Garden Compost Pile

[RayCJ]

Every year I get a compost pile going. My wife is a florist and she can't get enough of this stuff for the fancy flowers and plants she grows. This year, I started this pile in January and even in the dead of winter, the hungry microbes raised the soil temperature to about 90/32 (F/C) degrees. This morning the pile is 135/57 (F/C) and outdoor temps are 50/10 degrees. All the ingredients are from tree branches and almost 100% of the kitchen scraps. Everything but meat, fat and skin etc goes in there. Bones from food scraps get ground-up with the branches.

The box is about 3' x 2' x 2' and I'll have about 5 of these by end of summer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those bunny kiss'n, tree huggers. It just so happens I enjoy tending to the compost pile as much as I enjoy a good round of oil & filter changes on all the family vehicles...

Anybody else running a compost operation?

 

[MasterSolenoid]

I dump my table scraps into a 5-gallon bucket and watch it disappear.

Have you ever thought of 'adding' worms to your compost piles ?
http://wormfarmfacts.com/Red-Worms.html

 

[JHZR2]

Yes absolutely. Always run a compost pile to augment our vegetable,garden soil.

 

[CT8]

Compost is great stuff for the garden. I use tree chippings as mulch and as they break down they do wonders for the soil.At my previous residence I had a 50X 90 foot area I pit tree chippings in and let them rot away The neighbors were flooded with all the surplus vegetables and fruit the garden put out. The new house has no such bragging rights.

 

[Nickdfresh]

Do you turn you compost with a pitchfork?

 

[maxdustington]

Is that red machine your wood chipper? Adding chipped wood like that must make it a lot less gross than 100% food scraps. You must get some nice yields with that. Do you add grass clippings?

 

[gathermewool]

Originally Posted by Nickdfresh
Do you turn you compost with a pitchfork?


I was going to ask this same thing.

OP must have to turn it often, since his containers don't have any means to keep air flowing around it.

 

[Dave9]

Yes I have a pile but it's literally that. I don't turn it but once in a blue moon (when I'm shoveling some out to use), don't water it, nothing. I am not in that much of a rush, it's a multi-year process where I reap what I put in years ago and so on. Nature composts fine on her own if you aren't in a hurry.

 

[PimTac]

We do something similar. It's just a pile in the back yard. We discovered that coffee grounds attract worms so that aids in the process.

 

[RayCJ]

Hi All...

Originally Posted by MasterSolenoid
I dump my table scraps into a 5-gallon bucket and watch it disappear.

Have you ever thought of 'adding' worms to your compost piles ?
http://wormfarmfacts.com/Red-Worms.html



I'm aware of folks doing that but, I'm not sure if that's the direction I need to go with this. I must say though, I do like the smell of earth that has lots of earth worms.


Originally Posted by Nickdfresh
Do you turn you compost with a pitchfork?


I do 2 kinds of aeration. Every day, I take the hand gardening tool, dig down deep and over-turn most of the volume of the container. Then, once a week (usually weekends) I shovel all of it out into a second container. That way the bottom gets over-turned to the top.

The piles always smell good, like fresh earth. Never any bad odor at all. Sometimes some fruit flies and these other black & white flying insects that kinda look like bees but, they don't sting and they give my dogs something to chase after. They lay eggs and larvae in there and it's my understanding those insects are normal and OK for compost piles.


Originally Posted by maxdustington
Is that red machine your wood chipper? Adding chipped wood like that must make it a lot less gross than 100% food scraps. You must get some nice yields with that. Do you add grass clippings?




Yes, that's a SunJoe electric chipper/mulcher. This is my second one. The first lasted about 4-5 years and finally, the AC/DC transformer went kaput. There are 3 different models of that style chipper. This one is the 602 version, 15 Amp. I much prefer it over the 601, 14 Amp version. This one does not jam and it pulls the sticks in whereas the 601, you have to cram the branches in there. Both produce nice small chips like coarse sawdust.

In these compost piles, I mix just kitchen waste and chopped branches. It takes all season for it to break down completely but, my wife swears it's the best soil she can get her hands on for her fancy flowers and plants.

Every season, I get about 4 to 5 of those containers so I guess that's a good yield. As the season passes, it's a lot more daily work but it's all fun work. I have about 8 trees and my neighbors do too so there's no shortage of branches. The chipper easily handles branches up to 1.25" diameter. It can do 1.5" if the branches are completely dried out.

Yes, sometimes I add grass clippings. I grab a bag or two from my neighbor who uses a gas mower with a bagger. The grass on my lot is only about 25' x 50' so I just use an old fashioned cylindrical push mower and I don't bag the clippings.


Originally Posted by gathermewool
Originally Posted by Nickdfresh
Do you turn you compost with a pitchfork?


I was going to ask this same thing.

OP must have to turn it often, since his containers don't have any means to keep air flowing around it.



I have a bunch of drain holes drilled in those containers and I manually aerate the soil daily. I got a bunch of those containers free so I just make due with them. It's all good.


Ray

 

[gathermewool]

Very nicely done, and thanks for sharing!

We're not nearly as good as we should be about feeding our compost bin. My wife bought a small container with a charcoal filter for out kitchen scraps. I think it's too small. I think I'm going to switch to a 5-gal bucket that I'll keep on the porch. What do you think about that?

I'm also not very good at turning it. I keep it in the middle of our yard, so it gets the most sun. I should move it closer to the back door, so I'll be more willing to turn it at least weekly.

Also, I always find it amazing how, after I fill it to the brim with carbon and some greens (kitchen scraps), it shrinks to only 1//6 or so of the volume in a few weeks.

 

[RayCJ]

Originally Posted by gathermewool
Very nicely done, and thanks for sharing!

We're not nearly as good as we should be about feeding our compost bin. My wife bought a small container with a charcoal filter for out kitchen scraps. I think it's too small. I think I'm going to switch to a 5-gal bucket that I'll keep on the porch. What do you think about that?

I'm also not very good at turning it. I keep it in the middle of our yard, so it gets the most sun. I should move it closer to the back door, so I'll be more willing to turn it at least weekly.

Also, I always find it amazing how, after I fill it to the brim with carbon and some greens (kitchen scraps), it shrinks to only 1//6 or so of the volume in a few weeks.


For the daily scraps, we have a can just like the one shown but we used a 5 gallon bucket with for a long time. The one we have now sits next to the main trash can in the kitchen. Its about 3 gallons and does not take-up much room. It has an inner plastic removable liner that I take out daily as part of the dog walking routine. This time of year and thru the summer, we make a lot of fruit bowls and salads so the melon peels etc are abundant.

I don't think the pile has to be out in the sun... Matter of fact, I leave mine where it's partly shaded. There's 3 primary categories of bacteria doing all the work and generating heat. They work non-stop, day and night. If the pile temp goes much over 150/66 (F/C), the microbes will overheat and self destruct. For manure piles, there's a 4th type of bacteria that can take temps up to 170/77 but, but it has to be pretty big -like about 10 feet by 5 feet. For smaller piles, 100 to 130 (38 to 55) is ideal with occasional temps at 140/60 to kill off seed germination and insect larvae.

Like I mentioned... I just started doing this because my wife grows all kinds of fancy flowers. She was buying soil and all these expensive fertilizers so one day, I just read-up about composting and now, just part of the daily ritual. That was about 5 years ago. She has flowers that bloom all winter now and they never did that when she used chemical fertilizers.


Ray

 

[gathermewool]

Great, thanks for the advice!

 

[Donald]

What about animals going after it?

Bears will rip the bird feeder down, broke mine into pieces a few weeks ago. What would they do with food scraps? They are extremely hungry as they are coming out of hibernation this time of the year?

 

[RayCJ]

Originally Posted by Donald
What about animals going after it?

Bears will rip the bird feeder down, broke mine into pieces a few weeks ago. What would they do with food scraps? They are extremely hungry as they are coming out of hibernation this time of the year?


Good question... Fortunately for me, no bears around here (thank heavens) but lots of deer, fox, raccoon, opossum etc... Maybe I'm just lucky but none of those creatures have ever raided the piles. I don't put animal meat or fat in there -only vegetable matter. Maybe that's why I'm so lucky.

Ray

 

[Shannow]

I've got a "tumbleweed" composter, but it never really worked all that well for me.

Then I started making biochar out of old boxes and sticks, and adding that virtually pure, but very porous carbon into it, and it works like gangbusters (comparatively)

 

[Silk]

I have a worm farm, but it can't keep up, so I have bottomless buckets in the gardens and put scraps in there...then a few worms from the worm farm. I have a raised vege garden, there is no soil in there, it's all made from stuff I've put in.

 

[g-col]

I have small to medium waist basket for worm farm. 1 month first harvest baby greens. After 3-4 months, continuous kale, Swiss chard and green onion for about 2 years. Everglades tomatoes produce indefinitely. Mine took 9months to really produce because I did not cover them when in a storm. But now have enough to feed trolls.

 

[SuperSalad]

What about animals going after it?

Bears will rip the bird feeder down, broke mine into pieces a few weeks ago. What would they do with food scraps? They are extremely hungry as they are coming out of hibernation this time of the year?

I don't know about bears specifically, but I've got skunks, possums, raccoons, rodents, etc. all around where I live, and I've never had an animal go digging in my pile. As long as you cover up the raw food scraps with at least an inch of the browns in your pile, nothing but bugs usually go for it in my experience. My pile this years appears to have a lot more worms than usual for some reason, which I'm not complaining about.

 

[SuperSalad]

I began wondering why there is any need for the cinder block structure at all.

Is it to keep predators away? I'm not sure what the construction your looking at is like, but would it keep other stuff out? For instance, centipedes can obliterate a worm colony in a very short time period.