Hey, I searched on 'dryer lint' and this thread came up. Question, I collect my dryer lint in a bag in my laundry room and it's now full. Can I put that in my pile? Is it a green or brown? And I'm assuming dryer sheets cannot go in? Lots of good tips here, the old protein powder, lobster carcasses an other things. I have 3 piles which are now mostly wood chips from last years trimmings and weeds and soon will have deadheaded roses from my garden. Luckily we finally got some needed rain an I am going to stir up the piles this afternoon.

Egg Shells Paper towels Spoiled fruit Dryer lint Spoiled Straw Garden Trimmings Shreded Junkmail Alfalfa Meal TeePee rolls with a little bit of teepee on it UCG Yup I have one of those compost bins that used to be a wine barrel. I opened it the other day and whooo it smelled to high hell, plus lots of hairy mold. Well I added some straw and mixed it with a fork instead of turning the barrel. I guess I added too much water or too much green material. I will keep adding paper and the like to try to soak up some of the moisture. Despite all of this it was getting warm but not hot. It's interesting reading what everyone compost. Even the wife is getting all into it. Most of the time she will ask if I want something for the compost and yesterday she even with to a big bix store and bought a small garbage can to sit on the kitchen counter for composting. Larrick

Large C Shaped Grubs In Compost Pile New composters are often shocked to find these in their piles and are naturally concerned and/or repulsed by them. No need to fear. Often times what you have are the grubs of the Green Fruit Beetle. A quick web search using Google or one of the other search engines, using either of those terms will bring up a lot of good info that I will summerize here. Green fruit beetles are, for the most part, good guys. They prefer to feed on decomposing organic material as grubs and overripe or rotting fruit as adults. If you have them in the compost pile they are working hard to break it down for you along with the redworms and other members of your "microherd". You can identify them from other more destructive types of grubs fairly easily. They are an off white color changing to a dark grey at the tail end with a reddish brown head. They are considerably larger than most grubs, up to 2" in some cases. Say the size of a small shrimp. If you expose them they will crawl on their backs, legs in the air, to try and rebury themselves. This "upside down" mode of locomotion is specific to this species. It has been noted that, unlike other types, this species will come to the surface at night and move about, and in doing so, serve to aereate the compost piles for you. If you sift your compost before use you may wind up with quite a few of them at one time. They make good fishbait. You can also place them in a shallow pan or tray and lay them out as food for the birds. There are many other more destructive species and of course if you find that is what you have you need to take measures to remidiate the situation. Milky spore or benificial nematodes are some recommended methods that are low impact. Limiting heavy chemical use will allow for natural processes to keep things in check for the most part.

Coco Peat Powder is simply a powdered version of Coir, coconut husks that have been reduced to powder. Coco Peat Powder is all Carbon, just as coir is. What I can find out about Thermocol is that it is packaging material, cardboard or a plasticized material similar to plastic lined cardboard, or polystyrene. The bin size does not have enough volume to allow the bacteria that would digest the material to work on it properly. To get enough Coco Peat Powder into the mix to help sop up the liquid the volume of the bin would need to be doubled. kimmq is kimmsr