Compost

I have priinted off some instructions that look easy to follow, hopefully I will make a start on this during the week.

My compost bin is almost full to the brim, not sure what to do next lol, I guess I need to find a good website and read up, that’ll be this weeks goal!!!

haven’t really got started on this one yet. Have a compost container and have just been throwing food scraps and garden waste in. Need to start reading up on how to make compost

I ahev to break up my compost kingdom, because Mum wants to change the lay out of her garden and my compost was behind a hedge on her block. So I opened the bins and put the contents on two of the four vegie patch; the other two has vegies in them. Then I covered the compost with pea straw and now, i leave it.

I had to change after that because I got goop in my pockets, and along one leg – yuk.

Now I just need to buy the worms! I want to wait until I’m sure they won’t freeze to death and since it snowed this weekend, I’m a little afraid to get them yet….

Already been saving up scraps and tossing them into a corner of my garden, but obviously that is only a temporary solution.

And I just ordered a countertop composter! Once I get that, I’ll buy some red sqwirmys, and have them eat my garbage to make some dirt.

We’re so used to thinking about compost as something that consists of kitchen scraps and garden clippings but there are many other things that we usually throw away that can be composted:

1. Paper Napkins and Towels. While this sort of paper is recycleable, most recycling programs do not accept it because the food residue can create a nuisance during the collection process. I found that tossing these paper items right in with the kitchen scraps works easiest and once in the compost they break down rather quickly.

2. Wine corks. They take a while to break down, and may even have some of their shape when the rest of the compost is complete, but they are natural and do better for the planet in the garden than in the landfill so toss them in the compost.

3. Cotton Swaps/Q-tips. No one should be using the plastic stick kind at all. The gross out factor of q-tips is the main reason why they cannot go into municipal recycling, but since the sticks are made of either wood or cardboard, they break down really quickly in the compost and stay out of landfills.

4. Dryer lint. Once wet it turns into almost nothing, but imagine how many dryers are in your community and then add all that “almost nothing’ together and there is a large ball of dryer lint. So toss it in the compost and it will disappear.

5. Cookie crumbs/ cracker dust. You know all that crummy remnant stuff that remains in bags of cookies, crackers, and other snacks? Dumb it into the compost. Sure, its not a lot, but carbs feed bacteria which are what do most of the work in your compost. (All that excess flour from dusting the board on which you roll flour is great for the compost too)

6. Kibble. Normal dogs eat all their food, sometimes Archibold does not, and he is pretty picky about fresh kibble. Since most dry dog foods are made of grains with only a little bit of “meat by products” they break down really easily in compost. With all the other kitchen scraps that go into the compost bucket any smell must disappear as I have never had an animal go into the compost.

7. Moldy bread. Its carbs, it breaks down quickly and feeds the bacteria that create the heat in the compost.

I am going to have to start keeping better track of what else I have tossed into the compost instead of the trash.

I have 1/2 acre, so potentially a LOT of compost material. However, the How part has been holding me back. Started with a little wire compost about 18” in diameter, which was too small to get hot enough and too small to turn because the wire was 3’ high. Then I created a bigger pile, but that is all it is a pile of grass clippings etc. under my back fir tree.

Last night I saw an example of a compost on ryanishungry.com where they used old pallets for a fence. Brilliant! This solves my problem of not being handy enought to put up a fence. Nail the pallets together and there you go. I checked Craigslist in my area and folks are always looking to get rid of or sell these for cheap, so I should be in business soon

its winter though
there is a wooded area of my yard, so i just used the leaf litter and the degraded leaf black soil and dig a hole mixing it with my daily kitchen scraps (which are considerable- i never knew how much i was throwing away.) unfortunately i am in bear country. they are always walking through my yard, but i aint seem em for a few weeks, hibernating i guess. i hope the compost dont attract them. but its looking nice, maybe i will have to wait till the spring though till it gets good and fertile, i need it for my garden.