Yesterday I found 5 very large, very full bags of fresh grass clippings;
they were too heavy for me, but the homeowner spied me & loaded them into the car (I can just roll them out of the car into the wheelbarrow).

He said he didn't mean to be nosy, but what was I gonna *do* with that stuff??

so I told him.

& he said, "Where can I get instructions on that?"

& I wrote it down:
gardenweb
forums
Soil Compost & Mulch

Yay!

various and sundry dead leaves and blooms
a full bowl of peanut shells and peanuts
one somewhat dried out aloe vera leaf
a bunch of dead fern stems
half a plastic grocery bag full of shredded junk mail, paper towel tubes, and paper towels
three baby carrots and one sprig of broccoli (raw)
one apple core

Fruit cocktail....pineapple rind, old grapes, old bananas, cantelope rinds, strawberries...shame really to waste this amount of fruit :( but my pile didn't mind one bit

I don't want to know what is in my crock. Do I have to look?!? Heehee!

d giffin, don't look, just dump once a day. :)

Last night I went out in a drizzle and dumped a few pounds of UCG on my new weird compost pile. It's now steaming! I had also turned it earlier in the day. This is my compost PILE as opposed to my compost BIN so I now have two going! WooHoo! I think I have officially joined the cult of the composters.

Wonder what odd thing I'm going to do next! I read this forum daily and wonder where I can get more stuff to compost.

Watered it after adding some kitchen waste and the yard waste. The first pile has dropped noticably since the warm weather and rains. Looks like I'll have a happy fall garden.

I've read back through what I added over the past few weeks- most of that is unrecognizable now, so I must be doing something right.

Since the volume has been markedly reduced in my tiny bin, I thought I'd start layering some more stuff.

Started with a layer of dead, well-aged leaves.

Added at least a quart of chopped up old vegetables and strawberries.

left over french fries with cheese sauce.

added a few petunia plants that never found a home and had withered.

added a half bagel I found on our parking pad.

covered it with a thinnish layer of shredded paper, cardboard, a paper fiber drink holder (also shredded)and a few paper towels.

My recyclng success story: ordered out from a local pizzeria for dinner- between recycling, composting (and eating, of course!) the only thing that went into the garbage was the plastic lid the fries came in.

Yippee! I get to contribute to the thread.

Daughter and I carried out:
12 crushed egg shells
potato skin and some remains
carrot peelings
onion bits
garlic skins
mushrooms past their prime
two toilet paper tubes

and the newest addition to my list:
dryer lint!

Later today, I'm going to raid some fallen limbs for dried leaves. I saw a huge worm underneath the pile and the usual herds of rolypolys.

WHAT IS UP WITH THE BREAD???? and sugary stuff too???
And how about the kitty litter/?? You aren't suppose to put cat or dog stuff into the compost pile. It isn't healthy. I have seen and read this several times.
Just a bit confused on what people are using for compost?? Now, those of your who use bread,,and banana pudding......??? How does your compost look and smell when it is finished??

ctufts, avert your eyes...

Today:

4-5 left over pieces of toast and bread

an apple core

left over carrots (canned)

a few cubes of fruit (melon)

one used tea bag

one african violet leaf

a few petunia blooms

half a bag of shredded cardboard, junkmail, and paper towels

an inch thick, four inch wide disk of left over fibermax, which had solidified.

Turned, stirred and aerated.

As I look back over my past posts in this thread, I can say that most of what's in my bin isn't recognizable. It's not a pile of goo and it doesn't smell like dumpster in August, so I must be doing SOMETHING right.

Today, I added:

some dead flower blooms

a live opuntia pad (I put it in, then flipped the bin right side up, so I not too concerned I'll have prickly pear growing in my compost any time soon.

cactus in the compost?

never had that, but I do have a couple of iris & an elephant ear!

Can I count stuff that's been whacked down but won't actually be added to the pile til tomorrow (I just gave out & had to come inside!)?

If so, today I "added":
a ton of prunings from trees & roses
some Starbucks grounds
a trash bag full of teabags from a restaurant
2 banana peels
& a dead bird.

Since this is my first attempt at composting, I'm trying to stop adding and let it do its thang until it's done, so I know what 'real' compost looks like for the future.

For the most part, I was able to forbear:

a couple dead petunia blooms

a couple dead sempervivum leaves.

There's a cobwebby mold growing over the top of the pile, and I can feel the heat coming off of it.

naw naw naw, don't pass up those little bits;
don't pass up *anything*.

What you want is a constant state of rotting-ness in your garden;

Those little bits are the beginning of your next compost pile!

blutarski,,,"cobwebby mold growing"? Must be the bread !!
LOLOLOL

I don't have room for a quarter of the compostibles my family produces! I'd need a municipal sized pile, sylvia! :)

ctufts, i think the mold's from the strawberries I threw in last week- i remember seeing a similar type on them, which is why they hit the bin in the first place.

either way, it's welcome.

Was outsidse already, tryig to beat the Texas heat. So I added the contents of my kitchen crock: orange rids, eggshells, mango pit and fruit, crusts from 3 of son's sandwiches, 12 tea bags and whatever else hubby put in there (he is so proud of himself heehee) plus the compostable bag I line the crock with; coffee filters and grinds from a neighbor, dryer lint, grass clippings, 1/2 glass of ice tea and rice from dinner last night. I then turned and took the temp: 118.

Later on, (in the heat), it will be shredded paper, tp rolls, Starbucks UCG and more grass clippings. Plus whatever else I find around the house today.

Lotsa dog hair lately; our lab is shedding.

prunings from the wild cherry tree that engulfs my front walk
prunings from some bushes alongside my drive
watermelon rind
old lettuce, mushrooms, green pepper
eggshells
week old breadsticks
pizza crusts
moldy hamburger buns
moldy old bread
:)
toilet paper tube
cup-o-pee
:))

I am new here, but love to compost. I've received permission from several cemetary care givers to access the dead plants and cut floweres that they throw in their dumpsters after Memorial Day. They continue to clear the grave sites all summer long so there is a continual supply. They also have piles of leaves and grass clippings. I've already built 4 huge compost piles this spring. Last year I found a huge refuse pile they had been using for at least 30 years. Found lots of finished compost there. Connie

I planted a blueberry plant that was wrapped in brown paper and wood shavings, so I added those.

Cardboard, cut up into small pieces (my new watching-TV busywork).

Weed and grass clippings.

I have half a plastic grocery bag of more cardboard to add tomorrow.

Thanks o your suggestions, lots of shredded junkmail and newspapers, egg shells crushed up, strawberry tops, stale bread, a bagel half-eaten, rotten fruit and vegetables, coffee grounds, tuff that was pulled out of the gutters (boy does it look rich!), dog hair, and a bunch of other stuff.

Last night I cleaned out the pantry. The compost pile received-- old rice, macaroni, boxed scalloped potatoes (yuck hate them) some oatmeal, and urine.

This am. I added 1/3 of straw and urine.

"I am new here, but love to compost. I've received permission from several cemetary care givers to access the dead..."

I read this sentence and was a bit afraid where this was going!

Today, added a shriveled leaf from my madagascar palm and a few of the ubiquitous dead petunia blooms.

admired the mould in my bin, then stirred the pile and flipped the bin on it's head.

Cat hork (hairball + breakfast, ew) and the paper towels I cleaned it up with

Used pine sawdust kitty litter

Nasty hateful "religious" tract someone left on my car - somehow putting it in with the kitty litter and cat hork was appropriate

Junk mail

A garbage can full of dryer lint

Tonight - cleaning out the fridge!

>WHAT IS UP WITH THE BREAD???? and sugary stuff too???
And how about the kitty litter/?? You aren't suppose to put cat or dog stuff into the compost pile. It isn't healthy. I have seen and read this several times.

If it was OK for you to eat it, it can be composted.

There's a lot of debate on kitty and dog "stuff" in the piles - basically what it comes down to for me is, I use biodegradeable litter (pine sawdust pellets) that has lots of nice nitrogen on it by the time seven cats are done with it, plus all of my cats are indoor cats, healthy, and haven't been outdoors for years so they can't be passing toxo, which is the most common concern, and there are enough outdoor cats, raccoons, squirrels, possums and skunks in my neighborhood that it doesn't matter anyway - there's animal poo around no matter what I do. So I might as well bury the cat feces and compost the litter. Hey, maybe some of the neighborhood cats are attracted to the pile instead of doing their business in my planters ...

I compost meats, dairy products and oils, too, with nary a problem - from blenderizing leftovers and pouring the resulting sludge into the pile and covering with leaves, to occasionally putting a dead squirrel into the pile whole.

I put in some:

eggs shells
UCG's and filters
used paper towels
used paper towel/toilet paper rolls
some extra grass clippings (to heat up the pile!)
old bread crusts (just for you annpat) >8-D
old rolls (just for you annpat) >8-D
tomato plant clippings
spent blooms on various plants

Just a few dead petunia blooms today...

Today I added UCG from Starbucks, kitchen scraps from the kitchen crock, plus the bag that goes in the crock; tp rolls, brown bags; a half of a roll, cornmeal, dry pasta, dryer lint and a magazine made of recycled paper.

Turned it and put it to bed.

half a sub roll
4 banana peels
a big bowl of watermelon rinds
a pint of old bean soup
old salsa
old hummus
one raw egg (my wife threw out the shell by mistake)
coffee grounds and filter
tea bag
left over cereal and whatever milk it had absorbed
moldy applesauce
a bag of cut up cardboard and newspaper
one kleenex with blood in it (nosebleed)

Liquid coffee, coffe grounds, clippings of mugwort, some other dead dried out weeds, a sprinkle of composted manure, a sprinkle of soil and some decomposed wood chips full of earthworms (it's a cold pile).

UCG from work
leftover salad-in-the-bag from camping two weekends ago
watermelon rind
leftover apple cinnamom cheerios/fruity cheerios
bits of two cucumbers (Out of my garden! Yahoo!)
tomato bits from husband's tomatoes
week old leftovers of squash, zuchinni, onion, yellow bell pepper, and corn
misc paper towels used to soak up watermelon juice
dryer lint
huge mess o'shredded paper from the office

what I need to add most right now is a half-pitchfork. Not in the pile itself but in my tool stash.

It was cool last night so I made chili. Bought a can of cheap beer to put some in, and the chili was delicious. This morning I dumped the rest of the can in the compost along with onion peels, cut-up grapefruit rind, coffee grounds and filter, lettuce trimmings, tomato trimmings. Thought it was such a waste to dump the beer, but I don't like it to drink. It was either going to compost or septic system and I tried to choose the lesser of the evils. Don't have any slug problem. Hope it didn't nurt my microbe babies.
Sunny

a bag of old lettuce and croutons
ucg and filter
some type of plant that my dad gave me that didn't survive transplanting
a small pot of dead blooms, stems and misc. plant parts.
a good pound of cut up cotton t-shirt.
a shopping bag full of shredded newspaper.

have sooo much stuff that could be composted...I feel like buying land just to use for composting.

my bin was afire with heat today! easily the hottest it's been.

but, it smelled muy garbagioso

so...

added a bunch of shredded paper and some paper napkins, gave it a good stir.

Today I added:

corn, husks and cobs
eggshells
blueberries
napkins, paper towels
old bread
hot dog rolls
rice
newspaper

A nice fat package of dried seaweed, 1/2 cup rice flour, flower deadheads, 1/2 cup tiny dried fish of some kind, a bunch of bolting spinach, dried maple leaves, UCG's, a bunch of old seeds saved from last year, a handfull of beet greens, a cup of powdered milk. That should make a healthy mix.

This afternoon I added
stale pretzels
crackers that son no longer eats
some dry cereal left in the empty box
2 cereal boxes, shredded
mango peel

I'm filling up empty cereal boxes with all the scraps and hand-shredded junk mail, UCG, iced tea bags, and what not, and taking the full boxes down to the pile. A DS16 and a DD10 between themselves will eat a whole box of breakfast cereal every day.

The vacumn cleaner bag
Japanese beetles and the water they've been sitting overnight in.
All the weeds from the vegetable garden
some nice fresh horse manure

4 lemon wedges and 4 lime wedges
1 piece of lettuce that decorated my plate
(both of the above were packed away in a Ziploc baggie at the restaurant table)
a week's worth of coffee grounds & filters from my aunt
a few pea pods

receipts from a couple of grocery stores
coffee grounds & filters
tea bags
what was left of yesterday's coffee & tea
shredded junk mail
shavings from sharpening 2 pencils
salvia stalks

a feather i found in our yard

3-4 flower stalks from a blue spruce sedum. I was going to put the dead flowers in, but I had visions of sedum springing up in and around everything next year.

I spent a couple hours in the heat weeding my back yard of sticklers and the like, and they all got tossed into the compost bin. I also deadheaded some irises and lopped off some dead canes from one of my lilacs. Those went in. I carried out a biobag full of kitchen scraps, mostly garlic trimmings from the garlic I've been harvesting.

And I've got a plastic bag of thin "cereal box" type cardboard to dump in as "browns" after I put in a nice layer of greens.

coffee grounds
egg shells
corn husks and cobs
vegetable peels

Starbucks coffe grounds
-- I'd never asked the Target store before, and the guy started to spoon some grounds into a papercup! I said, Here, dump them all in this bag. I had an interested audience of five who asked "What are you going to do with those?" Man, I was tempted to say, "Oh! It's a lot of work, and it gets really stinky, but I put them on my garden and grass, one particle at a time." I mean, if everybody starts snagging them, one day, I could ask, and GASP! they could already be gone.

I told the truth. Do I get a gold star?

green and red pepper scraps
onion peel and onion
cinnamon-raisin bread that nobody liked
eggshells
oregano
thin cardboard box
water

yep, patsy, you get a gold star!

Egg Shells
Paper towels
Spoiled fruit
Dryer lint
Spoiled Straw
Garden Trimmings
Shreded Junkmail
Alfalfa Meal
TeePee rolls with a little bit of teepee on it
UCG

Yup I have one of those compost bins that used to be a wine barrel. I opened it the other day and whooo it smelled to high hell, plus lots of hairy mold. Well I added some straw and mixed it with a fork instead of turning the barrel. I guess I added too much water or too much green material. I will keep adding paper and the like to try to soak up some of the moisture. Despite all of this it was getting warm but not hot. It's interesting reading what everyone compost. Even the wife is getting all into it. Most of the time she will ask if I want something for the compost and yesterday she even with to a big bix store and bought a small garbage can to sit on the kitchen counter for composting.

Larrick

In order to keep the length of these posts a little more manageable, there's now a "July" What Have You Fed Your Pile Today thread.

Please post your "offerings" on that thread!