No, you don't need to have two piles, but at some point you're going to have to stop adding to the pile, if you want to use the compost. But you don't have to use the compost. I grew up with a compost pile as a way to manage our kitchen and yard waste. We made compost, but after my father died, we never used it. I harvested it when I was about 21---the most beautifully broken down compost I've ever seen.

Any tree or shrub in your yard would greatly appreciate a circle of compost around its base, too, if you wished.

Happy composting.

You might like a soil saver bin. I got mine at Sams club for 40 bucks. You might consider getting one now, see if you like it, consider add one more for "finishing" a full bin while adding new to the other bin. They have a lid that "locks" with two plastic turn thingies on top if wildlife is a concern. If it gets dry you can leave the lid off during a rain and that will let your kitchen waste cook and shrink with minimal work. Sounds like the slow composting method is what you want. If you turn with a pitchfork you need to watch out for cracking the side of this thing. I have three so I can pick up one to shovel the partly composted stuff into an empty bin and water if needed, but that sounds like more work than what you want. You are saving the landfill with you method and eventually you will get some compost out of it!

If your main concern is that your compost pile doesn't become a 'varmit feeding station', perhaps you might use one tumbler, and when full, transfer partially composted material to a compost pile.

You might also consider the WORM INN composter. There are some interesting videos of experimental "overloading" a WORM INN on the Red Worm Composting site.

Here is a link that might be useful: scroll down to WORM INN

You can keep filling the same bin and never get anything from it if you want. I've had "perpetual compost piles" going on occasion. I'll fill it and in a month the bin will be half full. I'll fill it and in a month it will be half full. I had one going for several years once and never got a single bit of compost from it. Since I kept adding to it was always "unfinished" even though there was compost in there. If your goal is simply to reduce your garbage it is an option.

I assume you wish to just be a good soul, and do what you can for the environment. It is good that you wish to give back to the soil--even if its someone else's.
But, if you have reservations about what kind of compost you can bring about for a neighbor, then how about finding out if your local people have a composting program and by setting out at curbside what you would add to a compost pile, then is made better by the experts and given to those who can use it by inviting them to 'come and get it'.

A tumbler can be a weighty problem. You should think about what kind of tumble action you wish to put up with.
Is it worth the effort rather than making a pile somewhere where the worms can get in on the action. The tumbler will have good mixed with what you are adding today...and tomorrow and so has to be tended to more than a pile.
It still has to be dampened down and therefore, close to a water source. Once with soil and everything, it can get very heavy and unless you have a tumbler that turns easily, you might give up and decide the exercisor indoors is the better way.

Don't listen to Goren.
Ever.
Compost can be made with no effort, no water, and no labor. Put stuff in a pile. Walk away. That's all it takes.

Most communities do not have a curbside pickup for kitchen compostables and it is so easy for individuals with some yard space to compost what a household makes. I am with Annpat - so easy to cold compost if you want to reduce your trash. Plus another perk is that you do not have to hang onto smelly stuff (I do not care for old onion or cauliflower odor) in the trash while waiting for the garbage pickup. Just throw your dinner prep bucket in the compost pile and your kitchen stays fresh!

That said, I am impressed by urban collection in places such as San Francisco where folks "take it away and compost it" for those who do not have a pile. Where these services are available, I bet many people STILL want to and do make their own black gold.

'I don't need the (insert substance of choice) but...'

That's what all addicts say valyn. Beware, once you've started you'll wonder how you ever managed to survive without it.

Some of us here are in such a desperate state we are physically unable to put an apple core into a rubbish bin. Our hands just won't perform that action anymore.

Finished compost replenishes the nutrients in container gardens if mixed in thoroughly at the start of the growing season. I use vermicompost (compost produced in worm bins) from the New York farmers' market regularly for that purpose. I'd be a little more wary about putting homemade compost in containers.

It does sound like, for what you want to do, you'll need two bins or heaps. You could start with simple heaps and see if any wildlife goes near it. I've found that, if I mix in the right amount of chopped straw (my brown of choice), kitchen scraps compost quickly, there's no odor to speak of, and the wildlife stays away.

Well, if you ever not listen to me at least some people will read and agree that not everyone has the get-go to bother with handling garbage.
Whether compost can be made as per Annpat's method I bow to her being able to suggest it but challenge the overall result to come to anything. Anything, that is, worth the effort and worth anything to the garden.

Lots of communities do not have pick-up of compostables?
That's a rather wild offering if one has some basis for suggesting it. I live in a small community and we have pick-up at curbside for kitchen scraps. Later, on particualr dates, they allow pick-up of garden trash and other debris. In the summer, they announce in local tabloids that compost will be made available early on a morning and first come-first get and take as much as you want. Late comers get left out in the cold.....or should I say, left out of the gold.

How about this then: Most communities do have pick-up of compostable materials and make it available later.

I suggest too that if you have the muscle power of Arnold, then by all means, roll out the barrel, and have lots of fun.

Yes, I apologize. I was rude.

This, however, is the question:

"So given that my goal is not so much to create compost but to have a receptacle for my daily kitchen waste, must I have two piles going?"

And the answer is no, you need only one receptacle, and you can manage your household waste with as much effort as you enjoy or as little effort as throwing stuff in a receptacle and walking away.

Goren claims you have to water it. Well, that's great if your goal is to generate compost, but if your goal is to dispose of waste and maybe get compost, as stated, then, yes, you can put stuff in a pile somewhere, and it will decompose.

The poster's goal is not to create compost, although, if she gets some, she has some potted plants and some neighbors where she could utilize it.

I wish that more communities accepted kitchen scraps. I doubt there is a single town in Maine that does, and if you attempted to take it to the leaf/grass/pumpkin collection area, I bet they'd, fearing rats, try to stop you.

Valyn, do you have a lawn? Finished compost makes a great fertilizer for lawns. A thin layer is all that's needed and it will save on nitrogen fertilizer.

For decades all we ever did was throw kitchen scraps in a bin and once a year harvest the bottom layer for rich black gold. I never layered or was concerned with browns or greens. Most of what went into the bin was greens but it decomposes nicely over time.

Now I collect all winter (again mostly greens with a few paper towels) and will eventually mix it with wood shavings, pile it up for awhile, then use it as mulch. If I feel energetic I may turn it but I know it's not essential for slow composting. I also dig in my kitchen scraps over the summer as it's easier and works well. It's called sheet composting and it feeds the worms (along with all the other beneficial soil organisms) who quickly turn it into nutrition for my plants.

There are many ways to 'compost' or save kitchen trimmings from the landfill and when you find what works for you it will be something that is easy and that you can do for a very long time. Don't let anyone tell you that their way is the only right way. Just isn't so.

BTW where we live there is no garbage collection, never mind compostable collection. Even in the nearby towns there is no compostable collection altho there is weekly garbage collection. There are tens of thousands of people in this rural area that have no such collection and I'm sure that is true for many other areas, perhaps even MOST other areas.

Nope Annpat hit it right on the head no need to apologize

How small can a community be if it has curbs? For pickup
the OP never stated that they live in the city but by the mention of wildlife I would think not in an apartment building..

And discouraging composting on a compost forum is just plain stupid don't like composting Why would you be here

No you only need as many bins as you would like also composting is a great way to take care of kitchen scraps

To all, thanks SO MUCH for the encouragement and information; I love the passion on this board! Our town does not pick up compost, so I'll have to build my own.

We live in a house in fairly rural suburb of Boston surrounded by conservation lands so we are regularly visited by foxes, deer, coyotes, wild turkeys and all manner of other wildlife (two beavers shimmied down the driveway yesterday), so I'm pretty sure an open pile of kitchen scraps would make us a very popular neighborhood destination.

So I'll start with just one pile; if I can get compost every spring, that's good enough for me. The question is the container. I'll do a bit more research.

Thanks again, and I'll keep you posted.

There are only three creatures here that have much of an interest in my compost---raccoons, skunks, and a very bad dog. I've never had a problem with wildlife, although I know others do.

I've never seen a raccoon or skunk get in my compost, but I've smelled, or seen, evidence that they have. The ill-conceived fish bin I made once was a bit of a problem.

I compost in a single pile, that I never turn or water. I do this to dispose of kitchen scraps and leaves, ect.

It just kind of breaks down on its own. The pile shrinks.

It is in a ring of wire mesh. Every other year or so, I take off the ring, move it over, shovel the top 2/3 of stuff over into the moved ring, and the bottom 1/3 is very nice compost.

I have tried to be an industrious composter and turn and water, but I get excellent compost nearly for free from the city, so I just do this to have a place to put waste (I have to haul all my garbage to the dump, so it makes sense to compost everything I can).

Greenmulberry that is excellent - how easy!

oh, i laughed out loud, belly laughed actually. i too, am physically unable to throw away an apple core! am known to take bags of compost-ables home from dinner parties and pluck banana peels from workplace garbages! (to name a few...)

and our city has never curbside composted, or any city near us except for sudbury ontario who started it about a year or 2 ago.

Being visited by verrmin on any kind of regular basis is good enough reason to me to not invite them by putting out garbage. Aside from the usual visitors, the skunks, the squirrels, the whathaveya, there's always the quesdtion of rats......big rats, small rats, everything inbetween rats....and you don't want them around yours or your neighbors' homes.
Yes, for such nonsense, I do recommend you buy what commercial compost you require for what little jobs you contemplate.

In a compost forum, we're supposed to help...to recommend, to advise, about what compost can do for the garden, and for the environment.
But, when compost can lead to all sorts of problems....aside from an aching back, just putting a pile where it can percolate might come to some people as something not worth the effort.
For these, do we then say......well, your garden, your containers, your pots ....are not worth starting if you don't have a compost pile.

Are those that suggest such nonsence going to vilify someone who doesn't wish to have a pile and yet sees the value in having one but who still wishes to not bother.

For those readers that testify that their communities do not have curbside pick up for kitchen waste and who's community doesn't have such compost piles for use by its citizens.....then all I have to say is....

why not!

Personally, I cant see a whole state being devoid of people who cant see the value of compost. Such environment help is forever in the news these days....its getting quite common for communities to have such method to avoid all that goodness going to the dump. If you don't have such plan, then call your local authorities and have them start one. Tell them your concern for the environment and how easy it is to start.
Tell them that the Canadian communities just north of you all have such pickup programs.

Toronto, and many other southern Ontario communities have been sending their garbage to a community near Detroit.
In the last 5 or so years, they have reduced the percentages going there and instead have initiated widespread compost programs.
It only takes one suggestion which might start the steamrooler.....but it takes the one....so anybody out there that doesn't have roadside pickup...
there's the phone....got any reason to not use it.

While the people in the Michigan environs might be upset with how Canadian garbage is coming to them, they should be aware that other communities in Ohio, Michigan, Pensylvania and Illinois are also contributing.
That particular town is rolling in dough accepting what isn't composted. Now isn't that reason enough to be upset.

Boise, Idaho certainly isn't collecting kitchen scraps. I don't think anyplace in Idaho is. And Sitka, Alaska isn't either.

I think that leaves are collected in Boise. I was impressed as all hell when they started a recycling program. This place is the most conservative area in the U.S. and environmentalism is to blame for all manner of societal ills. So when Boise starts recycling, that's significant.

Seattle was recycling back in 87 or earlier.

To the OP, I use wooden pallets tied together with a doubled strand of baling wire. I used to screw the pallets together but the baling wire is so much simpler.

If you live in Mass, you have trees. Run over some leaves with your lawnmower and put that in the bottom of your new compost bin. The kitchen scraps will decompose nicely in a bed of shredded leaves.