Compost piles

S

sawbonz

500+ Posts
I have been thinking about doing this for awhile. Does anyone have any tips? I would plan on having a bin. Any thoughts on dimensions, materials?

Also, what can you put in it? I am assuming vegetable and fruit peels and leftovers and dead leaves. What about grass clippings? Right now I mulch them, should I bag them and add them to the compost?

When is it "ready" for use, and how is the best way to use it?

Thanks
 
it's really a pain in the *** unless you keep it rather small. big piles you gotta turn and water or else it's just a pile of ****.

sorry i have no constructive advice, just a bad personal experience.

oh, i know you want to make sure you balance the amount of brown and green (in simple terms) you stick in there. if you put too much in the way of sticks and dead leaves you won't get anywhere. grass clippings is a great source of the green.
 
I have been thinking about doing this for awhile. Does anyone have any tips? I would plan on having a bin. Any thoughts on dimensions, materials?

We use about a six foot by six foot bin (wire to allow circulation). My wife bought it off the Internet.

Also, what can you put in it? I am assuming vegetable and fruit peels and leftovers and dead leaves. What about grass clippings? Right now I mulch them, should I bag them and add them to the compost?

You can use any organic material; however, I would avoid using wood ash in this region, as it is highly alkaline. Along with the obvious things, you can also use coffee bags and egg shells. You should try and layer, typically two parts browns (leaves, twigs and hay) to one part greens (fresh vegetable and fruit scraps). You can include grass clippings, but it easier to just let them fall into the ground while you mow. You can add fertilizer and water to help speed up the decomposition.

When is it "ready" for use, and how is the best way to use it?

It is ready for use when it looks like dirt and has an earthy smell to it. If it begins to smell like amonia, ease up on the nitrogen filled greens. Make sure you water after you apply it to the plants, as it should be relatively hot.
 
Johnny

What were your bad experiences? I'm kinda up in the air about doing it, so are they just things that you would go about doing differently or were they deal breakers?

Jelly,

Thanks for the advice. Do you remember the web site? Also, what volume of compost are we looking at, and how long does it take to produce?
 
It's not that hard. Size is however big you want it to be. No container required, but a wire fence helps keep it from blowing around while permitting air circulation. The smaller the clippings, etc, the faster it will compost. Throw in a few handfuls of N fertilizer and several shovel fulls of healthy dirt. Turn it every couple of weeks, keep it moist, but not soggy. The more often you turn it the faster it breaks down.
 
www.composters.com/compost-bins/shepherd-complete-coated-mesh-wire-bin_10_1.php


Thanks for the advice. Do you remember the web site? Also, what volume of compost are we looking at, and how long does it take to produce?

My wife ordered our two, but this looks similar to what we have. As the previous poster stated, the time it takes varies based on what you are composting, accelerating the decomposition with fertilizer, turning and etc., but count on several months at the least. I would say a full bin equals a dozen bags of compost. I have found that the homemade compost greatly exceeds even the best commerically produced compost. I guess it is because it has no fillers.
 
My mom has a tumbler like this at her house:

25728043.jpg


My neighbor has a pit dug in his back yard and a couple starter piles for leaves. Seems like too much of a hassle. I think I'd rather just use one of the tumblers. Supposedly the turn around time with those things is pretty fast too, much faster than doing it in a pit or pile.
 
Anastasis,

That's pretty ******* ugly. And I'm only saying that because that's exactly what my wife will say when I bring it home, right before she tells me to take it back.

Jelly,

Thanks for the link, there are some more "aesthetically pleasing" choices on there.
 
If we did it again I would 100% get a tumbler like that.

We basically put up a circle of wire mesh about 4-5 feet in diameter and 4-5 feet high. If you do it like that you will need to "turn", or mix it, quite often with a pitchfork or something. It's quite the process and a real pain in the ***.

And if you say you want to do it but never actually do it (like my fiance), it just ends up a big pile of junk without and good dirt.

The tumblers are great, I assume, because you can turn it often and with ease. That seems like the ideal setup. If you think it's ugly, wait until you have a big heap of trash. At least that thing is contained.
 
Have any of you built your bin with only 3 sides leaving the 4th side open to get access and turn it? This is what I have been thinking about doing. Maybe build it with a hinged door on the fourth side.

The pile at my old house produced great soil but it took about 6 months and the soil was on the bottom while new junk was on the top. If I do it again I will probably do it in three bins to keep it a different stages of decomposition.
 
^

Yes

Used materials around the property.

-cinderblocks for two sides, stacked up to ~ 2 ft.
- Back end w/ wood planks stacked together, secured to sides w/ 2 steel fence posts.
- 1 X 2 (squares) welded wire for front access, piece of rope tied around back to secure.
- ship board for top, secured w/ trim lumber and sheet-rock screws.

Used leaves for brown (carbon).
Used horse manure for nitrogen. Don't use fresh. BTW, most any barn-yard manure is outta-site. Poultry being the hottest.

You want the pile to be maintained just like a wrung-out sponge, as far as moisture. Pick up a handful, and judge your moisture content.

I distinctly recall going out and turning the pile in a Austin winter, and the thing would fog up my glasses with steam.

- Nothing wrong with a cool pile, just that it might introduce weed seeds (a hot pile is better for killing any seeds) and the decomposition takes longer.
 
An inexpensive and relatively easy bin is just a circle of galvanized wire fencing with 1"x2" wire spacing. To turn it you just lift the wire off the pile, move it adjacent to the compost pile and scoop the compost into it again. Not as easy as the elevated rolling bin thingy, but cheap, effective, scalable, and not that much work. Consider it free exercise.
 
Super easy- keep your mix of "brown" material (high nitrogen, i.e. dried, dead plants, leaf little, paper towels, etc) to Green material (high carbon, i.e. banana peels, coffee grounds, fruit and veggie scraps, egg shells, cut flowers, leftovers going bad, etc) at about 4/1. Don't put meat or fat or **** in the heap close by the house or intended for veggie garden. The pile should have the moisture of a wrung out spunge.
Here's the composter I use.. I could have made my own out of a trash can, what I like about this is that it keeps things warm and speeds up the decompostion.

Take a wire mesh bin, or my thing- basically anything well ventilated. A composter is just a space to let things rot, which is going to happen anyway. We're just trying to make it happen fast in a way that smells like the dirt, which is more or less what you are making, minus the sand. Put some scraps into it, and a little bit of nice black dirt to get things going, or better yet, some compost. You now have a compost pile.
Couple things:
1)Don't put grass clippings in your compost- it's good for the compost but bad for your yard, because you are literally stripping organic materials out of the soil if you take them away from where they grow. Leave them where they fall.
2) Mixing compost is easy, it doesn't have to be perfect, just cover the new stuff on top with some stuff from the bottom.
3) Feel free to pee on your compost- it adds Urea, nitrogen, and ants hate the ammonia.
4) If ants are getting into the compost, it's not hot/active enough. enclose on four sides.
5) Here's an awesome link about how to build a standalone, underground dog poop composter if you don't want to just throw it in the bushes.
 
and as luck would have it the fiance came home today with a small compost box that her client gave her. at least this one is smaller and manageable. how excited i am. can't you tell?
 
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