Emptied a very stinky compost bucket filled with the usual from the kitchen. Added the remains of a denim dress - I'd ripped a bunch of it into strips for the garden next year, the rest was unceromoniously dumped over the composting leaves. It was about 25 degrees here - will cover the denim soon.

Thanks for starting the December whathaveyoufed thread!
Rosie, Sugar Hill, GA

Don't'cha love keeping your favorite clothes with you forever?

One summer I realized my favorite gardening shirt was not only thin but holey enough to cause embarrassment, so I cut off the buttons & sent my beloved shirt back to the earth.

I have recently fed my compost a lot of dead plant material killed by a very hard freeze. *sob*

--Maureen

Shredded paper from the class I just finished, kitchen scraps. I was quite happy and surprised to discover it releasing a gust of steam when I stirred it in! Thanks, massive amounts of UCG from the local Starbucks!

Squids and prawns waste, layered on chopped coconut 'skin', or is it shell?

Regular kitchen stuff
UCG
All of the skins from 2 kilos of home-roasted peanuts so I can make my famous peanut butter
Skins from about 2 kilos banana peels, as I got them very ripe/cheap at the market and made lots of banana bread
Shredded office paper - this is my main brown

We finally got rain after an 8-month drought (and the worst forest fire in generations). Turns out I placed my second pile right under the roof gutter, who knew that in the summer? Have covered the first working pile with a huge palm leaf, so it will be soggy but not sopping. Keeping fingers crossed for the rest of the season.

My husband finally let me have his prized 40 pound Halloween pumpkin. It was frozen solid and I had to let it sit inside for two days to thaw out before I could chop it into little pieces for my microbes. It looked really pretty spread out over the brown leaves in my bin. Then I sprinkled it with five bags of Starbucks UCG. We are expecting rain followed by snow today, so I hope to collect a few more bushels of leaves to layer on top before it all gets watered in. Sounds like I'm making a layer cake--maybe I've been watching too many cooking shows?

I put in: shredded leaves, torn-up soggy cardboard, leaf litter from the greenhouse, coffee grounds and filters, cut up fruit skins, vegetable peelings, cotton dryer lint, packet wrappers from my Truvia (sugar), used tissue and cut-up paper towel tubes, and smashed egg shells.
Sunny

I love this forum!

"Have covered the first working pile with a huge palm leaf"

In a similar situation, what would you use to cover your pile?

I'm afraid I'd be stuck with cardboard & large rocks, as palm trees don't grow here.

except in bank lobbies.

As well as all the usual stuff (UCG & filter, tea bags, egg shells, veggie peelings) the compost got a different treat - 1/2 gallon of ginger root peelings and a few quarts of strongly ginger flavored water I cooked it in before making candied ginger. Not sure how the microbes will like that but it's cold enough that I'm not expecting heat. I collect and do a compost run every day winter and summer but don't layer, turn, or do anything but pile up the mostly 'greens' in a covered bin over winter.

I know, Maureen. But just think of what they will do for the spring planting!
My DH brings home banana peels and mango peels from work. Then I cleaned out my refrig (slimy salad stuff) and made coffee concentrate for the week, so lots of grounds. I dumped it all into the cardboard "carrier" from a case of water, and just plopped it out in the garden. Love watching it all decompose right before my eyes!

Nancyjean, your comment about DH bringing home banana and mango peels from work made me think about those smoothie places, like Jamba Juice and Keva Juice, and how awesome it would be to know someone who works at one and could haul out all those fruit peels!

--Maureen

As visions of sugarplums...and discards from anyplace that makes smoothies...dance 'round my head! What a great idea. There's got to be someplace around here...

"Shredded paper from the class I just finished..."

Sounds ceremonial.

Indoor worm bins 2 gallons frozen kitchen scraps.
Compost pile 1 gallon UCG and filters. Empty egg cartons and junk mail. Lloyd you sent us some nasty weather. ;)

Curt

'"Shredded paper from the class I just finished..."
Sounds ceremonial.'

Many years ago, I had a *horrible* boss-
manipulative, back-stabbing, would step on your windpipe to make an extra nickel.

so I quit...
but I stayed angry.

On the advice of a friend, I wrote his name on a piece of paper, stared at it a while, told it what a sorry person it was, tore it up, flushed it, & watched it swirl away.

Had I but known it at the time, I could have composted "him" instead!

Sylvia----that sounds very theraputic.....good advice

JB

Sylvia,
Does sound therapeutic. Could save a lot of us built up resentments. I'm making my list. I'm checking it twice ... And tossing it into the pile!

UCG, tea bags, nut shells, veggie scraps, cat barf and the napkin used for cleaning it off the floor. Temperature in KY this morning 8 degrees F. Call me a wimp, but if I lived in Canada I would find a way to hibernate till spring!

18" of snow...

You too?

"...but if I lived in Canada I would find a way to hibernate till spring!"

But it's a dry cold. ;-)

Some of us quasi-hibernate and only come out to play on the decent days (-10C and warmer with little wind). It's going to warm up to -8 today so all my accumulated frozen kitchen waste will get chucked into a tumbler and covered with shredded leaves. Of course I can't tumble anything, but I can fill the tumblers up over the winter and be ready for the warmth of spring (when it shows up in JUNE!)

Lloyd

Roadkill rabbit and ~500 lbs of seaweed.

Where did you get 500 pounds of seaweed?

On the beach in front of my house. I was walking the dog this morning and noticed a storm threw up a bunch of rockweed and mung, which both work a lot better as a soil amendment than our usual eelgrass. So I backed the truck down to the beach and pitch-forked in a full load.

I had brown packing paper in several boxes I received from my "Cyber Monday" Christmas shopping. Shredded those and mixed with three bags of Starbucks UCG. Made a nice layer on top of my compost, now frozen under 1/2 inch of ice.
My composting in the past has always been casual--one or two cold piles a year. But reading the posts here has really made me crave a hot pile! So this fall I added two large wire enclosures to my original setup ( a compost tumbler and a small mail-order wire bin.)
I got to know the local coffee shop staff, and I've discovered the cheap thrill of swiping a couple of big trash bags and opening them to find not just chopped leaves, but grass clippings mixed in, and already getting warm!
So now I'm continuing to add layers of organic material every few days, watching them freeze over and wondering if there's anything going on in there.... It's an act of faith, like planting seeds. I hope that when spring comes I can mix these piles up and have a little steam of my own!
Anyway, thanks, you all, for continuing to post your exploits! Before I started reading this forum, I didn't realize you could keep adding to your compost during the winter. I just chucked things in the trash till springtime.
So you've got a convert here, and no telling how many others lurking as well!

Hi piranhafem, you could ask the manager at Jamba Juice. They have to pay to have it hauled off. And the manger could say they are green, because the waste is in a garden not the land fill.
I use to scrape up $60.00 for a dump truck load of coffee chaff. Then the other people getting the chaff just stopped. So the recycle manger has paid the driver to deliver the chaff to me. So far I have 10 truck loads, that I am spreading on the garden as sheet compost to cut in.
I add kitchen scraps, tea & coffee grounds, egg shells,nut shells, leaves,hedge trimmings & 5 gallon bucket of horse manure.

I threw in a couple cardboard circles from frozen pizzas, some used paper napkins, an old cotton towel that's become to worn to use as a rag anymore and the usual coffee filters and grounds, citrus fruit rinds and other kitchen scraps that my chickens won't eat.

My chickens get any scraps that they find appetizing: meat, bones, dairy, vegetables, breads, pasta, finely crushed eggshells, etc. The bedding from inside their hutch (I use leaves, shredded newspaper, shredded cotton sheets, other material that would otherwise go to waste) gets mixed in with the compost pile. The mess from their yard, manure, uneaten food, etc. gets buried in shallow (1 ft. deep) trenches in the garden due to unwanted smells and vermin that are attracted to the spilled grains and bones from the kitchen. I also add anything that is slow to break down to these trenches, woody stalks from plants, small trigs, anything that isn't really suited to a compost pile but will add to the soil if left to breakdown underground for a couple years.

coffee filters & grounds & cold coffee
couple of teabags
an entire "flower arrangement" from the office party;
it was made of fancy slivered cantaloupe, honeydew, & pineapple & whole strawberries on plastic picks stuck into a styrofoam base, & it froze in the office refrigerator.

It's that season when those small seedless tangerines/"cuties" are abundant and on sale, coinciding with the ravenous herd home from college, thus bags and bags of tangerine peelings. As well as the usual suspects..... Bread crusts, coffee grounds, egg shells, avocado pits and peels, junk mail, firewood bark, and dried house plant leaves.

Some Thanksgiving vegetables, collard green leaf stalks, shreaded leaves from the front yard. Was 85 degrees today so the compost is cooking. No major freezes forcasted in the immediate future.

Sylvia,
Sounds as if you hit The Mother Lode!
Nancy

In addition to the usual kitchen scraps, I threw out some moldy pomegranates that went missing when we moved our studio. Just before the move, one of my part-time painters brought over some homegrown fruit, and it got lost in the confusion. I kept asking everyone if they had seem the pomegranates, because they were a bit past their prime.

Well, today I found them, and man-oh-man, were they furry!

I'm just bummed, because they were too icky to deal with, and I had just read that pomegranate skin makes a great natural dye for wool.

Solids from juicer,vegetables waste,egg shells,tea bags,oak leaves from a neighbor, he always bags them. Then I went to the farm & spread 6 bags of coffee chaff out about 10-16 inches deep. I got photos that are up loading on bucket this minute.

Here is a link that might be useful: kitchen gardeners international

Lisa,
Please tell me you didn't mean they were too icky for the compost!

I have tried growing vegies off and on for years with little success. Mostly because I never improved the soil. So Now I am in Phoenix in a trailer park and trying containers. Compost is my present goal. I found a barrel on Craig's list, took it home, dumped in my little pot of garbage. Wondered how long it would take to fill the barrel. Supermarkets must have lots of waste, right? You all probable know where that got me. Something about the tobacco companies got sued after the fact so..... Makes me wonder what they aren't telling us about our food.

I did happen on some bags of leaves waiting for pickup and loaded up a couple. Ran them through the leaf blower then hosed them down a bit. This morning I went to the nearest Starbucks and have the possibility they will save their coffee grounds. Took home the garbage bag with what they had at the moment. When I dumped it into the compost barrel and stirred it up a bit IT WAS WARM IN THERE ALREADY!! Just leaves and grass. IT'S WORKING!!!. I am so thrilled. Maybe this will really work. More coffee grounds and I am saving my urine.

I put juicer pulp,banana peelings,apple cores,coffee & tea grounds,egg shells. About 2.5pounds/ 5.5 kg. of composting waste.

You will be surprised how fast the container fills. And I often use mine before it's fully composted. It just keeps working for me right in the garden. You'll love what it does for your veggies!
My local store wanted to sell me their discards! And with two boys (17 and 20) and lots of friends over, I wasn't that desperate.
Don't let the pee sit; you should dump it every day. Otherwise, it might get a tad stinky.

nancyjeanmc -- goodness no! just too icky to salvage the peels from. the moldier the better, for the compost pile!

Thanks Lisa. I'm feeling much better nowd! ;)

over two gallons of kitchen scrap and UCG with filters all wrapped up nice in newspaper bundles/presents. The carbon will come in handy at the spring thaw.

Curt

leftovers scrabbled out of church trash after Christmas diner for 400!

It was total fun!

It's coming up on our last chance to add something to the bin or pile in the soon-to-be-past year of 2010!

Today I've added:

leftovers from starting some rose cuttings (too-thin stems, spent flowers, leaves, etc)

datura stalks & seed pods

used-up cut flowers from the office

& the usual coffee grounds & filters, cold coffee, teabags, & torn-up paper

I added:

Last year's poinsettia, which made it through the summer outside but is now just a wimpy whitefly magnet.

UCG mixed with shredded paper.

Leaves I raked up after the snow cover melted from them.

Nut shells and clementine peels.

I'll post what I added in December:
*Turkey bones from hosting Christmas at our house
*All the napkins, paper plates, food scraps, shrimp tails, etc from hosting Xmas
*About 100 lbs of UCG's from cleaning up around TCF Stadium from the MN Vikings game after the Metrodome collapse- there was a Caribou Coffee tent outside.
*The usual food scraps, veggie peelings and coffee grounds
*Guinea pig bedding and poo
*Food scraps and peelings from Xmas at a relatives house (I've been planting the compost infection/ guilt in almost a lot of my relatives/coworkers and get them to save me their scraps that would have been wasted to the landfill! :-)

Do I have the best DH in the world, or what ... He cleaned up the lunch room at work, which was filled with fruit baskets from clients. Fruit that no one took home over Christmas. Fruit that made my compost pile give me a big smile, today.