We live is SC, zone 7b, so the warm season is long, six or seven months, and it's quite hot middle of June through August and often into September. So since composting will be quicker here, that means the piles will shrink faster too, right? In that case I guess I t might be hard to keep the kitchen pile deep enough to keep it hot.

Note that if you start out with majority of shredded leaves, you're not going to see a lot of "shrinkage". I wouldn't worry too much about heat. You don't need the pile to heat up a lot to compost unless you're worried about weed seeds and or pathogenic bacteria. Leaves, garden trimmings, and proper kitchen compostables won't do that to you. I'm just saying that, done right, a 4x4x3 pile will be completely composted long before you can fill up another pile with garden trimmings and kitchen compostables. That doesn't mean you can't do OK composting in a 4x4 pile that is less than a foot deep!

For a 2 acre plot those bins don't seem particularly large to me. I have four 3 x 3 bins on my allotment which is just 15 x 45 feet. I notice you didn't mention lawn mowings or weeds. Don't you have any of those? Household paper and card? Soft prunings from shrubs?

In a 3 bin system not all will be full at once. You need an empty one so you can move the material along periodically.

I have had two 4 x 4 x 4 compost buns for years and often even made free standing piles on various planting beds. I never had a problem filling those bins, even after the kids grew up and moved out. I did stop on the way home from work during the summer and pick up bags of grass clippings that others threw away and in the fall bags of leaves. I often had more material than the bins would hold and used what I could not compost as mulch.

kimmq is kimmsr

Add leaves! Sounds to me like that's the only way you're going to fill it up, if all you have beyond that is kitchen waste and garden trimmings. At least down here, no one collects mowing debris. It goes back on the lawn/field and self-composts. No thatch here. 2 acres sounds like a lot, but if you don't do anything with it, it won't yield much.

If you are layering dead leaves and yard waste (leaves, etc.) in with the kitchen scraps, 4x4x3 sounds about right.

Fill the first bin, layering the stuff as best you can, let it sit until it's settled about 50%, then shovel it into the middle bin, mixing it up as you move it. Let this sit some more and compost, probably will lose another 50% in volume.

While bin #1 is sitting and composting, you will be filling the bin at the other end.

The middle bin is where you get the compost to use. Shovel it out and use it, or sift it.

If you have a lot of stuff, such as dead leaves in fall, start with the two end bins and fill them both, then move them to the middle bin when they have settled.

Don't worry about temperature, keep it moist and check how it looks under the surface. If it's looking "composted" 6-8 inches under the top layer, it's probably done in the middle.

Thanks everyone! You've all convinced me to just go with the 4x4s. I'm so excited to get started with composting, lol!!

And thank you so much for all the advice about how to get started with the leaves, etc. I've been combing the forum, but it's so helpful to hear advice that is particular to my specific situation.

So another question: though we have lots of leaves, we don't have a bunch of greens saved up. If we want to start a pile quickly like lazy gardens suggested above, could horse manure work in place of kitchen/garden waste? I can get an unlimited amount of manure.

"I can get an unlimited amount of manure."

4 X 4 ain't gonna be big enough!

My guess a lot of people just swooned.

Lol!

If you can add manure, that's fine. But be aware that leaves can be composted all by themselves. I do that routinely, and FWIW, my piles get pretty hot. You MUST shred the leaves though. I run over them a few times with a lawnmower, and that does the trick.

Do be careful about manure. Be sure to get it from a keeper who doesn't feed herbicide-laden hay. Many people these days, especially unsuspecting home gardeners, are killing their gardens with pyralid-laden manure. Doesn't hurt the animals, but the stuff goes right through them and lands in your compost, and thereupon in your garden beds. There the stuff won't break down for a few years. Cheap bagged manure in at least one big-box store has been accused of being contaminated in this way. It's not pretty.

I used to swoon over manure. Now I'm cautious. Same is true for free grass clippings. I know someone who got a truckload of such clippings from a golf course. He didn't know that the lawn had been sprayed to kill weeds, and his garden was toast.

hafamily, I note you use the phrase 'saved up'. Does that mean you are under the impression that a compost heap needs to be built all in one go? Maybe that was why you were concerned about the size? Some people do that but it is not necessary. You can add to a pile as and when you have materials. Then, when the enclosure is full, you can transfer it all into the next bin along and start refilling the first bin. You may not get much heat but you will, I promise, get compost.

Perhaps this composting tutorial might be of some help-.

http://sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu/compost/

kimmq is kimmsr

If we want to start a pile quickly like lazy
gardens suggested above, could horse manure work in place of
kitchen/garden waste?

Certainly. Or just leaves. If you wanted to have a large amount of compost fairly quickly, layering dead leaves and manure would do it. Use the other end bin for a slower building pile with kitchen scraps layered with yard waste and the rest of the leaves.

When I said "fill as quickly as you can - I did not mean you had to do it all in one day or week or even month. Pile in whatever you have as you acquire it or produce it until the bin is full - even though it's been settling all the while.

What Floral UK said ... just keep adding stuff.

I've made bins of nothing but leaves, nothing but shredded tree branches and pine needles, and some with the traditional layering of mixed materials. They all turned to compost.

If you have tons of leaves you can make a circle of wire fencing off in a corner and stuff them in there. They can go at their own pace. And if you run out of leaves for layering with other stuff in the regular compost you can rob the leaf bin.

When I had a multiple bin like you are building, the first bin was the largest and the second and third each got smaller. I always put new stuff in the largest one and when it was full, I turned it into the second and then the third. Third bin was always the ready to use stuff. There are different ways to do it but that's one.

Re: manure, make sure it's fairly fresh, because aged manure will have lost a lot of its nitrogen. If it's REALLY aged and smells like compost rather than poop, it can go right on the garden.

This is all really helpful. I was a little confused about building the pile. I know folks build piles slowly, but it also seems that some build piles all at once, and I wasn't sure how that works. I think that I will be able to do one pile all at once with all the leaves and manure and also have a slow pile.

Hopefully the friend that I am getting the manure from will know whether her hay has been sprayed.

I rake leaves into big piles, run a lawnmower over them, and presto!, I have 30 cubic foot compost piles. I put a sprinkler on them for an hour, and in a few days they're up to 50C inside. I turn them weekly and, in a month or two, they're done. The speed at which you build a compost pile is kind of irrelevant.

Good point about age of manure. Fresh manure has loads of accessible nitrogen that will speed composting. Old manure doesn't, but it will still be a fine addition to your pile.

It's very cool that you're getting serious about composting. To me, the larger part of gardening is preparing the soil and that includes incorporating compost.

Over the years, I have developed a system for compost. I start compost piles in batches. I get 4'x4' pallets and tie them into a box with baling wire. Larger than 4'x4' is harder to work in. I've tried 4' deep by 6' wide and I've tried smaller bins, and they didn't work as well. For finishing compost, I've used something that was about 5'x5' and because I didn't try to turn that material, it was fine. Actually, red wigglers took over that pile. I'll cut a pallet in half to make a horizontally split fourth front wall for the box to make it easier to work in. I'll take the top half of the pallet off if I need to do something like turn it. But the simple answer is; tie 4'x4' pallets into a box with baling wire.

In the last place I lived, I had three of these boxes in a row, sharing a pallet as dividing walls. To turn a pile, I move the compost from its current box into the empty box next to it by removing the dividing pallet and starting to fork the compost over. Obviously, when I get partway through, I have to reinstall the dividing wall, but having it out of the way at first makes it a little easier.

In the last few years, I've been using mostly shredded leaves and chipped wood for compost ingredients. Kitchen scraps that have accumulated are incorporated, too. I have a chipper/shredder that shreds leaves into small bits. I'll start with a pile of leaves and shred enough to fill the box. I have experimented by adding freshly pruned (green) branches, running them through the chipper part of the chipper/shredder. I also like to add some older, dried branches just for some variety. I mix the materials as I go.

I line the sides of the box with old leaf bags and lay another old leaf bag across the top, holding it from blowing away with chunks of wood or clods of sod. The plastic lining traps heat, moisture, and air into the pile. The box/pile isn't fully sealed - the edges of the pile in the corners of the box allow some air in. I'm thinking for my next experiment I will line the sides of the box with a layer of cardboard for insulation, covering that with the plastic. I Fill the lined box with freshly chipped/shredded material and cover it.

What happens next is a process called 'retting'. Fungi and archaea start breaking down the cellulose. The pile should heat up to a rather high temperature, about 140-160f. I've seen higher temperatures, but 140f is more the norm for me. I use compost thermometers that have long probes to monitor the temperatures. After some weeks, the temperature drops. I'll turn the pile and cover it again and it heats up again. When it cools a second time, the pile goes into a phase where bacteria are doing the work.

After some months, the pile has mostly broken down. I'll sift the compost through a screen of hardware cloth to break up any chunks. The material that goes through the screen is piled up and allowed to 'finish'. I might cover it to prevent rain from leaching the compost or prevent the sun from drying it out, but this phase needs air to complete.

Because I've made the mistake of turning unfinished compost into my garden soil, I now use the compost as a mulch in direct contact with the top of the soil. The compost will gradually disappear into the soil during the growing season.

Whoops! I wrote a book.

Fun! Good luck.

Paul

Most of us will have all-at-once and slow add-as-you-go piles, just because of the nature of material availability. Spring means grass clippings to a lot of us, so piles get made because you can't save greens or they will start to fester. Big load of fresh manure or food waste from the juice bar? Time to make compost. That's a good time to turn over the existing compost into the next bin and start a new batch. In fall, if there are just too many leaves, I will often make corrals out of tomato cages on top of the garden soil. It keeps the leaves contained till they can be used for something else, and it covers the soil and insulates it, which keeps the worms active longer and avoids rain pounding on the surface (which compacts clay soil). It all works in harmony through the seasons.

Thanks for all the ideas and for sharing your experiences. I'm really looking forward to getting started!

Keep us posted on your progress! And we're here to help if you have questions. Happy rotting.

Thank you, I will!

IMO if you will be composting kitchen scraps make a 3x3ft bin reinforced with hardware cloth to keep out the rodents - top, bottom, and sides or you will wish you had as they will find it. Compost the scraps in there mixed with the leaves.

If you leave out the hardware cloth you will surely have rodents.

Just make sure that where the scraps are that pile is HOT - Hot also keeps the rodents away.

For the leaves as mentioned you can use a ring of wire fence or the 4x4ft bins.

When building any compost pile always make sure it is moistened as you build it and kept, moist thruout the process which can mean adding water daily.

When building the bins plan on making a cover to keep out rain as too much water will slow things down and make a stinky, slimy mess.

My experience is that it is not necessary to have a hot pile even if one is adding kitchen waste. If a good variety of stuff is going in the heap it will be fine.

There have been discussions on here as to whether a cover is necessary and it seems to come down to local conditions. Despite my damp climate, I have never experienced a 'stinky, slimy mess' from an uncovered heap. Nor a dried out mess from a covered heap.

Again, in my experience, adding water is entirely a function of your conditions and the materials you have. I have never added water to a heap.

As soon as one starts saying something is a sine qua non in composting beginners start thinking it's all too difficult and regular composters start disagreeing based on their personal experience.

Me thinks there are 1001 ways to compost and it goes without saying that local conditions apply. Meaning what works for one doesn't work for all.

Hot pile is not always needed. What has worked for me is when it is HOT it kept the rodents out of the pile - I thought I mentioned that.

I thought the OP was in SC and likely gets rain. To me there is nothing worse than getting a thunder storm on your perfect pile. To me it's better to be prepared - meaning better to have a cover and not need it then to need it and not have it.

btw - my cover keeps the coons from eatin the worms when the pile is cold. Just sayin - 1001 ways to compost and hard to mess it up..

Most of all - have fun and enjoy it..

btw2 - I will say that just like in gardening - start small. Meaning start with the 3x3 then build the 4x4 if needed incorporating any changes you feel are necessary. That will also give you time to figure out if you can fill the 3x3. Keep in mind a 4x4 is almost twice the size of a 3x3.

I'm surprised that a hot pile will keep rodents out. That is, the pile is hot in the center. But within a foot of the surface, it's probably pretty comfortable. So if I were a mouse, I'd burrow in just far enough to be toasty. My piles are in an area adjacent to a creek bed. Plenty of rodents down there. Never have any living in my piles. I occasionally see some excavation where someone was looking for something to eat.

I've never even thought about covering my piles. Never seen any slime.

Rodents are not always such a big deal. I find mouse tunnels in my piles, especially the more finished stuff, as it's a good insulator for them to burrow into. But it's not like I'm overrun with mice. I don't try to tell people there won't be any critters around the compost, but it's not going to look like an episode of Williard. You won't even see them, and if you do, there are things you can do.

At my workplace, an office building with woods 50 ft from the compost area, we compost 5-10 lb of coffee grounds and food scraps per DAY all year in covered plastic bins with hardware cloth underneath. We don't really see any critters large or small.

<the pile is hot in the center.>

I always place my kitchen scraps in the center of one pile. Maybe the heat changes the way it smells? idk But now those scraps are in a bin enclosed by hardware cloth where I have seen the nightly coons come tho sniff things out.

afaik - compost has a triangle similar to the fire or combustion triangle.

Air (O2) + Water (Moisture) + Organic Matter = Compost.

And just like making coffee you vary one ingredient and it throws things out of balance. Which is why I don't care for those home composters (or tumblers) that are plastic with only holes for air flow. Hardware cloth allows air to flow freely.

So the key is to keep things (AWO) in balance. Certainly Compost will happen with things out-of-balance it will just take longer.

Thanks for all the comments. Lots of interesting things to think about...

We picked up a truckload of manure. Most of it is fairly old with some fresh added in, and it is mixed in with a LOT of wood shavings. I'd say most of it would have been ready to put right in the garden if it weren't for the shavings. I'm confused as how to handle the shavings since they've been sitting there for a few years and still haven't decomposed. Should I forget adding leaves to the manure in the compost bin and instead at more greens?

Old manure is pretty much absent of the urea that contributes nitrogen to speed up composting. It's just organic "browns". That's all. No wonder the wood shavings haven't gone anywhere. Great stuff for the compost pile, but it's not going to kick off much composting. I'd throw on a bunch of high nitrogen fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate, urea, lawn fertilizer.

Yes, probably OK to just dig directly into the garden. If you do, just toss the larger wood shavings.

Or, it's spring, get some grass clippings from the neighbors. :-]

I will ask the neighbors. I didn't know you could put fertilizer, urea etc in a compost bin. Interesting.

I guess you can - if you choose to.

IMHO composting is to recycle, reuse, or repurpose organic materials into something your plants can use to grow and continue the cycle. I don't and wouldn't pay to put anything into my compost piles.

If you buy fertilizer why not just put it in the garden? Seems it would be more effective used the way it was designed to be used.

I haven't put fertilizer in my garden since 2005 when I stopped tilling. I don't have trophy veggies but I do get more than I/we can eat and enuff to share with others with little disease or pests problems, well other than deer or moles and voles..

But hey, the wonderful thing about gardening (and composting) is you can do just anything you want.

I think the reason I garden and compost is so I know exactly what goes into my veggies (and my mouth). I know what comes out of my garden IS Organic and I don't/won't pay extra for it.

Putting fertilizer in a compost bin is just kicking things up. Like starting your barbequeue coals with a splash of gasoline. I wasn't really endorsing that strategy. But I agree that unless you're really desperate for finished compost, just let the pile do its thing. Putting fertilizer in the garden is fine, but you need to be careful not to overdose.

"Like starting your barbequeue coals with a splash of gasoline."

Ya, don't do this folks.

+1

Yah, ya can taste the gas on your food. Not a good thing.

For your compost jump start with corn husks or grass clippings. But if you are gettin grass from the neighbors make sure they aren't using herbicides first.

Thanks, I will check with them!

The only fertilizer I put on my leaf piles is small doses of liquid fertilizer, usually applied during the evening hours, particularly after consuming chilled beverages. But that's just me.

lol, that's awesome! Under cover of darkness, right?

Yeah, but best done in a hole in your pile. Then cover the hole with compostables. Gotta seal in the good stuff. Seriously. Don't just wet the surface. That's just fertilizing (um, p***g into) the wind.

Guess that depends if you are feline or canine.

Does this really have to be so complicated?

Nope. No complication needed. You can also take your nitrogen fertilizer and just heave it into the air above the pile. I mean, the whole purpose isn't really to get it to compost, is it?

Dan has been informing us sternly of late that pee applied to the surface will lose its nitrogen rapidly to the air as ammonia gas and should therefore be applied subterraneously.

Urea in pee combines with the urease enzyme that's in soil and floating around in the breeze to produce ammonia GAS. If that gas is captured in the soil, it will turn into nitrates that will hang around. But if it isn't captured, it will just float away. You pee on the surface of a compost pile, and most of the ammonia (containing nitrogen) will just float away.

Urea is a major ag fertilizer, and it's well understood that you need to till it in to get the most out of it. Very different than chemical nitrate fertilizers, that will pretty much last forever.

The other thing I'm informing sternly about is that old pee isn't an effective fertilizer. If you pee in a bucket for a month and then pour it on, the nitrogen is mostly gone. Fresh is best.

I think that depends entirely on if you are passing gas or liquid but then I just don't have that kind of experience.

I am new at this. ;-)

May even wait for the "studies show" if you are gonna wee on your compost pile there is only one way to do it correctly comment.

I have 3 4x4x4 compost bins that I built myself. I have a ton of leaves in the fall which I like to hang on to and compost them in the spring with grass clippings. I get a ton of grass clippings from neighbors in the spring as well. I will fill a compost bin fairly quickly in the spring. In about 2-3 days, the pile will be about 3' tall due mostly to compaction I would suspect but the pile heats up within about 12 hours of being build so there's composting going on as well . In another week, that bin might have shrunk to around half. I keep stirring up the pile to add air. When the pile gets to about half, I turn the pile in to the bin next to it. The first bin then gets filled within about about a week or less. And the process starts again. When that pile gets half, I move it into the second bin and mix it in. LOL. Bet you thought I was going to say that I moved the second bin to the third bin and then the first bin to the second. I had finished compost in the third bin that I wanted to use in my potato bin, but didn't for some reason. I'm using that finished compost up at the current time and will likely start moving the second bin to the third bin. However, if I have a LOT of material, I'll likely combine the second batch with the first batch in the second bin and let it cook for a week before turning into the third bin. I stir the piles every other day to add air though. When the third batch is ready in the first bin, I'll turn the second bin into the third and it will sit until done.

Like the others said, it really depends on what size works for you. 3x3x3 is a good min to shoot for. I use turning the compost as exercise so the larger piles are good for that.

Thomas, I did a lot of composting pretty much like you describe when I first bought my house, which was only a couple years old and surrounded by horrible clay soil. Made a LOT of compost with other peoples' leaves and grass clippings. The triple bin is dandy for moving large volumes of material through.

After a few years the soil improved and I cut back on the imports and high volume composting.

By the way I see you're from Columbus, I have family there who were involved in the Eartha Inc. food scrap composting company a couple years back.

toxie, I don't see me ever cutting back on composting. :) I created a bed out by the mailbox. The soil was CRAP. I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. More gravel and cement and clay crud than dirt let alone soil. Over the last 10 years or so, I've dug plugs of dirt out to plant annuals and top dressed with either compost, unfinished compost or shredded leaves. A week or so back I was checking the mail and looked at the bed. I was able to push my fingers into the soil. Still amazed at that change.

Haven't heard of the Eartha Inc food scrap composting company. Will have to look them up. I'm PROUD of the company I work for. We have three different types of refuse bins instead of the typical trash can. We have the recycle bins, and the trash bins, and we have COMPOSTING bins. All the disposable plates, cups, plasticware are biodegradable.