A bag of freezer-burned okra
Some gunk from the sink strainer

Junk mail
banana old and black
banana peel
apple core
UCG & filter
potato peelings
carrot tops and trims
some old tomatoes and zukes left by an unknown friend
the cardboard box they came in
so far 18 hours of cold rain, I was out during a break.

Two days ago it got all the pepper plants that had finished producing, all nicely chopped up and added to the pile, plus alot of annual impatients. Today its getting coffee grounds and filters, a head of lettuce that I missed and is really foul, some onion peelings, about half a dozen egg shells, and I think thats it. I need browns,LOL

Alberta

An almost dead mint plant, some yucky looking tomatoes (no disease), som cukes I let go bad, about 5-6 pots of used soil & a few other things.

Yesterday our compost got 3 large wheelbarrow loads of frost killed plants. We've been away so there were a lot to cut down. Still more to do.

Onion peelings, egg shells, coffee grounds and filter, paper label from can, old lettuce, left over sandwich parts, cooked catfish bones, hush puppies, beans, left over baked potato parts and skins, pickles and tomatoes from hamburger.

shredded office paper
banana peels from Starbucks
used bird and small animal bedding from PetSmart
kitchen trimmings
crab shells
chicken bones

Cuccumber peelings, onion peels, some mac and cheese, potato peels, corn husks silks and some cobs(finaly got some corn a couple of weeks age, didnt think we would get any with this cool weather), egg shells and a few broken eggs, tea bags and wrappers, paper, and a mess of other sundry. How long will it take to break down the corn husks and cobs?

"frost-killed plants"?

sound of forehead thumping desk.

I am so jealous-
It would be so wonderful, right about now, to have a fire, & wear long sleeves, & put a quilt on the bed...

I'm sitting here in my sleeveless linen top & denim skirt, barefoot, hoping the air conditioner makes it til the temps cool off!

had to work late yesterday, compost pile got commercial tea bags.

I'm starting a new bin. GOT 5 WHEELBARROWS FULL FROM THE FIRST ONE! If my soon-to-be herb garden didn't need it so bad, I would have loved to giant-pile it and roll around a bit LOL.

New pile got remnants of old pile
garden cleanup: beans, peas, corn, 2nd-yr carrots, weeds
5-gal bucket from local pizza parlor's salad bar leftovers
tossed and topped off with a good watering

Playing in the dirt is so much fun!

LOL Sylvia, I'm sitting here in my house (drinking a glass of white wine) with the window open beside me because I added an extra log on the stove and it's too warm inside. It's 8°C (46°F) outside and the fresh air feels so nice. It will be white outside by the end of the month tho which we love but you "suthinas" might not!

To stay on topic, the compost got the usual coffee grounds and filter, jar of tomato sauce as the jar broke (not me, I didn't do it!), some rye bread crusts (sorry annpat), and more garden trimmings due to frost. Gonna have a ton of seedlings from this compost if it doesn't heat a lot. That's OK I'll use it as mulch on my new beds and get some free plants.

Cantaloupe vines with a couple of small fruits
Cucumber vines, no fruits left
Pepper plants, kept the small peppers
Tomato plants, kept the small green ones for chow chow
Eggplant plants, kept the baby fruits
Soil from two planters and the volunteer columbines growing in them
Dry flower stems from daylilies
Ratty looking fennel that the caterpillars had enjoyed all summer
A couple of small basil plants from a mixed lot that never got over 8" tall and had tiny leaves
Can you tell it was garden cleanup day?

"It will be white outside by the end of the month tho which we love but you "suthinas" might not!"

welllll, this *is* the place that shuts down when sleet freezes on the roads!

I added shredded office paper, torn-up soft-drink cartons, & tons of commercial teabags to the compost.

Well, it's almost 12°C (53°F) here so I made a big pot of chicken soup. So lots of onion and carrot peelings, and red pepper "innards". Also the usual coffee grounds and filter, eggshells, toast crusts, and some potato peelings from last night.

Sylvia, around here we get our winter tires on by end of September. When we lived in a part of Europe where snow only occurred every few years it was scary to watch people driving with smooth tires and slipping all over the road (and off). Advantages and disadvantages to every climate. About March I'll be ready to see South Padre Island!

We don't have winter tires, but it's scary to watch people slipping all over the road here, too!

funny thing is, even though our winters don't count as "winter" to people north of us, we go through the same cabin fever/winter fatigue/seasonal affective disorder that people go through in areas where winter lasts 6 months & involves whiteness & sub-zero temps, so...

by March, *I'll* be ready for South Padre, too!

Today's compost menu included:

4 regular teabags
2 coffee filters with used grounds
torn-up subscription cards & such from magazines
2 squeezed-out lemon wedges
slimy water & Mexican petunias that sat in a bucket for about a week because I thought I could find them a home & I couldn't.

& what have you fed *your* compost pile today?

• Parts of another compost pile (they are CANNIBALS!) to keep the layers of grass clippings apart

• a couple pounds of slightly inedible ground chicken (yeah, I know it's a sin, but we don't have to worry about attracting bears and I buried it under a foot of the old compost)

• the usual kitchen scraps

• used pine kitty litter (yes, another sin, God will strike me with toxoplasmosis for this)

• Grass clippings

more garden cleanup materials: beans, corn, peas, squash & cucumber vines w/ a few teeny cukes, old carrots, zucchini blossoms.

5-gal chicken manure
cukes that had gone bad waiting for hubby to make "something"
(anyone got favorite late harvest recipes for cukes? we've pickles & relish aplenty already hehe)
bananas
kitchen scraps
typical lunchtime paper goods
later today it'll get 5-gal of yummy leftover salad bar and fridge cleanout schmorgazborg (sp?) from the local pizzaria!

Earlier today (much earlier - it's 1am now, oops):

UCG and filter
tomatillo wrappers/skins/whatever you wanna call them
rice
tea bag
chayote peelings
ground peanuts
avocado skins and pits
onion skins and ends
juiced limes
piece of toast I only half ate
jalapeno ends
cilantro stems
used napkins/paper towels

The pile is finally wet enough, at least in the middle, to be breaking down the things I've been throwing in. It's devoured a whole bunch of collard leaves, and a bunch of cilantro I threw in last week or the week before, but along the edges of the bin, where there are air holes, the collard stems are still whole. I'll need to get some water up there again soon.

Compostkate, I like to make Indian raita out of cukes. Usually, I just thinly slice the cuke, mix it with some Greek yogurt (full fat tastes best, but when I'm being good, I'll use fat free), toast up some cumin seeds in a hot skillet, and toss those in, give it a little pinch of salt, and then let it sit for a while for the flavors to meld. If you want a little more bite, you can throw in some thinly sliced onion too, but I generally don't. You can eat it as a dip, or as a side dish, or just as a snack by itself.

rain rain rain rain
& some snail bodies
shredded office paper
used teabags/coffee grounds/filters

two big black bags of my neighbors garden cleanup
-peony bushes she cut back to the ground
-Russian sage she pulled up
-sweet potato vine
-spent Black eyed Susan
-some Iris and tubers (I thought about planting but no room)

shredded junk mail
toilet paper tube
eggshells
stale Honey Nut Cherrios
slimy celery

crumpled up paper
grass clippings
old kiwi that went rotten
bannana leaves
pine needles. just a few
bannas that went bad
old carrots
orange rinds.
apple pices that i diced up.

I scored free rabbit poo and bedding on Craig's List!

I bought my first house (a 1925 cottage with mature fruit trees, and a *totally* neglected yard) two months ago, and the first thing I did was clear all the brush in the back yard into a big pile. I stuck it in the center of the yard, because there were so many vines on top of everything that I couldn't get *near* the edges of the yard.

I've been feeding it with kitchen scraps and garden clippings.

And today, I moved it half of it out of the center of my garden. Whoo hoo! I feel like this is becoming *my* garden.

I'm going to make a second pile when I get another load of rabbit poo.

New office furniture where I work today, so I have tons of cardboard to take home tonight!

Since I'm going to be the last one out of here (I just can't bring myself to go through the trash when anyone else is here!), I'll also have office paper & coffee grounds & filters & teabags, in addition to my own usual stuff.

I shoveled up 2 ATV trailer loads of horse manure and layered it in my compost with the dried out old perennials trimmings. Watered everything well. If it doesn't get too cold it may heat. Always an experiment - depending on the temperatures.

Thought I was done for fall what with snow and all. Well we had a break in the weather. I went down to the city burn pile to check on left over shreaded tree branchs that I have scavanged all summer. There it was, grass mowings full of leaves from our early frost. One happy gardener with a pickup load and a smile all the way home. One mans trash... A new pile ready to go. Black gold in the making.

Curt:-)

After that shocking first inch of snow, we had 3 days of rain

Decided if I was gonna turn a bin I might as well set it up for winter and pile it full sooo:

lined bin with cardboard
added 20 GALLONS kitchen scraps, pizzeria leftovers, and the occasional napkin
layered in more cardboard and the original "almost finished" compost
topped off with dust/shavings from the woodshop mixed with a wheelbarrow full of chicken manure

now I'm watching it get rained on again, and all 9 of our egg laying chickens are trying to forage in it at the same time LOL. Don't plan on turning it again until Spring; though I may add a few more (thinner) layers as it sinks and weather permits.

4 yard bags other peoples shredded leaves/grass clippings.
My 3' and 4' diameter wire bins are full, 5' diameter
is empty and ready for fall.

It was 43 degrees with a light drizzle. Had to turn a bin to warm up my hands.

Mike

25,000,000 four o'clocks

I had a bunch of bags of veggie trimmings and stuff from cleaning out the fridge to add today. They've been piling up, but I wasn't motivated to take them out and dig them in. The lot of it included:

about 4 heads of romaine
apples
a whole taro root
celery
tomatillo skins
onion trimmings
rice
ucg's and filters
horse poop and pine shavings
feline pine litter
paper towels
lemon rinds
lime rinds
cilantro stems
jalapeno ends
garlic wrappers
hard straightneck squash that had been sitting out in the garden for at least a month and hadn't rotted yet
avocado skins
avocado pits (I'm curious as to whether or not these will ever break down - I guess I'll see soon enough!)

And that was all I could make out. I know there were other things thrown in that had already turned brown and mushy, and were totally unidentifiable. I'm really happy I've had so many greens lately. For a while, the pile was looking really dry and lacking in greens, so I took a break on adding C's, and concentrated on the vegetable matter. Things are finally starting to break down and turn darker, which means I can resume picking up my horse and goat manure (was keeping them out because they come with lots and lots of pine shavings/straw).

Silvia ----'splain please ........

Four o'clocks are free-flowering perennials whose small bell-shaped flowers open in the afternoon, supposedly about 4 o'clock.

They grow from seed, storing energy every year in a tuber that can get as big as a sweet potato:

Every flower makes a seed, & every seed germinates.

If you have one 4 o'clock today, eventually you will have 25,000,000 +.

They're pretty & tough & drought-tolerant, blooming even in summer when most things here either die or go into heat-induced dormancy, & butterflies love them, so I keep them.

but every now & then I have to pull up a bunch to keep them from taking over the entire yard/garden/neighborhood/planet.

Today as well as getting the usual kitchen stuff our compost is getting hair and fur from DH, the dog and one cat. They all got either trims, brushing, or combing. Less furry bunch here now. ;-)

Sylvia, thanks for the reminder about 4 o'clocks (Marvel of Peru). I had forgotten about those cute little plants that only grow as annuals here. I haven't seeded them in several years and will put them on my list for next year. I didn't know they could be such pests in warmer climates. Good compost tho.

big 'ol bag full of old zucchini
straightneck squash
grapes and grape stems
flour bag (just the bag...)
fingernails

Today mine is being feed a wet, drizzly snow. I needed to water the bin so I just left the lid open for today.

Kath

One 7-point buck. Must have gotten hit by a car. It was stinking up the place so I drug it over to the pile and covered it up. For the year that makes 1 ground hog, 1 opossum, 2 racoons, and 1 deer... and they keep saying not to put meat scraps into the compost pile.

Lol spiced ham your pile must be a lot bigger than mine.The coon and possum well, ya I could and would handle them,but a whole buck not a chance.

Curt:-) Lets all try to be a little greener.

Wheelbarrow of green and rotted tomatoes
Wheelbarrow of fallen apples
Chipped green branches
Leaves
Grass clippings
kitchen waste
other garden waste

I'm short on browns, so I'll be poaching bags of leaves tomorrow (trash day)

Yesterday - about an inch of snow, compost needed the moisture.
Today - 4 wheelbarrows full of horse manure and dried grass that rakes up with it. Good combo. Leaves raked off the lawn went directly on the perennial beds over the trees' roots. Most keaves have finally fallen.

19 large garbage bags of leaves - FINALLY!
15 gals kitchen prep and salad bar leftovers
home kitchen scraps
topped with daily does of chicken manure when the hens "free range"
currently soaking up a 3rd day of rain

Today's haul included about 20 bags of OPBL "Other People's :Bagged Leaves>. Maybe 4-5 went into the compost pile and the rest went into winter fallow beds as mulch for now.

I offered, completely altruistically, you understand, to help out a neighbouring allotmenteer by taking 2 barrow loads of spent flowers and weeds off her hands. Plus my own 6 barrow loads of weeds, spent fava and courgette (zucchini) plants. But I still haven't got that pallet bin filled yet. Very warm weather today for gardening. I was wishing I had put on a sleeveless top instead of the long sleeves I was wearing. I have four bins at the allotment and one at home. The leaves have only just started falling here. Many are still quite green. No frosts at all yet.