I like how you can throw pretty much anything in there and it'll all break down into the same stuff. I had the same result with cucumbers this year, I planted a bunch of them in a secluded corner and totally forgot about them. Lots of sun plus no water makes for some dead plants. Unfortunate indeed...

P.S. I'm eighteen lol

I just love days like yesterday scooping pure black gold onto my bed that was this spring a bunch of garbage(:
Some days I like composting more than gardening its the first thing I go and look at when I go to the garden

Its so good to see busy young people interested also I am 28 now and have been composting since I was 10

I love that it's FREEEEEEEEEE!!!!

My bins are old 4x4x4 orchard bins the fruit warehouse GIVES AWAY.

Leaves and cardboard I get FREE from neighbors and work.

Greens I get from our kitchen scraps, coworkers, even that orange peel in the parking lot. . . .FREE!

I even started with an old shovel and pitchfork I found in the neighbor's old barn hehe. Until the handle broke on the shovel. Then I just had my hubby make a new handle :)

I'm with you compostkate ----it's the old something for nothing syndrome....although all the work you put into it is certainly not nothing........

it's just that all the stuff we put into the compost was gonna go to a landfill.... what a waste....

and we can compost it and make black gold...

I brought some of my black gold to the office today to add a little to my plants ---people can't figure out why they are so full and green and happy.....JB

I like not having stinky garbage anymore.

I don't know that I ever grew up...
a lot of the appeal for me is the fascination I/we/every 5-year-old have with rot & decay & icky disgusting things, & part of it is the "magic" element.

As someone said on another thread, "I threw in an old kitchen towel, & I never saw that towel again."

Abracadabra! It disappeared-Magic!

& some of it is deeper than magic;
it's the transformation of death into life.

I'm a 46-year-old man but on the web I'm a 13-year-old girl. [Kidding!]

I've been composting since high school myself, and even when the garden turns on you and goes bad, compost is still your friend.

I enjoy knowing that instead of throwing compostables into the trash, they're going into my pile to later feed my vegetables, which will in turn feed me. It taps into all 3 "r's", and that makes me feel good on a fundamental level. I'm not a hardcore greenie or some kind of neo-hippy, but I like knowing that I'm doing my part and not contributing nearly as much to the degradation of the planet as I was prior to composting and becoming more aware of how my actions impact the planet. Yes, it's a tiny, tiny thing - garbage in the compost instead of in the can underneath my sink, but it's something, and I've found that making the conscious decision to compost has bled into other areas of my life where I've begun to make conscious decisions to be more earth-friendly. Is it going to change the world? No, and I don't have any delusions about that, but can my enthusiasm about it get other people on board? Sure, it definitely has the potential to, and when lots of people do tiny somethings, the somethings become less and less tiny, and a few people doing their part is better than nobody doing anything at all.

I'm also one of those people who loves getting "something for nothing", so of course, that aspect greatly appeals to me. And then, on top of it all, I just find the process fascinating (the magic element, as Sylvia mentioned). I throw in things that are recognizable as vegetables, pine shavings, paper towels, and then in short order, I can no longer make anything out. Watching my pile devour tomatillo husks, corn husks, and various large chunks of food has continually amazed me. Having an excuse to go outside and play in the dirt excites me. Being able to take other people's waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill (all the various types of manure I pick up) makes me happy. Composters take trash and help it along so that it can turn into treasure.

Oh, and since we're playing the age game, I'm 29, going on 30 in a month and 2 days. Ahhh... I'm getting closer and closer to being compostable!

I like "making dirt" --here is a hole in the garden, and boom, here is stuff to put in it--I don't have to go run off to buy some dirt (well, I have bought truckloads for large projects; but the compost pile lets me do immediate small projects with little advance warning and no trips to the store); here is black compost for the tomato patch; and recycling at least some of the stuff generated by our home and yard--leaves, sticks, paper towels, cardboard tubes, cereal boxes--as well as the kitchen waste. A side benefit is that our kitchen "garbage" is never smelly and only goes out once a week. (Of course, I empty my little counter scrap bin every other day or so.)

Steam!

It's also kinda neat when the experienced gardeners (especially the older gals) come to get some compost. Their excitement is infectious and their expression and delight is indescribable! It seems to take a few years off of some of them. I wish I could capture that in a picture!

I'm sometimes so enthralled with their responses, some get their compost for nothing and when I've delivered for a few of the frailer ones, they call their neighbors over to see it. How can that not make a person feel good?!

Lloyd

What I don't like: running out of room in the composter! Now I have to throw my kitchen scraps away (at least until it shrinks a bit :)

Making compost gives me satisfaction because in Central Florida we have sand instead of soil. Without compost, I wouldn't be able to have a veggie garden or extra healthy ornamentals.

Now I am wanting to brew compost tea to expand what I can do to produce more food. Last spring we've enlarged the vegetable garden quite a bit so more nutrients are now needed.

I have a thread going on "how do I make compost tea". If someone is experienced with this, can you give me some advice to make it properly? The batch I made today had slime on the aquarium stones. Help, please.

Christine

What I most love about composting is how the plants respond. Most of my plants have never been fertilized with anything but compost and are doing very well. I don't have problems with bugs or plants dying.

It's also very gratifying to see the change in our pure clay soil when compost is added. The worms come and the soil changes dramatically into nice, loose, fertile soil.

I've sometimes thot how much easier it *might* be to garden with synthetic ferts and all purchased products but I can't do that to my plants. I know exactly what they are getting and it's all good. So definitely worth the effort.

There is an odor, an eau-de-precomposte, a fleeting whiff there, just as the stench of the last rotting tomato eclipses into that sweet, earthy smell of finished compost, where the fruity, ephemeral aromas of summer excess mingle with the smell of fresh soil, leading one into the slumber of late fall, winter, and ...... that eternal hope of spring.

We often take our lawn chairs, these cool October evenings, and set them up by the compost bin, an occasional sip of wine to cleanse the olfactory cells, combined with an occasional snort into fresh, organic cotton hankies, and sniff away.

And as the light wanes, we tell tales of compost piles of the past, keeping that oral tradition alive.

I already said I love that it's free. But I am now so overcome with emotion after David52 has put our love of composting into such beautiful words that I think, if I weren't already married, I might love David52 as well.

David, I hope you don't mind if I copy/paste your Ode to Compost :)

My husband and I have been known, on occasion, to sit in the Adirondack chairs on our deck and watch our chickens forage the bins. We don't have TV, but we do have The Chicken Channel LOL!

David, that was awesome. I've never seen somebody so captivated by dirt :)

I added one already, but now that the leaves are coming down...

I love how you can take massive amounts of leaves and instead of throwing them away, you can turn it into something that you can use, which saves you money on fertilizer and saves the space in the landfill that the many bags of leaves would take up. I guess it's a feeling of saving the world, one bag of leaves at a time.

"saving the world, one bag of leaves at a time."

It's the new composting motto! When do the bumper stickers arrive?

I too love my compost, I have been composting since I could walk, my dad and pops loved it too, both of them liked doing stilly experiments with it such as cooking our dinner in it, this one was done about once a year, from what I remember they would use their old army straw cookers and pack it with hot compost then put a tin of meat in it, and wrap potatoes in foil, and cook them all day in the centre of the pile! I really can't remember eating these meals, but I remember the excitement, and steam!
but it is the something from nothing I like as well, and as described above the magical disappearance of stuff!
I even composted when I didn't have a garden just lawn, and I used to scatter it on the lawn, as something to do with it all, so I could start again:-)

I've been composting for so many years that it seems a part of who I am. I mean I don't give it a lot of thought, but these questions make one sit back and ponder. Of course I love the end result, ex. perfect soil conditioner etc.

But one added bonus is that there is no down side for the environment that I can see. Other recycling efforts always have hidden costs involved; For example, transportation and fuel expenses that make it questionable what exactly is being gained. I've just read that now that people are using reusable bags (which have manufacturing costs) the sale of boxed plastic bags has risen. Grocery bags that were once recycled into garbage bags etc. have to be replaced with purchased bags.

But with compost, I do it all myself. It's simple and easy. How can that be wrong? I guess you could count the fuel used by the lawn mower to suck up the leaves, but we would be cutting the lawn anyway.

i like turning garbage into something useful. it makes me warm inside to know that i'm increasing the biodiversity of my yard, and that i don't have to shell out cash for stuff i can make for free. I like making sure that there's a variety of material in there, even if it's just ONE advocado peel, because I feel that it will make for better compost (even though that's probably not true.)

I like not having to put out more than one bag for the garbage man, and that composting helps me do that.

I've been waiting impatiently for the fall leaves to come down, so I can mow 'em, bag 'em, wet 'em and let them decay all winter.

mostly though, I love the thought of things breaking down into humus, etc. I like to think that the wood mulch i put down this summer is being chewed by fungi, mushrooms, and pill bugs. I enjoy sitting on a beach and watching the waves hit the rocks and think about how they're eroding. I'm just freaky like that. It's how I roll.

I love that iffy fish, aged tofu, annoying weeds, old socks, mouldy straw, innumerable stalks, clapped-out leaves, peelings and thinnings make my garden better, stronger, faster than before...

I like it when I explain to family and coworkers that I can take their scraps and turn it into soil (amendment).

It's like perpetual motion.

So many things, but especially seeing the whole circle of life. I start most of my plants from seed. I watch those seeds sprout and grow into seedlings, seedlings turn into huge plants. Those plants produce flowers or vegetables, which we enjoy, then they die and go to the compost bins. Eventually they return to my garden in the form of delectable sweet-smelling compost to make next year's plants thrive. What could be better than that??? The compost is the most important component in that whole circle of life.

Karen

The part I like best is when my wife goes out into the gardens (whether flower beds or vege patch) and smiles at how well "her" plants are doing.......... even if her actual input was telling me she wants a new garden.......

It's taken 4 years of amending the soil around our rented house but now that she has an 8' tall crazy yellow rose outside the front door( 2 ' when we moved in) she is as happy as a clam!