Starting & Maintaning a Compost Bin

10 years ago

From my other thread about my soil not draining as good and I have decided to add compost probably next year. I priced leaf compost at $25 a yard... well that surly adds up when you need 10 yards a bed. I figured I can try to make as much of it myself especially since I have tons of leaves int he fall.

I've been reading up on this all day and I might just build a small wooden container this weekend. I have enough leaves in our wooded area that I could use for the bottom, I have a lot of newspaper around, an unlimited supply of shredded office paper here at work, we eat a lot of fruits and can have a lot of banana peels, apple cores, etc. We also have a catch and can collect grass clippings. During spring & fall I cleanup dead branches & weed out bushes that I can use.

My question is can I use almost any food scraps or should I stay away from stuff like Mac n Cheese, spaghetti, meats?

Also, if I start this year and won't need it until next spring, will it be OK sitting during winter? I'm doing my plantings this spring, but I'm not going to physically work the with stuff like compost and mulch until next spring.

Any tips/suggestions?

Comments (8)

JonCraig
10 years ago
Dairy, grains, and meats are bad in large amounts (relative to the amount of leaves in your pile), but in small amounts are ok in my opinion. So long as you're not tossing out a whole steak or a dozen loaves of bread, I wouldn't worry about it.

Be wary of tossing in grass clippings if you have a spreading type grass. I, for example, have tons of Bermuda and would cry if I introduced some Bermuda stolons (one of the ways it reproduces) into my garden.

Yes it will keep through winter. I make compost on much the same schedule as you're describing. But in the fall whatever compost I have left in the bins I put in buckets, planters, etc. to keep 'til spring. Then it's accessible, and I have that much more room to cram more leaves into the bins in fall.

Hope that helps!

--JC
Kimmsr
10 years ago
I'm not sure why someone would list grains as being bad in the compost since any vegetative waste is acceptable. Mac and Cheese, because of the cheese is best not added to the compost, although the macaroni and spaghetti, without any sauce covering it would be okay. Meat, as a rule, and fats are not very good additions to a compost pile.

What makes you think you need 10 yards of compost per bed? A planting bed 4 feet wide by 60 feet long with 1/2 inch of compost spread on it would need 10 cubic feet of compost.

Here is a link that might be useful: Composting Tutorial
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Thank you Kimmsr The frozen pieces are on the outer perimeter and crusted. Open to air, a while back I placed a cover over the entire pile. After a month or so I checked it and thought it was to dry, I removed the cover exposing it to the elements. Snow and rain moisten the pile, however it must drain rather well because I never find it drenched. I have a friend who's garden is fabulous, he has a large truck load of leaves dumped off from the leaf truck. These leaves have gone through the vacuum picking them up and are very nicely shredded. He leaves these in a pile till the next growing season, thats all he uses for fertilizer and mulch, works great for him
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Not sure if this is helpful, but I thought I'd share my accidental experience: I set up a sort of lasagna bed late this spring where I removed about an 8 in. wide strip of sod down the middle of the long narrow bed (it runs along my walk). On either side of the removed strip, I layered newspapers or cardboard and then piled up material, including some composted horse manure and some four way mix that I built up along the center strip. The layers on either side were just made up of whatever I could find to build it up 7-8 inches above the newspaper the keep the grass from busting through and build the soil up for next year. The idea was to make sure the beans for this summer had something that was already good and ready to go in the middle so that they could grow well and root down sufficiently deep. I think that I incidentally also filled the bed full of e.f. eggs/small worms from the horse poo. I had sorted out most of the big clumps of worms from the manure for my worm bins. I didn't notice the wiggler presence in the bed til yesterday when I was pulling out my spent bush beans (Which actually did quite well in this setup-- The zucchini that I grew with the same lazy method went nuts!). As I pulled out the beans and disturbed the first couple inches of nearly composted lasagna layers, the numbers of worms shocked me! There was more than I've seen in any of my garden areas. It was a very pleasant surprise! I also have a small worm trench set up next to that bed, so there is a small chance that worms may have also come from that, but I kind of doubt it. I'm interested to see what happens over the winter. Best wishes!
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Hi Leo, I’m lazy! The way I do it is to throw it on a pile and let it rot! No special mixtures, just whatever I have to throw on the pile goes on the pile. In the last few years I have started to turn and/or mix and fluff it up at least once a year to get air in it to get it cooking! Otherwise the only thing I do is to wet it down well every now and then in summer (and occasionally in winter) when we haven’t had any precip for a while. What David 52 isn’t telling you (now, David!) is that he has a couple acres of grass! At least! So when he lets it grow “for a few weeks” and then mows—he has a MOUNTAIN of clippings! Most urban folks aren’t that lucky! Like David 52 I use my grass clippings to mulch my veggie garden, but I don’t have that many and last year I started putting a thick layer of half-decomposed leaves that have been laying out there in the bags (the bags that get holes and get water in them) all winter around all the tomatoes/eggplants. That’s working really well—it’s almost like a wet sponge on top of the soil! If you’re planning to have a “bottom” in your bins, DON’T! If you leave them open to the soil the worms will migrate up into the compost and help the decomposition—and they’ll multiply like crazy and give you lots of worms to “transplant” all over your yard! A buncha years ago I started a compost thread—with possibly the longest post I’ve ever done! The only thing I do differently from what I said in that thread is that I don’t do any screening at all anymore! And I also do NOT let the compost decompose ALL the way anymore! I generally use it when it’s about 50-60% finished. That puts organic matter that attracts worms into the soil where I’m planting whatever I’m planting—and I also intentionally transplant worms with the compost I’m using. When I’m mixing it in to plant something and I find “pieces” that are too big to easily mix in, they just get thrown back on the pile. The one (minor, in my opinion) problem is that as the unfinished compost finishes, the area “sinks down” a little bit and needs a little bit of filling in at some point. http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2127510/reflections-on-compost With your “bags of leaves!” It’s WONDERFUL to have bagged leaves over winter! I discovered this accidentally, but I get all the (50-60) bags of leaves from one neighbor and, needing someplace to put them, I started stacking them on top of the soil where my tomatoes are planted. The first year, when I was moving one of them I discovered that the worms had been “procreating” out there all winter! When I pick up a bag there’s a MASS of worms under it—most of them disappear pretty quickly, but I can never believe how many there are! So since that first year, I now cover every square inch of my veggie garden with leaf bags and leave them there all winter! They keep the soil underneath moist, and they insulate the soil enough that the worms stay active ALL winter. I highly recommend you try it! In spring I mix leaves right out of the bags (both wet and dry ones) into my (clay) soil where I plant the veggies, and they decompose in the soil over summer. The bags that get holes in them will get water in them, and they’ll start to decompose in the bags over winter—and it’s not unusual for worms to find their way into the wet bags and happily live in there! Whatever bags I have left in spring that I can’t use somewhere I put on the compost pile and just keep adding more as it goes down. (I do add bags of leaves sometimes over winter too!) People will dispute this, but I don’t put eggshells on the pile anymore! The first year I did, but I tend to dig around in the pile with my bare hands, and eggshells are SHARP! I also discovered that they never decompose! The few I put in that first year stayed just like they were when they were put there—except for the fact that they got dirty!!! (Also, pumpkin seeds NEVER decompose! I haven’t put any on my pile for 8 or 9 years, but when I’m planting in the yard I STILL get into them—intact—in places where they got buried those first couple years. I’ve even tried “tearing them in half” when I find them and reburying them, but then I just wind up finding the “torn in half” ones a couple years later!) I don’t know if this is explained in the compost thread! What you see in the pics is pieces of galvanized sheet metal attached to the fence to keep from rotting it out! That’s the “entire” construction of my compost pile! I put up the metal and started throwing stuff on the ground! I think you might be surprised by how many veggie scraps you come up with, and all “discards” from perennials and annuals can go on the pile too. I don’t ever put weeds that even just MIGHT have seeds on the pile. Not worth taking a chance! As usual, this got way longer than I planned! Gotta go! Happy composting, Skybird
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luckygal
10 years ago
My best advice to anyone either gardening or composting is "don't sweat the small stuff". If you are throwing out massive amounts of 'Mac n Cheese, spaghetti, meats' you have a problem with your cooking or amounts you are serving people. If there are only small amounts that are not consumed your compost can deal with those.

Make sure you deeply bury in your compost any materials that might attract animals and you should have no problems.

There are very few foods I don't compost but then I don't throw out much except what isn't edible.
robertz6
10 years ago
"I priced leaf compost at $25 a yard"

I would be a bit leery of buying anything called 'leaf compost' myself. It might/would indicate that the seller did not know much about the product or the subject.

Products called "leaf mold" or "compost" would indicate the seller had more knowledge. In certain weeks in the fall I make a compost consisting only of freshly fallen maple, oak, and sweet gum leaves. It heats up to 130 to 150F, and breaks down quickly. But I don't think I would call it 'leaf compost' without further explanation.
lynngun
10 years ago
Dairy and Meats are usually not good to compost. I am not sure how they compost but they can attract rodents so I don't do it.

Here is a link that might be useful: A Brief Intro To Composting

This post was edited by Lynngun on Sat, Mar 22, 14 at 22:56
robertz6
10 years ago
I reread "A Brief Into to Composting". I wrote the first version about nine years ago I think. Still holds up OK, I usually dislike most of what I've written.

But FAQ articles should be short, and I think a lot of the latter part of the FAQ is too picky and unnecessary.
gardenper
10 years ago
You can start one any time of year. Although dried leaves are a typical and commonly named ingredient in compost piles, you can achieve the same from other dried plant materials or even non-plant materials, that you get throughout the year.

There are some who use methods that they claim can get usable compost material in as little as 4-6 weeks (and I'm sure their ingredients factor into this), but certainly a range of 6-12 months would be fine also for the methods that most people are using.

Depending on the size of branches, I usually don't put those into my compost pile since it takes longer to break down and I like seeing my compost as mounds of some kind of dirt-like material, not material with bits and pieces of sticks in it.

You can also think about trench composting so that you'll be amending your soil throughout the growing season (though admittedly what you put into the trenches still needs time to decompose and become available to plants also)

This post was edited by gardenper on Fri, Mar 28, 14 at 11:32
jonathanpassey
10 years ago
i have the same question as kimmsr:

how could you possibly use 10 yards of compost per bed??

i have a 40 foot by 16 ft garden with 8 3.5 by 16 foot beds. my whole garden is 640 square feet. even if i put 6 inches of compost down, 11 yards would cover the whole place. if i only put 3 inches down per year then i can get by with 5 or 6 yards.

i wire 5 pallets together as a hot compost pile and in about 8-12 weeks (spring summer and fall) i have finished compost. about halfway through the process i reduce my box from 5 pallets to 4 pallets.

a 4 pallets box full to the top is about 2 yards of compost. so to never buy compost i'd have to cycle through a box that large three times per year.

it is a huge amount of material to fill a 5 pallet box. i have a free unlimited supply of relatively weed free horse manure, plus newspapers and wood chips and etc. but even if you have that much stuff on hand you still have to assemble the thing and then turn the thing occasionally.

i get paid about 25 dollars an hour at my day job... it takes me about 10 hours of hard labor to produce 2 yards of compost.

given all of this, 25 dollars per yard for good quality compost is an incredible deal. and i have almost just talked myself out of composting... if i didn't think it was cool/fascinating, like conservation, and think my homemade stuff is better than theirs i wouldn't do it.

-jon

Starting & Maintaning a Compost Bin

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JonCraig

Kimmsr

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