to all you experts sharing their information. I just put together the off the ground composter yesterday. http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.as ... opnav=&s=1

Its very similar to the off ground composter in that link. I got it because I had rats at the school next door. I dunno if they are still around after the building was demolished. I also have chipmunks and deer. So my gardening skills are already challenged from the start.

I had just a little success with gardening last year. I got two composting nets (they are round and you fill them with leaves, etc) last year from ort county that gave out free "composting bins". I filled them with leaves and grass clippings but didn't use veggie and fruit scraps due to the animals. Our county takes bags of leaves and grass and they also suck up the leaves left on the curb two weeks out of the year. Now I'm trying to learn how to benefit from them myself. You all are such a big help.

So I'm now reading this compost page and I'm on page 4. Yesterday I swept my stairs of leaves and found worms working their magic. I put the leaves and the worms in the bin. I added some soil left over from pots. I put in more leaves and then I put my first bag of veggies too. So now i have to figure how to keep them happy (warm, watered, aired, etc). I think I'll dig into the bins (nets)I filled up last year and put a few shovel fulls into the off-the-ground composter when the rain stops.

Happy gardening everyone!

StarchBeet, with respect to the critters and kitchen scraps, even living in an urban-ish area, we had wildlife issues. I always avoided adding fruit refuse, the bees were the major issue. However, I never had any problems with vegetable scraps. I had a small lidded bucket on the kitchen counter into which I'd put the stuff, and take it outside when it got full. Occasionally a raccoon would get in there and have a little snack, but really, for the most part wildlife, including rats, was a non-issue. And a side benefit, often times potatoes or tomatoes would grow in the compost (mine was open), resulting in some delightful surprises. So don't deny your compost the benefits of your kitchen refuse.

Interesting plumerias. The experiment with the new composter seems to be working. I feel heat, the veggie scraps are not so noticeable and so it looks like its working. I have those two round net compost containers filled with leaves. They also have some sticks. I was going to start dumping the grass clippings in the corner of the yard, where two sides would have fences.

Do you think I could throw some veggie clippings there? I have been wondering what creatures would be attracted. I have deer that jump my fence (at a stand still) to eat my figs. They wandered into the front yard last year because I saw their hoof prints. I am trying corn this year so that may get their interest. I will try some netting and the deer away product.

I have leaves from last year (first year I didn't blow them to the sidewalk for a county pick-up) and I have run the mower over some to just compost them around the bushes.

I may have to go to my friends farm to get some horse manure or go visit Faith sometime.

Thanks for help everyone.

SB, sorry I'm really tired this evening, too tired to think, but I'm afraid I'll forget to answer you. Go back to the beginning of this thread and see if there's something about how to layer green stuff and brown stuff. That would be your lawn clippings, vegetable scraps for green, and those dried leaves for brown. You also need to wet it if Mother Nature does not. It must always be allowed some air to compost cleanly and without offensive odors. Composting materials that stink are decomposing anaerobically, that's why the smell so sour.

Sorry, I didn't have deer issues. Raccoons, oh yeah. They have radar with respect to ripe corn, so be forewarned. There is deer netting that comes in 21' x 21' packages, 3/4" grid. It was always available at my local garden center, but if you must order it, I suspect you'd need to look in the orchard supplies section of the catalog.

It is Etselle here that has the good horse manure. I am on the hunt for a source for some not too far away.

Feeling the heat is a really good sign. Way to go.

I think the layering in the corner will work well. I have this composter that I got from Costco that never would get hot enough and it falls apart real easy. Instead of throwing it away and wasting my money and putting it in the land fill, I used that as my gathering place for the coming year. I got this round kind that works well so put quick to compost stuff in all last summer. About September I stopped putting veggies in my round composter (which is ready this spring for use) and started putting it in my gathering composter. It was cool enough that no bugs and no animals got drawn to it.

This weekend if the weather holds I'll be dumping my round and ready composter into my garden to mix in. I'll then put the stuff in the gathering composter in my round one and see what I need to add and let it work all year.

Hmm I also need to figure out how to keep the gathering one together. Last year I tried giant twist ties. Maybe this year I'll try duct tape.

Faith, you could try some burlap type twine. You can tie and untie it as needed, and eventually it will decompose. You can also use it to tie up tomatoes and stuff.

I did tie it a couple years ago, the first year we had it. It's got to be the most stupid design especially for a composter.

I see Costco doesn't even carry it any more. I am wondering if they got so many returned maybe they stopped. I did see a neighbor with one, the larger model, that is holding together, but he has his on a concrete slab. He was also complaining that the stuff wasn't breaking down. it is basically like this but with even worse of a top [url]http://www.bjs.com/feelgood-90-gal-composter.product.124513/[url] The sides have to slide in together but there isn't much plastic there and one always doesn't go in. The top stays on with these little clips. The doors at the bottom on all four sides fall out as soon as any pressure is put on them. It's not easy to turn it of course as the opening isn't that large and heaven forbide if you touch the unit because it can't take it. But just having it sort of standing there for throwing stuff in all year works well. Right now all doors are off from the winter and the lid feel off, I guess the clips broke. I have a brick on to keep it from blowing away.

Way back in this thread, someone mentioned bagging their leaves in fall and finding beautiful compost in the bags later. I am doing something like this with some of my weeds.

I found out the hard way last year that the foxtail seeds (a grass) don't break down well in the compost, so I started tossing them into a big black landscaping garbage bags. It rained before I got a chance to take it to the landfill. I noticed the bag STUNK and was filled with a gooey mess from the plants that had broken down. Stupidly, I still took it to the landfill.

This year, I am throwing the weeds that don't break down well into a bag, adding a little water, and folding it up tight. It sits out in the sun and cooks. When it has broken down into the slimy mess, I'm going to add it to the compost pile to finish converting it into usable soil for our garden.

I'll bet I could add a handful of horse manure to the bag to speed up the breakdown process, too. I paid a local guy $50 to bring over a HUGE pile of horse manure that had been accumulating in a neighbor's corral for over a year. We're using it in the compost as well as in sheetmulching.

Another way we're using it is in "hugerkultur" beds. We had lots of dead wood and prunings on the property but no chipper shredder. Hugerkultur is a gardening method of piling up dead and rotting wood, putting on a layer of composting material, and covering it all with a layer of soil. Plant in the top. The wood holds more moisture for the garden and gradually breaks down, along with the composting materials, to provide nutrients. So far the squash and melon plants look pretty happy.

Last year I killed the lawn and planted periwinkle ground cover, hosta, and daylilies. I have a small narrow lot 50' x 150', alley on one side and planted arborvita for privacy on the other side. There's an old magnolia in front and an old ginkgo in back plus redbuds and sweet pea trees?? I was carting bags of mulch home from WM, but got lucky and a tree trimmer is bringing me free mulch. Last week I got 4 loads in back on the alley side. I have a compost pile where I just dump stuff. Last winter I had a bad 10lb bag of potatoes I dumped there...after reading this thread, I'm wondering if I'll have potatoes
Gotta go plant more periwinkle and spread more mulch Edit: Started to rain, I'll have to put my plans on hold for awhile

If you are getting all that tree mulch you could do like Chile is saying. I had never heard of that but it makes since and is a way to deal with it.

This spring I've been using the compost I made last year. It's the first year I actually got it to work.

I feel I should be able to get two loads a year out of it, but maybe I'm pushing my luck.