When we moved into our Victorian house in 1989 we found a huge (a 6 ft cube with a chimney with 6 inch thick walls) old cast concrete incinerator way at the back of the lot inside of a blackberry thicket. It appeared as we cleared out the blackberries. My DH (whose family house it was) did not even know that it was there. We found a lot of neat old small medicine bottles, bent spoons, etc. around it - I think they used to burn ALL of their garbage, not just leaves, etc. Well, my DH took one look at it and said "I am NOT breaking that thing up".

Then he had the idea of using it to make compost. He took off the chimney, and broke out some of the front, so he could put in movable boards across the front. We have two very large old scarlet oak trees, which cover the garden in very large (6 inches by 6-7 inches) leaves every Fall. They mat, so have to be raked up. We bought a leaf shredder, and every Fall now he shreds the oak leaves, and throws them into the old incinerator, along with occasional grass clippings and mounds of oxalis when I yank it out of a bed in the Spring. Also throws in mounds of raked up leaf litter from our driveway, which includes fallen plums and eugenie berries at certain times of the year. We don't save anything from the kitchen except coffee grounds, which do get added. He occasionally turns the heap over with a garden fork. The rain gets in there too. Well, each Fall now when the new leaves have to go in, he bags up whatever is in there from the prior year. It is always great mulch, and the bottom half is usually real compost. Very non-high tech, but it works. It gets warm in there, and sometimes we find indentations where some animal has spent the night in the warm. I use the proceeds to mulch everywhere when I am doing the Winter pruning.

He made a spot on top of the incinerator for a flower pot, and under the flower pot there is a brick lined sort of round planter, 2 feet in diameter and about 4 inches deep. I put a miniature rose in the pot, and planted some sort of creeping flower in the planter. Ten years on, the rose is still growing (it has an automatic water drip thingy), but the creeping plant died. Last year, to my amazement, wild strawberries colonized the planter, and now, with no assistance from me whatever, have covered the entire thing and are blooming happily.

Jackie

I add the kitchen garbage to the regular compost pile, making sure it's buried deep enough not to attract critters. I also bury my kitchen garbage (eggshells, coffee grounds, citrus rinds, vegetable trimmings) directly in the beds all winter. Surprising how quickly the stuff breaks down here especially during this very mild winter. Even though we have a small wilderness beyond the fence, SO FAR we haven't had possums or racoons digging in the beds.
High nitrogen fertilizer will help activate compost early in the spring but since I'm an organic gardener I just put pee on it. Urine is very high in nitrogen you know, that's why it burns plants.

I composted kitchen stuff for a while but couldn't stand the rotting stuff by the sink, as we were both too lazy to dump it. Now, we put it in a plastic bag or container and take it right out. Coffee grounds go out daily.
We are very limited in space so we use two heavy duty plastic compost bins. Our main ingredients are grass clippings and leaves. I bag up the leaves from our two trees and mix them in with the grass clippings most of the year. Best of all is during daylily season. We deadhead them each evening and put the spent blooms on the piles. It provides lots of moisture in the hot, dry summer. Sometimes, there is too much moisture and a black gooey substance leaks from the bottom of the piles. The dogs love it and I have to keep them away from it. Also, the dogs relish the finished compost and have to be watched closely after I put it down around the roses. It is always evident when they have been chowing down on it! I love messing with the compost bins, turning, mixing, and watering the contents. Best of all is the day I harvest the compost, sifting it into a huge wheel barrow and bin. I just recently worked them over, wetting them and mixing everything up. They should start cooking well once we warm up again.
No, I have never peed on my piles. Even if I wanted to try it, the bins are a bit high (hee, hee.)

One thing I do is take all the nice raked up Cercis leaves when they are damp, and put them in black plastic trash bags, closed only loosely so a bit of air can get in, and let them sit for a year in a hidden spot. Then I have bags of free prime leaf mold, a great soil amendment.

I have a couple of former plastic trash barrels I flipped over and cut the bottoms out of. They have become worm bins on their own. The worms just showed up. I've added literally hundreds of barrels worth of clippings to those two barrels, and they keep making room for more. I keep meaning to try to harvest something out of there to put around the roses, but haven't gotten around to it. Saved a huge amount of landfill space, though!

I love it when my.husband cleans out the rain gutters. They're always full of leaf mold from the surrounding oak trees and, amazingly, earthworms. I don't know how the worms get up there. I'd like to see them arrive once just to satisfy my curiosity. And I don't mean a few. It's always crawling with them. I usually add it to my potted plants, and the worms usually stay in the pots. The first time I did it, I thought they would haul butt out of the pots, but there are always plenty of worms in the pots when I replant.

OMG - you are the first person, EVER, to give me incentive to clean out my gutters!

Thank you!

Right now I am cooking a half barrel of well water, a bushel or two of wood chips, several loads of kitchen scraps and a few other promising ingredients. At the bottom of this stew is an aquarium filter bubbler sending a stream of bubbles up through the gunk.

It stinks to high heaven and the last time I stirred it the chips were not very dissolved. I think I need more nitrogen and I am positive that the bubble stream is too small for the volume of stuff.

Since I am planting several from the ghetto this month, I am planning on spreading it soon and remaking it in a 5 gallon bucket rather than the old water softener salt barrel it is now in.

You're welcome, Harmony. Don't you love it when a thankless task ends up with an unexpected gift?

I have always read compost shouldn't have an odor if you're doing it right, so I would guess something is out of whack, Thonotorose.

I am try to "recycle" whatever I can. All my vegetable waste goes into my compost pile which is an old garbage can with holes in it. Not that great but it does the trick (sort of). Coffee grounds go directly under my roses. I don't throw away any leaves at all; they all go into my beds as mulch. I don't shred them (too much trouble) so they just get put on top of the beds. Leaves are my main source of mulch although I do but stuff at Home Depot, etc sometimes. Some of my rose clippings stay in the beds but I do put the bigger pieces in the alley for the city to pick up. I would like to shred all the clippings for mulch but just don't get around to it. I also use alfalfa pellets a couple times a year on my roses. Plus alfalfa tea mixed with fish emulsion if I can.

But, leaves, leaves, leaves are my major source of mulch. I would NEVER throw away leaves.