Yesterday and today:

4 coffee filters (with grounds)
1 bag of shredded junk mail
potato peelings
carrot tops and scrapings
1/2 old head of lettuce
1 gallon bag of old dry dog food
parts of 3 old jars of jelly
1 small bag of shredded leaves
1 bag of vacuum cleaner sweepings and
2 big wads of dryer lint

Dave

Question about the vacuum bag contents and dryer lint. I remember way back in 1995-1996 when I started my first bin (3 pallets wired together and lined with chicken wire) I added everything I could think of and I did add dryer lint and vacuum bag and contents. Problem is there are a whole slew of synthetic fibers of carpet and to this day (I just cleared that old site for a new Soil Saver bin to start a new pile) and I still see those fuzzy bits of carpet and it will probably never decompose. I just know I don't add stuff like that anymore as stuff like that drives me crazy having to pick out inorganic trash.

It was dark and drizzling rain when I got home ----wanted to get home before dark to get a turn in on on my compst bin---no luck----flashlight in hand and pitchfork at the ready i went after it -----I'm wet ----- my back hurts---i got wet leaves and something i can't ID that used to be green sticking to my shoes ---- i'm a little cold ---- but it's all good---this composting stuff is the new drug of choice --------JE

Last weekend:
Coffee grounds
Egg shells
stale cereal
stale bread
cooked rice
bagged lettuce
sprouted onions
leek tops
turnip green stems
turnip peels
shredded junk mail

Gosh Dave, I never thought of jelly!

Haven't been able to add anything in a while. Either we got home after dark or everything's iced over, including the grass, and I don't want to walk on it. :(

So I have tons of stuff piled up outside, in cardboard boxes, plastic containers, bags. Not exactly the Martha Stewart look let me tell ya.

But as soon as I can walk on the grass, I'll be adding:
-several days' worth of kitchen scraps (carrot tops, stems from spinch, chard, & kale, some egg shells, ends of Brussels sprouts, apple cores, orange and grapefruit peels, lemon slices & seeds, onion & garlic papery skins, etc.)
--scraps from brought-home restaurant meals, like duck skin & bones, white rice (which I don't eat)
-several days' worth of tea bags
-several days' worth of our coffee grounds (no filters; we have a French press)
-maybe 10 bags of grounds from Starbucks
-a large paper bag of used tissues; paper cups, napkins, toothpicks, and plates from art gallery openings we attended; chopsticks; paper towels; shredded junk mail; etc etc etc
-bags of cat litter & urine
-dryer lint (almost all our clothes are cotton or wool)
-dust pan sweepings

Can you just imagine what our patio looks like? Yikes!

"this composting stuff is the new drug of choice"

ain't it the truth???

Yesterday I picked up 6 yellow-page phone books that had been dumped at the side of the road.

pepperz, I'm afraid you'll have to pick those synthetic fibers out by hand if you don't want to look at them for the rest of your life.

I'm not saying I've done the same thing.
not at all...
it's just something I know.

Hey Sylvia----what about our daily newspaper??? I don't have a shredder ---can I just rip it up by hand and mix it in the pile ???

Question about the vacuum bag contents and dryer lint.

pepperz - we have most all hardwood floors and tile - only carpet in one bedroom and 90% of our stuff in the dryer is cottons. Life in the boonies = jeans, socks, and sweatshirts! ;)

Dave

Our florist has been saving her scraps for me. My dear sweet husband has been picking them up after work because I have jury duty this week. He's also collecting coffee grounds from work. I'm a lucky lady.

I'm a little excited. I haven't really liked coffee, but am trying to cut back on my pop intake, and switched to the coffee caffeine intake, figure it has to be better than the pop. Getting the coffee from the place I get my special teas, so I'm starting to like it better. Compost has always gotten tea leaves, and now the nice addition of coffee grounds. A week ago I chopped up the Christmas tree and added most of it. My neighbors have their tree on their porch today, thinking I might go see if I can have it too.

spoiled Mandarin oranges
a dozen tea bags
Leftover thai food (meat removed)
half a tomato
several leaves of lettuce
small fruit chunks
some flower stems

joebob, sorry to be so long in replying;
just tear that newspaper until you get bored!

I never take newspaper or thin cardboard to the shredder;
I just tear it a few times & throw it into the kitchen bucket.

& wet paper & cardboard tear more easily & disintegrate more quickly.

My compost pile hasn't had anything exotic or even interesting lately, just the same old paper/eggshells/coffee grounds/nanner peels;
can't wait for spring!

Today I added:

egg shells
apple cores
clementine peelings
dryer lint
potato peelings
coffee grounds (ours)
shredded paper ('cause the garbage cans with extra leaves were frozen shut)

AND

SNOW! Lots and lots of snow!

Val

lots of clementine peels, orange rinds from juicing so much...I love citrus season! Tea leaves, lots of coffee grinds, ground egg shells, paper scraps, dryer lint (all cotton), leaves from under trees I am clearing..wonderful compost!...all organic.

And, yep, I was composting in the rain yesterday, too! LOL!

chicken bones, a bunch of yellowed kale, the last halloween pumpkin, apple cores, coffee grounds, bunny bedding and (squick alert) the lungs and intestines of a newborn calf. (The rest of the calf, bones and all, was cut up for dog food). Hey, its better than landfilling which is what the dairy used to do with newborn calves that they didn't want.

Nancy in chilly western Oregon

Old mushy macaroni and cheese.

Some left over peas and rice.

A bunch of onion and garlic skins from lasagna prep.

slimy spinach

I filtched the UCG's and a rotten bannana from the kitchen at work today.I have them sitting in my office ready to go home to the pile today.Is there any medication for me now that I have truly gone over the freeken edge with this stuff???
Yesterday I drove around at lunch looking for greens and saw a lawn care service cutting some winter grass.I think I may have gotten to excited for such a simple task!!! Is this wrong ????---JB

Pee soaked charcoal!

Every day the pile gets a 5 gallon bucket of coffee grounds and 4 buckets of wood shavings.

This morning it got a whole chicken that didn't make it through the minus 28 F. night.

Wayne

Joebob, you can relax-
not only is there no medication that'll undo your addiction, but research shows that the more compost addicts there are, the better life is for plants, animals, & everyone else!

(&, like they say in the 12-step programs, you have to *want* to get over the addiction.)

so we're all safe.

*sob* I can't even FIND my compost bins under the snow, so I'm collecting kitchen scraps in 5-gal pails in the garage. No probs with 'fragrance' - my garage is unheated and we've had temps -12F etc. In December I brought in a couple of bags of dry shredded leaves so I can layer browns w/kitchen greens in the pails.
Kris

Today I added egg shells, bread, rotten rasberries, moldy bagels and some garden trimmings.

I can't even FIND my compost bins under the snow

I'm trying to think of it as added moisture :-)

When I can get out there I'm going to have all the usual stuff plus an ice cream bucket full of christmas cookies.

Val

frozen doggie tootsie rolls.

Freezing cold in DC, and my compost heaps are frozen solid :(

Since this is one of my favorite threads to follow on this forum, would it be appropriate for me to jump right in here, or do I need to post a "formal" introduction?

Sassy (new to the forum, not new to composting)
gammie to 2 beautiful girls, Kyndall and Surae

Welcome Sassy,

I compost year-round. In the warmer months, I don't give threads like this a second thought, but in the winter, composting reminds me I am still gardening.

Wayne

Pile is frozen and the path back there is icy and dangerous. Rather than risk breaking a hip or crashing my tender noggin on the cinder blocks, Im putting the coffee grounds naner and orange peels, and egg shells and other non-edible compostables directly on the garden beds. When the snow melts, I will have to scurry a bit to cover them up.

Last year I fed alot of critters my putting the more edible yummys on top the frozen pile and I dont want so many baby squirrels this year, so Im starving them and putting the more yummy stuff in the trash, which causes me a small bit of anxiety about wasting the compostables, but, ya gotta weight the pros and cons. During the summer I compost tons(well, lots of it anyway) of paper and cardboard so Im telling myself its a net annual contribution.

I'm working on a new pile here. Yesterday it got the usual:

--a paper grocery bag filled with tissues, paper towels, shredded toilet paper rolls, paper odds & ends I stashed when dining out (like our wooden chopsticks, paper napkins, bread, etc....I've become COMPLETELY shameless about it).

--the contents of the compost bucket (coffee grounds, egg shells, tea bags or loose tea, banana-orange-grapefruit peels, stems from kale, stems from Swiss chard, ends of brussels sprouts, & trimmings from whatever else....garlic, onion, spinach, celery and etc etc etc)

--fish bones & skin; chicken bones & skin

--bucket of water from kitchen washing up + some of the plate & pot scrapings = bits of oatmeal, bits of eggs, bits of whatever

--bag of scavenged leftover bread I'd stored in the freezer

--bags of cat litter (made from pine, this time) + urine

Today or maybe tomorrow it's getting:

--Ten or eleven bags of grounds from Starbucks, scroungings from the last couple of days. I'd plopped them down next to the side of our house but didn't feel like carting them over to the pile. They look like little kids all lined up and ready to go outside for recess LOL.

The Starbucks hauls have been fantastic BTW. I should post this in a new thread....when the weather gets nasty, not too many people seem to bother going on a hunt for grounds. When I've stopped, I've seen the place's bin overflowing with bags.

Not that it matters to the general concept, but that should have read:

paper AND odds & ends I stashed when dining out (like our wooden chopsticks, paper napkins, bread, etc....I've become COMPLETELY shameless about it).

But while I'm on the topic, I had to stop our waitress from taking the pods from the edamame we'd had. I explained, as I wrapped them in a paper napkin and stuffed them in my purse, that they were for my compost pile. It's not entirely clear that she got it. And all the while, I expect that my husband was wondering, "Remind me again, why do I go out to eat with this person?" LOL

gammie, I hope that you aren't confessing to tossing your grandchildren into the compost pile?! :-0

1. lots of coffee grounds
2. shrimp peels
3. egg shells -- egg carton and all
4. misc veggie waste from my cutting board
5. air (from stirring)
6. more leaves from under the grape vines (and there are still more left)

Soon to be ready to add:

1. wine corks
2. cardboard
3. shredded paper
4. sticks & twigs and other landscape waste (pending the chipper/shredder when the temps get above freezing)
5. more leaves
6. nicely rotted veggie garden waste
7. "used" planting soil with roots, etc., from my greenhouse

coffee grounds
rotten oranges
misc. kitchen scraps

I put in a mess of fish ---8 bream and one trout caught at my friends pond . I was going to plant them under my tomato plants but decided to bury them in my new compost pile.

Anybody ever done this? Hope they are deep enough to stay put and not turn into critter food.

Hope they will decompose without a lot of smell or my better half will lose her mind.!!!

JB

Hi guys. I didn't mean to post and disappear the other day, but the girls have been sick and have been demanding much (all) of gammie's attention:( They are finally feeling a little better and went back to school and day care today, so now gammie has time to post.

Today my pile got:
lots of kleenexes
empty kleenex box
contents of kitchen scrap tub (onion tops/skins, bell pepper "innards", banana peels, orange peels, UCG, UTB)
assorted junk mail, shredded
inside liner from cat food bag plus bonus cat food "dust"

Hopefully, we have some warm weather coming in the next few days and I can get out and give my stuff a little turn.

Sassy (new to the forum, not new to composting)
gammie to 2 beautiful girls, Kyndall and Surae

And NO, to whoever asked, I did NOT compost my babies, LOL

Hi, Sassy! & welcome!

Today I fed the pile a bunch of vegetable parings/peelings/stems/etc, 3 very heavy bags of wet shredded leaves from someone's curbside, & the usual coffee grounds & filters, teabags, eggshells, & banana peels...plus the last "slosh" of milk in the bottom of a carton.

The days are getting longer, so we oughtta have some nice tender green weeds pretty soon!

Well I don't have a pile but I did put some stuff underneath my leaf mulch.

UCG and filters
banana peels
suspension notice from my kids school ***grrrr***
unidentifiable bowl of something that might have been corn
TP rolls
Jal. pepper bits
scallions
orange peels and some pudding boxes.

yeeeee hawwwwwwwwww !!!! its 55 degrees and i'm gonna go home and stare at my pile -------

how disturbed is it that i am looking forward to something like that --------

if the others new------ it would be capers for the caped composter -----JB

Today I churned out four heavy duty bags of compost that is headed for the newly expanded raspberry patch. Each bag contained layers of oak leaves, white pine needles and chopped branches, pieces of spruce, shredded newspaper and cardboard, old bread flour and rolled oats and an occasional layer of carnation and rose stems, coffee grounds and diced fruit peels. Hoping the snow melts some so I can get it in place.

You asked so here goes.
I keep an ice creme bucket in the kitchen for scraps but all it had today was a bag of carrots (we could have eaten them but they were a little old) and some burrito shells in about the same condition.

For the last month or so I have been putting my compost veggies in a 20" fan front tipped upside down and secured to a tree limb. That way the squirrels and birds get a chance at it. What falls to the frozen snow covered ground is just piling up and if we ever get spring I will scape it all up and plop on the compost pile.

today it was

egg shells
stale tortilla chips
shredded cardboard
UCG
water and residue from washing out mayonnaise and pnut butter jars
onion skins and ends
a couple of garlic cloves that were too far gone to use
the little bits of leftover juice and formula from baby DGD's bottles
couple of handfuls of leaves that blew in from the neighbors yard

that's about it

Today I "fed" my pile:

garlic/onion peelings, scraps
the little bits of leftover juice and formula from baby DGD's bottles
a few bites of uneaten baby cereal moistened with apple juice
juice from canned blueberries used in blueberry muffins this morning
a few muffin papers from above mentioned blueberry muffins
two torn up tp rolls

that's 'bout it for today

Tonight's mindless timeconsuming activity will be ripping up some newspapers while watching a movie with the girls.

Warning : make sure the fish you put in the pile are buried DEEP-----

I didn't bury the ones I put in deep enough I guess and it looks like a backhoe dug up my pile ----must have been a hungry racoon or oppossum---

I don't begrudge the critters ---they are only attracted because of my stupidity and our close proximity to the watershed ----(we have lots of friends visit)---

I think I'm gonna stick with the vegetable matter for now untill I get a better handle on the pile ----still need to fence it in somehow ---but that will come with time ---JB

"I have been putting my compost veggies in a 20" fan front tipped upside down and secured to a tree limb.
That way the squirrels and birds get a chance at it.
What falls to the frozen snow covered ground is just piling up and if we ever get spring I will scape it all up and plop on the compost pile."

great idea!