Teach me the finer points.

First, I've got a bunch of leaves.

What next?

Seriously, I know nothing about it or how easy or hard it is.:smile:

Mold me into a great composter.

You need to compost:

Green material (I like 10 - 20%) this is household veggie waste like nasty lettuce, veggie scraps, banana peels, eggshells, etc

Yellow Material - grass clippings, leaves, straw, even some cardboard through a chipper will do,

a bin that allows easy access but keeps varmints and dogs out.( I like four pallets with chicken wire and landscape fabric)

Something to turn the bin with either a commercial compost turner or a pitchfork

WATER!

I water and turn my bin twice a week when I'm making compost for the fall. As a hint... water lightly, turn, then water heavily if you have decent drainage. You're feeding microbes so they need water and need air hence the watering and turning. You'll know you're doing it right when you see steam rise from the bin as you turn it and objects begin to break down and look less like recognizable bits. Usually the only thing I have left that is recognizable from produce at the end are banana stickers

*eta* I do add kelp meal at the end of composting because of a natural lack of certain minerals in the soil around here due to acidic rain.

Michael lawn clippings can be the green.Leaves are great.
It's going to get hot, 130-170 degrees, that kills off weed seeds and bacteria. It should be hot for a week. It's "done" when wetting it and turning it doesn't cause it to heat up again. You can use a meat thermometer to check the temperature.

It all depends on how fast you want compost, and how much labor you are willing to put into it. Anything organic will eventually breakdown into compost even if you do nothing. A pile of leaves left untended will, after a couple of years, be compost. And in a couple more years after that would be incorporated into the soil by worms. So you don't absolutely HAVE to do anything.

But, turning the pile to incorporate oxygen, watching the moisture content, adding components in a not-too-strict ratio of green and brown stuff, and generally fussing over it will make it breakdown faster. With this method you should be able to make useable compost in a single growing season--spring's debris would be ready to use as soil amendment in the fall.

I have a tumbling composter that makes useable compost in about three weeks. There are lots of kinds you can Google. Mine's called a "Tumble Weed." Basically a plastic barrel on an axis. With these, there's less labor than the traditional pile-and-pitchfork method...but you're also making less compost at a time in one of the tumblers. This works great for my smallish yard and a weekly chicken coop clean-out. And since the tunbler is closed, no smell.

If you've got lots of leaves/clippings/etc. to compost, and you're up to the challenge of occasionally getting out a pitchfork and heaving it, then Melissa's method is great and will make piles of organic matter to amend garden beds. I used to do this method and made more compost than I could even use.

Hint: don't make the pile so large that turning it becomes impossible. I wouldn't want to have to deal with a pile taller than waist-high. Better to have a couple of piles than one enormous one. With several, you could also have them at different levels of "doneness"--new, half-composted, nearly done, etc.

You can also have a bin (minimum 3 feet square and as many high) made of wood slats. Removable at the bottom. Then just keep piling garden waste on top and turn if you want to, but usually I leave mine alone because I am a lazy gardener. Over time, the pile just keeps shrinking and you can pull out compost from the bottom where you removed the slats...

I would like to reiterate one point....DOG PROOF.

Years ago the family I lived with while going to college left the compost wall down a bit too long and too far. Thankfully the mom of the family was a nurse and noticed when my poodle, Kili, started acting wrong. Being a poodle he was a total nasty dog for rolling in and eating anything that smelled like undead. I was at a class at the time. Cell phones didn't exist. Get a call through the teachers RA. Rushed home, rushed him to the vet, sedation, stomach pumped, charcoal.....poor guy nearly died. Dogs are not really bright. I think domesticity has bred the survival instincts out of some of them.

 Quote: michael_wise

Seriously, I know nothing about it or how easy or hard it is.:smile:

Everything you've been told so far is perfect. Add nothing fatty, greasy, meaty and no dog waste. Chicken poo however is wonderful, but very HOT and has to break down well prior to being spread.

I have two compost piles; one "hot" one and one "almost done/done" pile. I also have one of the large green tumbling types on a stand which does speed things up considerably, but I use it only occassionally. (My son used to call me "Worm Woman" because I get such a kick out of composting!) I like Mother Nature's way best. I honestly don't work too hard at it Michael. I've never watered mine but DO turn at least part of it every time I add something. Watering during dry spells is a good idea however.

Order some earthworms on line - they really help speed things up and will reproduce like crazy. Worms LOVE coffee grinds!! (Hey! maybe thats why the reproduce so much - they are "UP" all the time!!! SNORT) I crack myself up sometimes...

One of the best Christmas gifts Doug ever got me? A good quality pitch fork. REALLY helpful in turning the pile. You'll get hooked.

With your dog's nose - dog proof is a very, very good idea!

Edited to add: the finer things are chopped up, the faster they decompose. I run the lawn mower over leaves prior to adding them and chop kitchen scraps up well.

Why no dog poo in the compost? I have a manure pile as long as 2 semis that I turn with the Bobcat, it goes from cow manure+cornstalks+horse/chicken/turkey poo + straw to something that looks like bagged potting soil in the period from June to late Sept. in Minnesota. I love it, its terrific how nature breaks all that down. You can't recognize the individual components anymore, it's all just black earth.
Why no dog poo? My whole thing is poo of one variety or another, plus bedding. It all heats up and breaks down. I guess I don't handle it with my hands, mainly a machine, but by fall all the smell is gone, it just smells and looks like the richest soil.
I'm just curious why you can't put dog do in.

Edited by Betty Landercasp (08/09/2010 09:00 PM)
Edit reason: added "just curious"

Great question! According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dog and cat feces contain bacteria like E.coli, viruses or parasites harmful to people and other dogs. Compost piles provide these substances with an ideal breeding ground.

Chickens, cow, horse, turkeys... vegetarians. Dogs and cats? Carnivores.

a typical backyard compost pile doesn't get hot enough to break down fats, proteins, etc., as Barbara said. Manures are mostly grasses already being broken down, dog pooh is not. You definitely want to compost manure before spreading it in a garden, fresh manure produces way too much salt and nitrogen in the soil, but does compost well and quickly unlike pooh from carnivores (which we know that dogs are, right? since we raw feed them)

Municipalities that compost, have big enough piles (as does Betty) that some of these other wastes can be composted safely.