Good for you! You are on the right track. You could just pile it up and let it do its thing over time. However, because most of what you have falls into the category of what composters call "greens" it is going to smell like something rotting. If you add "browns" you will achieve a better mix and it won't smell. Typical browns include dried leaves, cardboard, toilet paper tubes, newspaper, and a whole host of other things. I'm going to encourage you to take a look at the Soil Compost and Mulch forum. There is so much to learn there. It is the kind of forum however, where I'd definitely encourage you to read the FAQs and do a couple of searches before posting. You'll get a much warmer welcome that way.

There are several different philosophies or camps at the SCM forum. Some say pile it up and eventually you get compost. Some say you have to do everything "just right". I'd encourage you not to get complicated, just mixing browns and greens, because yes, this is definitely something a beginner can handle.

Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: SCM forum

I keep all my organic kitchen scraps in a brown paper sack from my Local Grocer, that way I can bury the whole thing in the middle of the compost pile and the "browns" are provided in the process. Otherwise I use a main mix of oak and pecan leaves and grass clippings. I know some people that have pet parrots and they use newspaper at the bottom of the cages. The bird poop is a good "green" and the newspaper is a "brown". It's not very much that I acquire at a time, but it does add up with the leaves and grass. That makes me wonder, if a pet store would provide someone with soiled newspapers? Am the only one that thinks this a good idea? ::::::Light bulb over head::::::

Dale OKC

gw, seedmama's got good advice. It's a good source of info, warm people with a weird sense of humor. A word of warning, composting is addictive. Once you start, you'll never stop, your last act on this earth, in fact, will be composting.

If you decide not to compost, I'll come get those bags of grass clippings if you're anywhere near Grove.

Randy - How is your garden doing this year?

hehe, laughing at randy....
from what I've gathered from reading and trying for about 1 year, composting can be as easy or complicated as you want it to be. I save all my kitchen and garden scraps and leaves. I don't worry about greens and browns. I throw it in a bin made of hardware mesh (1/2 in)and at planting time I move the bin over, shovel the top of the pile back into the bin, then I sift the more mature compost and get enough to give each plant in my square foot garden a scoop.

I takes a lot of stuff to make a little dirt.

I'm a lazy composter, but I make huge piles of compost and use every bit of it every year.

I just pile stuff up on the ground. When I have more stuff, I just throw it onto the pile. I never turn it. I never wet it down. I just let it sit there and decompose. I throw stuff on the top of the pile all spring, summer and fall. In late winter or early spring, I rake off any stuff on the top of the pile that hasn't broken down yet, and shovel out the good stuff and add it to the garden beds. Then I rake the non-decomposed stuff back onto the now-bare ground and that's the beginning of the new pile.

I have three compost piles and all are roughly 8' x 8' or 10' x 10'. Most of the time they are between 2' to 5' tall depending on how much is being added to them. Today, for example, I fed the compost pile closest to the veggie garden all the snap pea plants and broccoli plants I was removing from the garden, so it went from about 2.5' tall to about 5' tall, but it won't stay that tall long. My piles get hot and break down quickly. We don't add grass clippings to them very often, but that's because the grass clippings go directly onto the beds as mulch, where they decompose on their own over time. We do add lots of leaves to the piles in the fall, but we chop or shred them first so they'll break down more quickly. We also add 'stuff' from the chicken coop to the piles about twice a year when we clean it out.

Compost can be easy or it can be complicated...it's up to you. I keep it easy. The main reason I don't turn it is because during snake season the snakes like to live in those piles and I don't like snakes.

Dawn

I don't work on my compost pile either. It just gets what it gets. However, I always toss in a brief comment about browns and greens when talking to someone new to composting for a very simple reason. There is a common misconception that compost stinks. The people who have experienced that are using too many greens, typically kitchen scraps, and nothing else. If the compost stinks, add more browns, problem solved.

Availability of browns and greens tends to be seasonal, so I try to keep browns in reserve. I gather up the neighbors' phone books, as well as their leaves, and have them ready if the summer greens are on the heavy side. I don't have a problem with tossing old plants, but when I start adding tomato peels, cantaloupe rinds, etc. it has the potential to get smelly. Sheets of phone books and a few leaves do the trick.

Dale, I've been amazed at how willing people are to contribute to the cause. I explain to them how compost cuts down on water consumption and the use of petroleum based fertilizers. Along that line, I explain that the pick up schedule needs to factor in a full vehicle load to justify the petroleum used to come pick it up. Otherwise, it's a net "negative" on the carbon footprint and petroleum consumption. If you're in the city, you can probably incorporate a pick up schedule into your normal route.

Randy, agreed composting is addictive. And so simple.

seedmama, thanks for making it sound so simple. I am going to start small, 1 bag of grass clippings and just add kitchen scraps there on. Biggest problem for me is small backyard (huge front yart but cant use for composting), a cute but naughty dog and smell form composting. Now that I know how to control smell i.e, by adding browns, all I have to worry about is my dog. I will have to buy a compost bin I guess and work in small quantities. Can I use moving boxes cardboard for browns?
Dawn, great sugggestion about using grass clippings as mulch. I will use some there but rest are going in trash.
Randy, I live in oklahoma city too far from groove. I wuld love to give grass clippings to someone, so much better than sending them to landfill.

Its feels really good to see so many people taking time to respond.. it just puts a smile on my face to everytime I see followups.

GW-
Wait! Yes, it makes sense to use grass clippings as mulch, but why throw the rest away? I promise you'll regret it later.

You can use a compost bin, but it's one of those "extras", not a necessity. A simple pile will do. Personally, I like to contain my piles in bins put together with discarded pallets. If appearance is a concern, you can always dress it up with fence pickets and paint.

I build my pallet bins to be permanent on three sides, with cross bars across the front. The front pallet is attached with screws, so when I'm ready to take stuff out, access is easy. I initially built them that way so I could turn the compost, rotating from bin to adjacent bin. In reality, I never get around to turning it. That's partly because it doesn't have to be important if you don't want it to, and mostly because I just don't want to use my gardening time that way. I'll second Dawn's comments on snakes.

Make a starter pile by layering the moving boxes and grass clippings. Moving boxes are particularly good because the corrugation adds air pockets which in effect substitute for turning.

For browns remember grocery bags, toilet paper tubes, newspaper, small quantities of sawdust, phone books, junk mail.

One caveat I'd like to mention about using grass clippings as mulch, it needs to be spread out good so it will sun dry in a hurry. One year my son was mowing lawns and I had an over abundance of grass clippings which I spread around a cantaloupe patch that was maturing. It molded and created a fungus that killed the entire patch. A lesson well learned for me never to do that again :(

Barbara

Barbara, I think it must depend on the grass and how wet or dry it is or if it is diseased already or not because I routinely put grass clippings down as deep as 6" thick at one time and have never had that happen. I've also seen people say it turns black and slimey and rots, and mine doesn't do that either. Maybe it is because we're always so hot and dry here? Earlier in May, my grass-clipping mulch got so dry that it dried out and cracked on top just like my clay soil, It was this layer or mat of dry grass that you could pick up as if it was a sheet of cardboard. That is a first here and I wasn't sure what to do about it because when I tried to water with the hose, the moisture rolled right off the very dry grass mulch. So, when we moved the next day...which was this past Monday.... I added 4 or 5" of new grass clippings on top and watered that down. I am afraid we're in for a long, hot summer and that means I won't even have grass clippings for mulch because the pastures will go dormant and the lawn will grow slowly,

Dawn

I hate snakes too. Eek! I had no idea they hung out in compost. However, after you posted that copperheads blend in with leaves, I VERY GINGERLY forked decaying leaves into my wheelbarrow, VERY CAREFULLY forked the leaves from wheelbarrow to garden beds, and then spread them out with HEAVILY gloved hands.

We have about 1 acre in a suburban area and snakes aren't SUPER common. Still, we have seen them. Last year, my dogs freaked out because they saw a snake...eating another snake! BARF.

If I could rid the universe of snakes, I might do it. I love bats and toads and good bugs, but snakes freak me out. I don't care if they are good for my garden. They scare me.

Ditto on that jo ellen! I love my cats because they always seem to either alert me to the presence of a snake, or else kill the small ones. I also think snakes tend to avoid areas where cats are present.

Barbara

Barbara, It would be my guess that the grass clippings had broad leaf killer in them when he brought them home. I don't normally use grass clippings because my mower mulches and drops it back on the lawn, but this spring on a trip to OKC we played redneck gardener and loaded the truck down with grass clippings and brought them home. They did stick together a little and they did mold a little, but they didn't harm the plants.

When we lived in Ohio for 2 and a half years we lived in a rented home that had a beautiful pear tree in the yard. In spring, it was covered with pears and the branches were so heavy that they touched the ground. As was her annual habit, the landlady had the lawns of all of her properties sprayed for weeds. The pear tree died starting at the branches that touched the ground. It had already had too much by the time we realized what had happened.

When I lived in southern Oklahoma I had a nice little garden with some pretty tomato plants but decided I needed mulch. I 'borrowed' a few bales of hay from a nephew and by night time had the worst looking wilted plants you could imagine. They didn't die, but they were never the same.

Carol,

The broccoli and cauliflower are nice and leafy, but little to show for it (1 head of broccoli), the peas I started late have produced some, but won't last much longer, the tomatoes are starting to flower and I'm waiting to see how the melons, squash, cukes and gourds will do (all recently planted). I've got 4 4x4 plots and try to do a fusion of square foot gardening and Ruth Stout gardening. Which pretty much means lots of straw for mulch and very little patience for weeding.

I am kind of excited though. This is the first time I put straw down for mulch and did so in Dec. or Jan. and when I went to plant I was shocked by how many worms I found, how soft the ground was, dark and rich looking and ready for planting, no getting the garden ready. Then I topped it all off with compost I've been sitting on for over a year. I have high expectations as long as I don't give in to the heat of the summer like last year.