A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2005 How to make a compost bin

Well its made and full of grass clippings and leaves and some taters peals from dinner! We will see how it goes. We soaked it down real well and put in lots of holes for venting. Put it up on legs. and I got about 2cu ft of leaves to continue to add to it as I throw in table scraps and such! Wish me luck! Told the kids to throw their leftover lemonade in there after snack and the cheese poofs that were left over! Hope it goes well!

Another question, What If I dont have enough greens. Will it still compost? I was a little worried, I only let the grass sit overnight but we dont have much grass clippings as I tend to mow 2 times a weeek, and we have a mulching mower. I did wait a full week just to have some clippings in the heavy grassed areas for composting.

Hey, you're starting to spell like Vanessa!! *wink~wink*

I'd lay off the cheese puffs...
Salty things really shouldn't go in...

(I don't put any dairy either)

Just remember one thing about compost..
and stuff you put in..

It will always decompose..
just takes a bit of time..
if you don't want to do anything to it..
or only add "X" amounts of stuff...

There's no set requirement on how much you
put in.. it will, in time, render down..
(it may take a while, but if it's on the ground,
it'll decompose)

But the trick is to layer..
Green then browns...
and some soil..
*or older compost*

MARY!! ..... GUESS WHAT!?!?! ..... IT WORKS!!!!

But then Hub unexpectedly came home for lunch and I made him come out and touch it. He said, "I'm not touching THAT!" But I made him anyway. He thinks I'm You're a great teacher!

~SuzyQ~

So far plenty of brown here but very very little green! ERRRRRR I dont want to take the mulcher blade off the mower and by the time I finish mowing and weed eating I dont wanna rake! I am shameful I know. And we have so little to rake wth the mulcher on the deck. I need more green!

If you need green. Do what you need to do to get the green Karrie. Composting requires work but it smells and feels great when you finally get it done. The flowers respond with such great plants and blooms and the fruit is better. Gardening would be nearly as satisfying to me without the composting. As funny as that sounds. Of course I am lucky that my landlord brings me the grass clipping from the yards of his rentals. But then he's not paying to have them halled to the dump either so I guess he gains a little something from it.

Wow, Karrie... we have the opposite problem. With four teens, and one adult child showing up for 'home cookin' all the time, I probably peel close to five lbs of potatoes every other day (must be the Irish in us), and then all the vegetable scraps. I fill up a 'Greens' bucket pretty quick. That's actually what made me think I need to be composting in the first place.

But anyway, when you clean up your annuals, that should give you a bunch of greens. And don't forget to eat lots of veggies, too. They produce lots of good stuff for the compost.

And if you're still having problems, I can send you a couple of teenagers to raise (not that they're compostable... they're all meat eaters), and they won't save you much money either, not even a little bit! But keeping them fed should help out with supplies for your compost. Hey! Maybe I should advertise them in the seed exchange. lol

ISN'T IT THE COOLEST THING?!


So, now ya understand why I brought my partner out in the pouring rain my first time!

Knew ya could do it - like I said, if I can, anyone can Just wait till ya get your first shovel full of black gold! I'm always interested in what I'm going to find out there - the science of the pile really intrigues me (bout time some kinda science did LOL!) They shoulda taught THIS in school. Then again, guess composting isn't quite as popular in NYC

Congrats, SuzyQ, I'm so proud of ya!

Weezie!... that was Four Big GUFFAWS! " " You must have kids to trade, too! lol

I'm starting to think I'm going to be turning this stuff in the winter. (Or at least bribing some of the boys to do it. lol) The heat is pretty amazing. You're right, Mary. It's quite an interesting science. Some of my kids are even (semi)-interested.

My 19-yr-old son works at a humungous tree nursery when he's not at school, and when I showed him how my compost was working, he said, "yeah, they do that there... but they have all the stuff trucked in and piled up. And we all stand around it and get warm when we need to." A Truck-Load!?!? I'll take that! lol

Well, NOW I'm Jealous! He works at a golf course too, and you know how the grass is there.

So I think after all the years of putting him through school, hockey and golf, and with all his connections, I should end up with some really pristine landscaping one of these days. Well here's to hopin'

~SuzyQ~

Suzy,
What is your growing zone?
I am a 5 here and mine freeze solid in the
winter time...

Yeah, mine freezes here in zone 6 also.

Unfortunately, I'm in a zone 3. Maybe I am being a bit too optimistic, but I've heard twice now that they can continue to work up here through the winter. Oh well, you never know... maybe it was the beginning or end of winter when the composts were cooking for these people.

I'm still hoping the straw bales surrounding my compost will insulate it enough to keep it warm though. That's going to be my own little experiment anyway, so I'll let you know later in the year if it's working.

~SuzyQ~

Yeah, the organisms keep working but progress becomes very slow. I have not seen much breakdown in my piles over the winter months.

I think I'm finally beginning to understand the processing benefits of building a 3x3x3 compost pile all at once now, rather than adding things gradually (like I did all summer). I read on a different site yesterday that it's like baking a cake. You don't add the flour one day, and the eggs a few days later, etc. Sounds like a good analogy to me. lol

This was a site from Alaska about winter composting and they say it definitely will heat up in the cold if you do it all at once and get the ratios right.

So now I'm wondering about all the Greens that come out of my kitchen regularly. Would I be able to freeze them? Then when I have enough to build an entire pile, I could thaw them out and build it with the browns all at once? I guess I'm wondering if freezing the greens would significantly reduce the microbe action or something like that.

Thanks a bunch for any input,
~Suzy~

PS: I can't believe how much I've reduced my garbage (and the smell) by starting this. What a huge bonus it's turned out to be!

Oh, just one more question... I hope! (for now at anyway.) When we're talking about ratios, is it 3:1 by weight?... or is it by mass? It seems like there'd be quite a difference between the two.

I'm really sorry if I'm being a pain in the arse.

Mega Bunches of Appreciation,
~Suze~

I didn't realize this one thread
was way over the 100 post mark..

I'm going to start a new one,
copy and past SuzyQ's last post
and then put a link to the old
one so we can go back to it...