learn to compost

It looks ready…it smells ready…

I think I’m going to let it sit one more week before using it, just to be sure.

Hey this has been really worthwhile and not as hard as I thought!

Freecycled to find a bin, and have been working on it for a few months now. looking almost ready… just in time to plant some summer veggies, maybe…?

I turned my pile a couple days ago and noticed that parts are starting to get HOT. I watered it and added some more leaves and some coffee grounds. I’m going to turn it again this weekend.

I’ve been reading up, did my research, and bought a compost bin. My BioStack arrived a couple days ago and I’ve filled it with leaves, weeds, drier lint, shredded newspaper and some coffee grounds.

Hopefully I’ll have something cooking in a few days!

Today, I mixed my compost in with the soil while replanting the front garden. Yay! I did a project that was useful and it’s really awesome to me to have fertilizer that I made myself (that sounds wrong…) in my garden. I feel all self sufficient and stuff. I hope it helps the daffodils and other bulbs we’re planting!

the more guilty I feel about not knowing how to compost. I really should learn how to do this in 2008!!!

Mmm, compost. My family started composting over 10 years ago, and now all of our gardens, beds, shrubs, etc. are fertilized with compost and are thriving! We have two huge composters and a pile of excess ripe compost! Some of our neighbors have started bringing their organic material to our compost bins, so its turned into somewhat of a community project! (:

I have a small storage container that I poked holes in to store my compost. I think I started it in March. I still don’t always remember to take out everything I can rather than throwing it away, and I had some trouble at first because it wasn’t damp enough but now I can see where it’s becoming good compost instead of just table scraps and leaves.

Where I learned how to do my particular set up:
http://www.yougrowgirl.com/garden/urbancomposting.php

Check in with your local recycling organization; here in Redwood City, it’s the county who picks up curbside recycling. They’re as likely as ours to have cheap compost bins you can use; otherwise it’s pretty easy to make a compost bin with stakes and chicken-wire walls (google up instructions with pictures).
Set up your pile – not too close to the house or neighbors, and in a place where you can water it—it’s a good idea to leave room for two piles, unless you get a rotating drum doodad, so you can turn the whole pile over from one spot to another from time to time.
What goes into a compost pile?
one part Greens: veggie scraps, lawn-and-garden clippings, old annual plants, green kitchen waste, eggshells. seaweed
two to three parts Browns: dried leaves, good soil, vegetative debris (probably not weed-seeds), coffee grounds, used tea leaves, shredded TP- and paper towel roll centers, shredded newspapers, soft cardboard like egg cartons

What to not put in your compost
Meats, oils or fats (they stink and attract critters),
hardy weeds and invasive grasses
last year’s melon seeds (some folks say freezing kitchen waste makes seeds not germinate)

Make sure it’s moist but not sodden

chop things up to speed breaking down

If you don’t have enough mass (about a cubic yard) to get a good compost heap cooking, bury your kitchen waste in the yard: it’ll break down. Rotate where you do this.