/r/composting
A place to talk about decomposing materials into compost.
Compost - organic matter that has been decomposed and recycled as a fertilizer and soil amendment.
Do you have a garden and want an easy way to make fertilizer?
Wondering what to do with all those table scraps, leaves, and grass clippings?
Make compost! It is easy to start and easy to maintain.
Share your tips, stories, ideas, pictures, or questions!
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/r/composting
How can you keep your compost from drying out and staying stored?
I'm very new to this composting stuff and I'm having trouble ith finding definite answers to my question of, can I add scraps to my pile through the winter? I assume being that in my area winters have potential of dropping anywhere from -5° to -15° F the food scraps will not decompose. I figure, no need to mix, but should I be layering my scraps? Or should I just allowing it to sit over the winter? My pile is currently in a bin. Should I be keeping my pile moist in the early parts of winter? Or allow it to somewhat dry out? Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
Title.
I have some finished compost and need to make space in my tumbler for all of the end-of-season garden matter. What can I do with my finished compost?
I have some green giant trees. Would it be reasonable to spread the compost around the base of these?
Or can I just store it in a bucket until spring? I don’t know if compost loses any effectiveness if you store it for a long time.
I read a small amount of ash can be beneficial to compost pits and wondered if anyone had any experience with it. This would be a small amount of ash primarily from marijuana smoking which is legal in my area. I figure it would be less greasy than bbq ash and contain fewer chemicals than tobacco ash but that’s just my assumption. I’ve added about half an ash tray every other week thinking it wouldn’t cause much harm but I really don’t know. Thanks
Getting the garden cleaned out and ready to put together sleep for winter. We leave the roots in the ground and cut everything else out. We had a quarter of our garden that got neglected this year and it turned into a Daikon forest. I'm talking plants that are 4-5 feet tall, and super densely grown. I filled out lawn cart twice plus a wheelbarrow full. Turned into a nice stockpile of greens for the next pile. I will work on layering it together with wood chips, some horse bedding, and leaves in the coming week.
I've read pumpkin are great for the compost pile, is this true? I've also read they are high in water content, so the real question is do I need to piss on it?
I live in a tiny apartment in an over-55 community. Come spring, I will try to create an ornamental garden in a small space. For now, what 'soil' there is backfill from when the property was built about 40 years ago, and it's been sitting under a rotting sheet of weed guard and gravel. There is much work to do to make this pitiful dirt into soil. The vinal cloth bag pictured is pretty full of yard waste - cut up and some whole leaves, some half-cooked leaf mold from the edge of the property, and grass clippings that have been sitting in this wooded area long enough to have quite a bit of mycorrhizal fungi.
This bag is far from airtight, but it's not airated either. Once the gravel is removed in the spring, I'll replace this bag with an open-bottom aerated bin or pen where native worms can come and go.
What can I add or do to speed things along and avoid serious stink? I have a tiling auger I can use to mix this stuff Should I put holes in the side of the bag? I have screen repair tape that I can use to keep the bag together if I do make holes. This thing only needs to last a season.
I'm in central Massachusetts, zone 6.
We've been reading about different ways to compost and finally took a step. We put these two bins together using pallets. Any suggestions on how to improve it? We have leaves and grass clippings - should we start adding kitchen scraps and will they be enough to enrich it or should we add something else?
Strimmed grass, including couch not roots (hopefully) and cardboard. Look ok? Gonna chuck in some food scraps too and keep chopping garden waste and cardboard. It wont stayvin the bag
Someone had mentioned it in a comment a while back. It's 34.5% urea, so it would be like adding a lot of pee to the compost, but is it safe to put into the bin? I'd like to add some extra heat going into the winter, but I don't want to harm the biology in the pile that makes such good compost.
I haven't been able to get my pile over about 110-120F this season, so I'd like to get it back up a bit.
Clearing my new allotment and they attempted a compost heap but its very wet and smells like sewage, can it be saved or shall i bin?
Just started a new batch today, is it looking good or no?
Had a big batch of compost with very perfect balance of greens and browns. let it sit for 5 months and it came out mostly great but stank for a week eventually broke down and mixed it in for my my large in ground bed everything is healthy and fine.
I had a thought. If my compost is going anaerobic and I’m also doing bokashi composting in a separate bin inside that requires anaerobic environment why not sprinkle bokashi throughout my process in this next batch. Takes me about 5 months to fill the can then I let it sit for another few months to let the top layers breakdown. This next batch came out perfect! No smell broke down even faster. I also added organic hard lump charcoal to the bottom of the can with the idea that the fluid from the compost would leak down into the compost making my own pseudo-biochar.
Anyone else do something like this or anyone from compost university want to tell me why this is a bad idea? Thanks!
Exciting Saturday night. TV time with a cocktail and hand shredding cardboard for the pile.
Hi,
So I'm an Ohioan (6b hardiness zone) wanting to begin my journey into composting - to be more specific, I'm hoping to use composting as a significant supplement to the crappy soil that we have to work with from Oakland Nurseries. I'm thinking that fall should be a good time to begin work on a compost bin because of all the leaves falling from our neighborhood trees that would make for an excellent source of carbon. However, I'm concerned with how close we are getting to winter weather. Temperatures will drop to freezing and below-freezing in only one-to-two months, and I'll obviously only be able to maintain the pile so well when it's hardened by the cold, plus there won't be any bugs to help aid in decomposition.
So, the obvious question for me is: Is it still a good idea to begin the piles during November, do what I can to keep it tumbled, added-to and maintained during late-fall and winter, and then introduce worms and other decomposition-assisting insects during the mid-spring? Or should I hold off until the Spring because the heat would be more frequent and I could actually add worms? If I bother with the latter, what should I focus on for sources of carbon? I hear grass clipping are good, but I'd like a reliable source that I can introduce early-on in the spring, if I have to wait 'til then.
Thanks to anyone and everyone who can help.
Hi!
I recently learned that my county has a compost program where we can take our compostable items to either our local farmers market, or waste management facility. I am very excited about this and want to give it a go! I live in a town house with no back yard, and I was thinking it would be good to get a small compost bin and a larger one for storage. I think the most managable thing would be for me to drop off a larger amount of compostable items 1-2x/ month rather than weekly. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can accomplish this without attracting animals or having the issue of mold or rot? This program sounds great, but I want to be realistic with my capabilities.
Thank you!
Okay. Help. I’ve got all the stuff but it’s not coming together?
This is a pallet compost bin - 3 areas that have some wood chips (left), some topsoil (middle), and some too large pieces of tomato plant and tree trimming (right).
Not pictured, chicken poo (lots available), lots of woodchips and a family’s worth of food scraps usually going to municipal compost.
I need a quick start recipe to get going? And a system to use these three bins?
I’ve been hesitant to use chicken poo in the compost because of e-coli but I’m mostly growing flowers and landscaping type stuff.
I’m in Northern California so it’s not going to get too cold and (hopefully) will start raining soon.
What's the point of compost tea versus composting and watering separately? Is it better in some way or is it just a different way of doing it? It's it a faster way to get the nutrients out of the greens?