You go, girl! This is a great time of year to start a perpetual pile, because the warm weather (and hopefully spring rains) will help it take on a nice life of its own. Just keep piling stuff on, add water sometimes, and by midsummer you'll see magic happening.

Congratulations on being creative with scrap fencing, too. Bet you could let some pumpkins or something ramble around it and it will become a favorite spot.

Here is a link that might be useful: my website

It really is a thrill to put all that stuff in the bin. You keep checking and turning it, and it's all just leaves and potato peelings and moldy lumps of tomato, then all of a sudden it becomes COMPOST!

Sue

Amanda, I'm impressed that a beginning composter would build what is, imo, the best bin design in which to raise compost. It sounds like you're off to a fabulous start. If you alternated your greens and browns well, your compost can be flipped in about three weeks and might send up some steam when you do it. Just walk around your bin and tug it upwards as you circle it. Lift it off, set it aside and either refill it or, if it doesn't look like it's breaking down, rebuild it using some of the grass clippings you will soon have.

You're from Mass? If you're near the shore, don't forget about seaweed----a Fabulous addition to your bin.

Ask someone you know that has a cat and buys their kitty litter in those 40lbs buckets if they can save you one, I'm sure they'd be more than willing to do so...

They make the best "garden waste" buckets for the kitchen. Over winter I literally had five of them full with various amounts of already decomposing slop from kitchen scraps being thrown into them and the only time you noticed the nasty putrid smell is if you were to open one of them up. Emptied weekly, or even monthly, and you'll not have that problem - I just got wrapped up in work and didn't have an "active pile" going to toss them into.

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Also, there's a lot more stuff in your house that's compostable besides kitchen scraps. Here's a short list of the things I throw into my "garden waste" buckets.

Coffee grounds,
coffee filters,
dryer lint (not the fabric softener sheets, however),
dust and dirt that I sweep up,
hair - I have a dog, two cats and a wife that sheds worse than the lot of them,
used paper-towels (as long as they're not "greasy"),
kleenex and toilet-paper bits that end up in the bathroom trash,
used toilet-paper and paper-towel cardboard rolls,

I also had* (wifey just broke our 3rd one this year) a cross-cut shredder that is dedicated to shredding all paper that we receive in the mail that is non-glossy print. I rip the plastic out of the windows of envelopes and shred those as well. We also shred all used paper from "to-do lists" and other drawing/note paper that was used around the house. Really need to teach the wifey to stop jamming up & breaking the shredders though because they cost about $100 USD each...grr. I know some of you use the term "DH" but I should really use the term "DW" lol...

I solicit my neighbors for all their yard trimmings and unwanted newspapers for my compost as well. Shredding newspaper for compost is typically done by tossing it in a 16 gallon bucket, filling it up with water and letting it sit for a day or two and then using a paddle-whip attachment on my cordless drill to turn it into a soupy slop. Brown, plain corregated cardboard can be processed the same way and serves as a good way to break down the glue that holds it together.

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My goal is to have less than two 13-gallon bags of trash for the garbage man to pickup per month - or one every other week, depending on how you look at it...and we're pretty close as it is but I was vetoed on cloth diapers so that constitutes 80% of my current landfill contributions. :sigh:

bcomplx, belgianpup, annpat, and arjo_reich: THANK YOU so much for the warm welcome. I love this forum; IÂm learning so much.

Barabara: "Bet you could let some pumpkins or something ramble around it": thatÂs a great idea. I do have some kind of vine-y thing growing (that never fruit), so letÂs see if itÂll climb. If not, IÂll transplant some clematis there to climb the fence-bin.

Belgianpup: the kitchen scraps stuff is a perk, but IÂm just so excited that IÂll get to benefit the raking of ALL THESE DARN LEAVES!!! IÂm about wear out my shoulder from raking.
- does belgianpup have anything to do with Belgium? We honeymooned in Belgium (and Holland and France) and fell madly in love with Brugges!!!

Annpat: yes, in Mass, but no where near the ocean. IÂm 2miles from the start of the Boston Marathon in Hopkinton, which runs on Monday 4/21. No, I am not a runner, but can cheer w/ the best of them. :)

arjo_reich: thank you so much for the list; I never knew of all the things that could be composted. Question: what about cardboard egg-cartons? We go through a lot of eggs (for the eggwhites).
My husband also kills the shredder because he is paranoid about identity theft. And now, I can compost all these paper.
We cloth-diapered my DS and now my DD, and only use 1 disposable diaper at night. So I like that we donÂt contribute that much to the land-fill w/ our disposable diapers.

"My goal is to have less than two 13-gallon bags of trash for the garbage man to pickup per month"  so the question is: how often do you take out the trash now? We have a trash cabinet, and now w/out all the veggie/fruit-cuttings, my trash is mostly empty. So do I waste ½ a good empty plastic trash bag to take it out? I already have a small trash barrel.

Now, next project is to chip (for mulch) all these trees/branches that we cut down for our new driveway.

the egg cartons are fine for compost - but their even better as seed starter pots ;-p

...and as for egg shells, I save them also, although the process in which I go through is often considered a little "excessive" but I'll explain why.

When I use an egg, I rinse out the shell as well as possible and then toss them into a little chinese take-away soup container I've saved from previous orders. I crush them down until it's relatively full and then I sprinkle them out onto a cookie sheet and toss them into the toaster oven or the convection oven - depending on how many I have - and bake them at 200(F) for about 15-20 minutes.

This kills off any salmonella virus that might still be latent/dormant in the membrane of the egg shell. When they come out I grind them into a powdery pulp - or as close to it as possible - and toss them into a coffee can.

Every year, starting in the early spring I begin laying out some of the crushed egg shells out along side the bird feeders. The birds use it as the gravel for their gullet and, because the females will become calcium starved from laying eggs, it encourages them to build their nests nearby as they have found a relatively easy to obtain source of calcium to replenish that which was lost while laying eggs.

Come April/May, whatever is left is added to the compost piles slowly at a rate of one cup a week until it's gone and the process is restarted.

Over the last two years I've gone from having one bird's nest nearby to having dozens... ;-p

I am also considering a compost bin. I plan on making mine out of a metal trash can. I am really excited about it! This is my "new" project I am going to start!
I have a question for you all: Can you add worms to a composter? Or has anyone ever tried a vermicomposter? and what exactly is it?

Thanks for all the great tips on what to place in it also..

ERICA in SW Okla