Nothing today, but..... I got over my embarassment and asked the neighbors if they would mind if I took their green waste from the curb. They gave me a full bin - they were taking out a huge vine that had covered their privacy walls. I shredded it and now have a full bin and half, hot as you please, cooking away. I am glad to have worked up the nerve -

I'll probably throw in some kitchen scraps after dinner.

Two full buckets, each 5 gallons, of used coffee grounds plus filters. One bucket was developing an interesting (and thick) crust of orange mold.

Claire

I could not begin to list it. One of my DILs was here and discovered some pancake syrup spilled in the pantry, from a bottle turned over with a loose lid. That resulted in a complete clean out and up of the pantry and throwing away of about two five gallon buckets full of lots of stuff that was old and I did not even know was in there. Sugars, starches, grains, chocolates etc, you name it. I bet the microbes and worms will be really hyper for awhile. My pile has been getting a pretty steady diet of garden and kitchen waste and water mellon, canteloupe rinds, potato and banana peels etc. so a little change up should do them good.
Bill P.

Two mice
coffee grounds
vegetable scraps
egg shells
junk mail
paper towels
dog hair
apple mush
pumpkin vines (dead from frost)
corn cobs

Patty, good for you for asking the neighbors!

This afternoon I'll pull more pumpkin vines as I pick 300+ pumpkins, rake the ash leaves off the lawn, check the trap for the daily mouse contribution, and the kitchen scraps.

My banana peels and yucky bananas go to the roses!

Today I fed my new compost pile (retired the old, it's full) one of the tomato plants that had done its thing and decided to retire, trimmings from lantana, weeds and bermuda grass from a flowerbed, junk mail and some old pages from a class my DH attended (our new kittens decided to spread them over the floor which brought them to my attention...one less thing in the house!), coffee filters and large tea bags from local restaurant..do not live near Starbucks :(, the tea leaves and coffee grounds went directly into my flowerbeds with grass clippings on top. Reminds me I need to dump shredded newspaper from catbox (just declawed and vet said to use paper).

Peggy

Mine got some grass clippings and straw and various and sundry yard waste.

The pile had cooled down to 90 degrees, so before adding to it I flipped and watered the pile. I found that I had fed it credit cards last week. I had forgotten that we shredded expired credit cards last week, and I had emptied the shredder into the bin. I don't expect them to rot too fast...

Karen

Had to start a new pile since I've not finished distributing this season's finished compost. But I piled up 20 lbs. of used coffee grounds, 2 five gallon pails of grass clippings, 2 bags of shredded newspapers, 1 bag of leaves saved from last year, and the leftover divisions from 4 monster (2 wheelbarrow's full) Stella d'Oros.

Isn't composting wonderful!

"pumpkin vines (dead from frost)"

Wow!
We're still wearing shorts & running air conditioners here.

I'm jealous!
(but I won't be jealous when the frost really arrives here & melts the crinum & canna leaves...)

All mine got yesterday was some paper napkins that I'd been carrying in the car "just in case" that finally got used to wipe up dog slobber on the way to the vet, & its normal coffee grounds/teabags/eggshells & some water from cooking noodles.

Peggy, I pick up the big square teabags from a restaurant here, too!

I think they're as good as coffee grounds; the only difference I notice is that you have to put them into the compost right away or they sort-of ferment & get slimey.

Sylvia,

Slimey is just one part of it...the smell can often be a bit much but I figure it is just the herd already working on it in the bucket!

You can tell when I put the coffee/tea leaves out...my flowerbed or garden bed smells for a day or so.

But HEY, I don't care and the neighbors are never in their yard (it's covered in weeds--I'm thinking privacy fence to block the seeds their mower blows into my flowerbed when they finally get around to mowing).

DH was in San Angelo recently to buy new windows for the house and brought me back a silver bag and a large trash bag of Starbucks...smelled so good! The man knows the way to this gal's heart LOL! These went on my new canna bed I'm creating and there is still a faint scent left, wish it lasted longer. I don't drink coffee but think it smells wonderful!

Peggy

A bunch of banana peels, one apple core, stale bread, a few teabags, and half a bag of dates.

I've got a huge amount of cardboard to deal with from the new wardrobe we just bought. I'm thinking lasagna, probably.

40 chopped up dead tomato plants (some done yesterday ;), a 2 gallon bucket of old coffee grounds and filters, a big bag of dead leaves, a 5 gallon pail of 3 year old canned pickles, and 5 ziplock bags of frost-burned frozen okra.

Dave

A chocolate cake that when I looked at it I gagged, a huge zucchini that I cut up to make smaller pieces, some cashew shells, onion peels and garlic peels, and half a loaf of Italian bread. Yesterday, the pile got 3 eggplants that had never delveloped or grew, alot of weeds, and I've got about 10 bags of leaves to run over with the lawnmower either today or tomorrow. They are from last fall.
Alberta

10-ish lbs of Adzuku beans that are at least 4 years old,
5 gal pail of tomato seeds / skins / stems / onion & pepper trimmings,
5 Asian Tiger melons that smell wonderful but taste like a bland cucumber
grocery sack full of junk mail, sans plastic windows
3 Christmas catalogs - no, I don't want an artificial tree
big cardboard box full of weeds

and if it stops raining, I'll wait an hour and then I'll go mow grass and cover all that up with clippings.

Cucumber peels and paper plates I cut it on
leftover canned corn
leftover canned peaches
some peach puree left over from jam making
half a can of coconut milk that I discovered in the depths of the fridge
dusty coffee filters discovered at the back of a drawer
4 squishy potatoes
a handful of paper towels

Quite the collection of oddities!

*Slimy white onion half
*Slimy red onion half
*Wadded paper towels containing cat vomit
*Shredded old cotton dish towel
*Pods from my home-grown black turtle beans
*A couple of cracked Sungold tomatoes
*Half a bottle of flat Heineken
*A very mushy plum
*Bunch o'weeds
*Bag of pine needles from the monster tree on the corner
*Dead shredded old once-white cotton nightshirt, cut up small

Figs, figs, and more figs
4 brown grocery bags
a few volunteer tomato plants
coffee grounds, just a little ol' pots worth

That's about it for today, I only have a little compost bin compared to you guys, but I do enjoy it. :)

coffee grounds
apple peels/cores
peach peels/pits
various veggie trimmings
vacuum cleaner bagless thingy contents
paper towels
tea bags
chicken thigh bone
unidentified mushveg from the bottom of the drawer in the fridge

"mushveg".

I think I've seen that before...

My pile may need a Rolaid from the stuff I fed it today.

tons of canna leaves & stalks
4-oclocks, tops & bulbs (rhizomes? tubers?) as well
coffee grounds
teabags
kitchen bucket including eggshells, more teabags, newspaper, & cooking water
wilted lettuce
icky sticky macaroni

I think I heard it burp.

Sawdust from a nearby cabinet shop. There's a mountain of it maybe 20 feet tall, free for the taking! I also use it for mulching vegetable and fruit trees. Any other uses you can think of, let me know.

My pile got the soiled cedar bedding of my son's pet guinea pigs and the contents of a large bowl of kitchen scraps which has been fermenting on my counter for a few days (it's been a busy week--I meant to get it out of the house sooner but...)

Tomorrow will be a great Saturday for me. No pressing plans for me and my family so DH and I will probably putter in the yard all morning. I plan on tossing what is left of my potted petunias which are well past their prime and whatever else I pinch, pull or prune onto my pile as well.

Oops! Forgot to say that having the compost heap makes me feel less frustrated when the $5.00 bag of gourmet greens I buy at the supermarket is less than fresh when I open it on the same day it was purchased. If it's slightly wilted, the guinea pigs get it; if it's really gross, the compost heap gets it. Either way, it ends up in my compost eventually!!

This weekend my in-laws loaned me their chipper-shredder, and with considerable enthusiasm, I went after the brush pile that I built up in my back yard. This has resulted in the addition to my piles of about ten tubs of shreds composed of semi-green wood, leaves, dried sticks, dried weeds, and leaves. The source plants (that I could at least semi-identify) were: oak, maple, LOTS of rose of Sharon, honeysuckle, butterfly bush, grape vine, forsythia, wild rose, barberry, thistles, bishop's weed, and some miscellaneous composite thing that stood about four feet tall before I whacked it. Plus a bunch of leaves from the trees that hang over the back yard, which I think is some kind of ash. A bit of cardboard, some paper napkins, a Burger King bag and cheeseburger wrappers, and a bunch of bloody paper toweling (my MIL had an accident with the pruners we were using to cut up branches into manageable lengths) also found its way into the shredder and bin. Since a lot of the wood was green, it was quite moist, but I added a couple of buckets of water to the fluffy shreds as I went along. The result was that this morning, what I put in the day before was already heated up and cooking nicely. That filled up two of my bins, and I still have a lot of brush to shred.

I had a Rubbermaid plastic bin nearer the house, which had to be moved - I discovered in the process that everything in it was too dry to compost properly, so I piled it into buckets, dragged it over to my third bin, which was mostly empty at this point, and watered it thoroughly as I added it. About half of it is uncomposted sawdust (former kitty litter), and the rest is almost fully-composted unrecognizable stuff. There were clumps of roots all through it from a tree near the old location of the bin - those feeder roots have just become greens, I think. I intend to clean out my fridge tomorrow; I will run as much as possible through the blender and pour it all into the half-composted stuff. It should get the sawdust going quite nicely.

The old plastic bin was then moved to a new location (on a slab of cement at the side of the shed) and I stuffed in a huge bundle of English Ivy I pulled up. Hopefully, in the dark, with no soil under it, it will die, and then I can add it to another pile when there's no chance of it taking root.

I had several planters that had spent potting soil, weeds and dry leaves in them, so those got dumped into the bins too.

Finally, I had a batch of large cardboard sheets, which I put down on the ground in the area near my bins with the intention of suppressing weeds, and I tucked a pair of my husband's old cotton pants under there, too. Once leaf season starts in earnest, I intend to pilfer the neighbors' leaves and mulch over the cardboard.

All in all, it's been a very busy weekend.

Pumpkin guts!

I'm so ENVIOUS!! I don't have a compost pile/bin. Can't have it here where I'm living. One day, I'll be able to post with all of you.

My little pile is starting over--most of it went into the daylily bed today! The new one got

left over twigs that didn't get finished
shrub trimmings
one paper towel
weeds
toilet paper tube
dryer lint

It's a sad little few inches but I have leaves from last year in the garage (not bagged, they just blew in there!) and tomorrow will be a good day to take the bucket to the coffee house.

I do love this time of year, what with "pumpkin guts" & all!

Yesterday, in addition to the normal coffee grounds & OPBL (Other People's Bagged Leaves), I also found a dead mouse to throw in there.

It's unusual to find mice here;
they avoid places where they can smell a cat (thank you, Miss Kitty), & the ones in the fields are owl-prey.

Grapefruit peels (the black soldier fly larvae get through those in a jiffy!)
amazon book packaging
the crusts from some sandwiches
chicken bones left after making chicken stock
half a pint of ancient milk
some mushy eggplant
a lot of bills (hope I paid them!)
one dead goldfish :-(
lots of tea leaves

ashita

today we have a pineapple top, a bunch of lemon peels, coffee grounds, some leftovers from dinner and some guck from the sink. blech!

Chutney and various condiments left over from Indian restaurant.

Several suffering squash, zucchini, and pumpkin plants.

Chicken Bones? Thoguht the golden rule was no meat or bones in a compost pile? Also see alot of paper dose that really break down well? Sorry for the questions I am still new to the composting thing. Also I fed mine

2 week old bread nice and green
Pumpkin junk
and pepper plants that didnt do anything but die.

Sawdust and bunny pellets
Sawdust and bunny pellets
Sawdust and bunny pellets
LOL!...
Banana peels
Old cereal
Eggshells
Old cucumbers and their vines from earlier this summer

I don't have room or permission for a compost bin in my yard so I compost the cheaters way: Kick a little hole in the dirt with my foot, drop the _____ in, cover it back up. Sometimes I feel like a cat covering up its poop. HAAHA!

---------------------------------------------------

The two main drawbacks of this system I've found are:

#1 The Plants - That grow from the seeds inside the fruits/veggies I put in the ground.

#2 The Ants - That are attracted to the things I bury.

Im willing to deal with both though to improve my soil. :)

"Chicken Bones? Thoguht the golden rule was no meat or bones in a compost pile? Also see alot of paper dose that really break down well?"

If you're just starting out, you should probably avoid meat and bones in the compost. If you know you can get the compost to heat to at least 135 F for 3 days, you can add meat and bones, but make sure it goes in the center of the pile and is covered with plenty of high carbon material. I've composted meat that was in the freezer during a power outage. My compost usually stays above 145 for a week or two and often gets above 160 for at least part of the time, so I know the composting process will take care of pathogens.

The paper does break down if it is mixed with high nitrogen matter, such as coffee grounds, green plant matter from the garden, etc. It composts best if you shred it first, although it may mat together if you add a lot of shredded paper at the same time.

I fed mine URINE. How's that? BTW, My pile still won't get hot again!

Not much today. I've been processing peaches from my tree, cutting them up and freezing them. I dunk the slices into a bowl of lemon juice, honey, and water as an antioxident. So I fed my compost bin the leftover "juice" from that, the skins, peach pits, and other detritus from the peaches, and the remains of some organic broccoli that I forgot about in the refrigerator. Also, any peaches that I find are past their prime.

I have 14 trees on my property. In the next couple of weeks I'll have plenty of fallen leaves to feed the compost bin with.

I may have to append another bin to the original, which is beginning to get full.

A good drink of water. (No rain yet)

a bucket of nasty cucumbers that had worms in them. I soaked the cucs in water first to kill the worms before putting the now nasty gushy cucumbers into the pile.

-grounds of 8 cups coffe & left over coffee
-apple peels & cores of 6 apples - from tonight's apple pie
-& the paper towels/napkins that were used w/it
-onion & peppers scraps from dinner
-banana peel from yesterday's snack

I haven't added any fruit to the pile since Oct 1 b/c of bears - hope they don't find the apples [the "pile" is in a rubbermaid garbage can w/lid - only thing that is inconspicuous enough for my HOA community]

I have some browns that haven't finished breaking down & I'm hoping the addtl greens will help them along faster.

:) Tree

I put in enough fall leaves to fill my compost bin to the rim, and then I watered everything down.

It's too bad I can't get other gardeners to come and rake my lawn in exchange for the leaves. I have 14 trees on my property, and they're all dumping leaves right now. I will have plenty for myself and to spare!

lilacs of many,
I envy you, most our trees here don't drop as many leaves per year.

*Banana peels
*cardboard tube from inside paper towel roll
*2 orange slices wrapped in the napkin I brought them home in from the restaurant where they were used as garnish on my breakfast plate

Today it got...most of the elephant ear leaves and stems, the rest of the basil plants, a few pepper plants. Tomorrow about 2 lbs of coffee grounds. Leaves are starting to fall but I"m too exhausted to start shredding yet.
Alberta

About two gallons of anaerobically half-putrified assorted melons and other stuff that had been in the outdoor back porch, sealed "For compost" bin, and its a good thing its a very windy day with the wind headed south, the house being north of the compost pile, with a forecast low of 19ºF tonight.

Finally got around to cleaning the fridge out. The pile got:

1 qt. rancid vegetable oil
six apples in various stages of wrinklehood
two black and mushy bananas
three unidentifiable fruits that were quite squashy
2 slices dried out cheesecake: 1 chocolate, 1 raspberry
2 c leftover lo mein
2 c rice that had gone all green and fuzzy
2 c chicken and snow peas (very long deceased)
1 package very dead snow peas
2 c green and yellow string beans
1 baked potato
1 c spaghetti w tomato sauce
1 c quartered roasted potatoes
4 lemon peels
a case of low-carb fruity drinks (some vitamin-enhanced) that we didn't like
some paper plates with traces of cat food
a handful of paper towels

All whizzed up in my blender into one of the most godawful-smelling greenish-brown buckets of gunk I've ever had in my kitchen, and poured into the middle of the pile. The microherd eats well tonight! (Well, not so well on the artificial sweetener, but hopefully those will just break down harmlessly.)

Actually yesterday, but...

Here is a link that might be useful: Building a pile

In honor of the fabric in compost thread, I cut up an old cotton T-shirt instead of throwing it out. Also,

half a mushy cantalope
a rabbit head (eeeew, cats, you know)
old pizza crusts
six moldy clememtines
aquarium gunk water
puzzle box bottom
three paper towels
pine bedding from my son's python aquarium, which BTW we changed because we found the python after four months AWOL.

It was under the rim of the basement toilet, and visible coiled under the flush valve. My son found it when the toilet didn't flush properly. Happily, it ate it's food but only came out six inches to strike and we couldn't budge it another millimeter. I'm freaking, and my son thinks it's the coolest thing on earth.

several moldy zucchinis, eggshells (from egg whites only pancakes), pepper & onions scraps & 2 bananas/peels, & 3 papertowels soaked w/the real maple syrup that overflowed in the microwave when I over-heated it

[and the next time my 6 yr old daughter wants to bring a cricket, grasshopper, or variety of caterpillar into the house to keep as a pet in her bedroom, I won't complain!]

All the Best,
Tree

banana peels, leftover coffee and grounds, rice cake, stale cereal, old juice, few paper towels, and some dead tomato plants. I so need to buy a bigger kitchen container for this!
I got splashback when I put it in. BlecH!!!

hub is promising to save the yuck when he cleans out the gutters this week. I have more dying plants to put in and am running out of room!

Squash Rinds (from roasting for soup)
4 banana peels (both my kids eat4-6 a day)
various apple and pear cores
appleskins (from making apple crisp)
coffee grinds daily
bad salad
onion skins (from dinner)

I gotta go take a Wizzzz... so I guess I'll go feed my pile now. I've also got some rotting potatoes, apples and egg shells too. :)