# Question about composting



## warrior4 (Oct 16, 2013)

Hopefully soon my wife and I will be able to move out of our apartment and into a house. When we do that one of the ideas I've had was to start our own veggie garden. I was thinking of also starting a composting system to go along with the garden. From what I've read it seems that once one gets a pile of composting material going it's wise to leave it alone until it's done composting. However what does one do with all the other compost-able materials one gets while the pile is composting?

For example say I go out and buy a compost barrel turner from the yard store. Fill it up with grass clippings, sticks, etc and let it go. A week later I mow the lawn and now have fresh grass clippings. Do I set those new grass clippings aside? Can I add them into the pile I already have? Isn't one of the points of starting a compost pile that you can add in the degradable food scraps, lawn waste, as you go? Just curious from those who have experience.


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## Camel923 (Aug 13, 2014)

You will add to the pile much more quickly that you receive usable compost. Sticks will take longer to decompose than leaves which will take longer than lawn clippings. Read up on rates of decomposition and what things add best to the nutritional value of your soil. 

Other thoughts are What are you growing and what nutrients get sucked out? You can compost with this in mind for best results. Take a soil sample for testing prior to and after planting your garden. Knowing what is there can tell you what will do well or not as well as what you need to replenish.


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## Targetshooter (Dec 4, 2015)

you can add in the food scraps, lawn waste, as you go , I don't do composting but my friend does and he puts every thing from the table they are going to throw out into it , He put the leaves he racked upped yesterday in it , he turns it every other day , and boy he gets some good stuff out of that thing .


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

Do not put any meat or fatty scraps into the compost pile.


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## LunaticFringeInc (Nov 20, 2012)

Maybe I am not "doing it right" but this is what I do...

I have a 1/2 a pick up bed sized container that once had a large tree from a nursrey in it that I use for composting. I add stuff to it on a regular basis. I started it off with a couple bags of soil. I then continually add stuff to it whether it be leaves, cut or fallen, grass clippings, wood chips/shavings, horse manure, rabbit manure, discarded produce etc. I also go to the store and add a bait container of night crawlers to it once or twice a year too. I stir it or turn it every week or so. About every couple of months I get about a half a yard or rich loamy compost to add to the garden or to fill another raised bed as I deem appropriate. Then repeat as needed.

Does it work? Well lets just say my neighbors are hoping to God they legalize Pot in Texas cuase they think my garden is on steroids and cant figure out how I grow such great tomatoes and theirs suck! Yeah theirs look kinda of frail and gangly and produce little while I am wacking about 3 feet off my plants to keep them managable weekly and still got Tomatoes coming out my ears! They spend several hours a week weeding and tending to their gardens and I spend maybe an hour a week, dont have weeds and use very little in the way of water even in the dawg days of summer. They are adding fertilizers all the time and I just add several scoops a couple times a year when I cycle between winter and summer garden crops. At my age (Im old but not that old yet)....I am all about working smarter not harder, too damned old for that crap! Oh and I usually have enough worms for a stringer full of frying sized Blue Catfish or to do a little perch jerking when the mood hits me with some help from the neighborhood kids I sometimes take fishing with me.

I dont add sticks to mine. I pile those up and when I trim the trees I usually rent a wood chipper for the day from A-1 Equipment Rentals and run all that garbage through it and then add a few inches to the gardens once a year. Best damned 100 bucks I spend all year. Keeps the yard looking spiffy and I dont have to spend all week end cutting it up in to 3ft lengths and bundling it up with twine to get the city to pick it up and get rid of it for me. I dont have to buy or haul and hump mulch every year either!

Thats just what I do, YMMV...


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## LunaticFringeInc (Nov 20, 2012)

Oh the horse manure....I get that from a freind when he is complaining about needing to clean his stalls again and get rid of it. The Rabbit Manure, I have a bunch of Florida Whites I raise for the freezer that usually keep me going with enough Rabbit Doo to sprinkle a bit on the plants and the compost pile. If its free....its for me! It beats the hell out of Miracle Grow eight days a week!!!


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## Redneck (Oct 6, 2016)

warrior4 said:


> Hopefully soon my wife and I will be able to move out of our apartment and into a house. When we do that one of the ideas I've had was to start our own veggie garden. I was thinking of also starting a composting system to go along with the garden. From what I've read it seems that once one gets a pile of composting material going it's wise to leave it alone until it's done composting. However what does one do with all the other compost-able materials one gets while the pile is composting?
> 
> For example say I go out and buy a compost barrel turner from the yard store. Fill it up with grass clippings, sticks, etc and let it go. A week later I mow the lawn and now have fresh grass clippings. Do I set those new grass clippings aside? Can I add them into the pile I already have? Isn't one of the points of starting a compost pile that you can add in the degradable food scraps, lawn waste, as you go? Just curious from those who have experience.


There are two methods of composting... hot & cold. Hot is much faster but requires work. A well managed hot system can produce compost in weeks to months. I personally use a cold system, as I'm too busy to manage another project. With cold, you simply have a big bin & throw the material in there. It will naturally degrade over time to compost but may take years. My active bin is 8' x 8' and one side is the back fence of the garden & another side is the fence-line for the road headed down to the orchards & pastures. Point is, you want it convenient for easy dumping. Last week I cleaned up all the garden beds prior to tilling in winter peas. All those old plants were just thrown on the active pile & I didn't have to leave the garden. Once a week or so, I bring up the muck bucket with chicken poop & shavings from the chickens & just dump into the pile. IMO, a great source for vast volumes of compostable material are the bags of leaves folks put outside their houses in the winter. They have done all the work by raking & bagging. I load them in the back of my truck & fill the compost pile to the top with leaves each winter. By spring, they are down to about an inch in height. When the active pile is full enough, after a few years, you can then either start a new bin for new material or use a tractor to move the contents to another bin. I do that because I want my active bin accessible from the garden & the road.

Be careful with grass clippings, if you spray your grass. Some of those weed killers stay around a long time & can taint your compost.


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## Smitty901 (Nov 16, 2012)

Damp not soaked, turn it often keep adding to it. No meat not fat or oils. It takes time to break it down. Keep pile away for live stock like chickens as the pile attacks raccoons and other rodents.


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

I had a 1 cubic yard pile. I found that sticking in a 4 inch PVC pipe with a few holes drilled into the side at the bottom helped to keep the pile active and breathing. When it was really cooking, it was too hot to hold your hand on top of it. I could get finished compost in about 2 months, but I had access to the local utility tree trimmers piles, and always got the good, finely divided green stuff.

P.S. Make sure you add a little common garden soil as you build it, to seed the pile with the local actinomycetes and bacteria.


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## LunaticFringeInc (Nov 20, 2012)

> Be careful with grass clippings, if you spray your grass. Some of those weed killers stay around a long time & can taint your compost.


Absolutely!!! Just like a computer....crap in - crap out! Things like Round Up have some serious hang time in your soil and what ever was growing in it. Thats why I only use vinegar for weed control on the lawn. Anything you used pesticides on will end up in your new soil if you compost things grown in it.


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## PCH5150 (Jun 15, 2015)

I have a question, once you have a compost going, do you remove some and add it to your garden soil at the beginning of the season? I have had a raised bed going for a couple of years, but have not started a composting pile.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

PCH5150 said:


> I have a question, once you have a compost going, do you remove some and add it to your garden soil at the beginning of the season? I have had a raised bed going for a couple of years, but have not started a composting pile.


Absolutely. Compost is a work in progress and so are raised beds. Our raised beds are somewhat of a compost pile in themselves. After the growing season I add some wheat straw and plant some clover and even some flowers The wheat straw that I tossed in a few months ago is breaking down and also sprouting so I'll turn it over a few times this winter. Same with any clover, it'll add some nutrients to the soil.

Remember never to walk on or compress the soil in your raised beds. But adding compost in progress is perfectly fine


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## PCH5150 (Jun 15, 2015)

Slippy;
Remember never to walk on or compress the soil in your raised beds. But adding compost in progress is perfectly fine[/QUOTE said:


> Never walk on it? Tell that to my 95lb. Yellow Lab please... (but thanks for the info, I'd like to start up a compost pile. I also didn't know about not putting fats or meats in there, good to know).


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## Redneck (Oct 6, 2016)

IMO, the best thing you can do for garden soil is to plant winter peas in the fall... especially for southerners like you & me. First of all the beds stay a bright green all winter, as those peas are very cold hardy. When it warms a bit in the spring, they will really take off & grow tall. As stated above, as a legume, they will add nitrogen to the soil. But also these ground covers are setting lots of roots into the ground. That is real important in a garden because when that plant dies, so do the roots & they start to decompose. When your spring or summer garden plants get going, their roots will take the path of least resistance, and follow right down that same hole. For that same reason, when I clean old plants from my raised beds, I never pull them up. I always cut them off at ground level & plant the next crop next to it. I till my beds as little as possible, as I don't want to break up all these root channels. Tilling also destroys & breaks up the network of fungal hyphae that gives soil structure. Mycorrhizal fungi are multi-celled organisms that form special relationships with plant roots. These organisms develop into long chains called hyphae and get energy from the plant and help supply nutrients to the plant. Point being, good garden soil is alive & has the proper consistency to hold water but also allow air flow. Deep & often tilling breaks all that up. Now some will till in their cover crops in the spring, which helps the soil on one hand but hurts good soil on the other. So when I'm ready to get my first spring plants in the ground, I just run a mower over them & leave the cutting on the ground & plant thru it. This material acts as a mulch & will rather soon break down & add nutrients back into the soil... all without breaking up all those wonderful root channels & microbes.


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## Chiefster23 (Feb 5, 2016)

I don't compost anymore because I have unlimited access to the township composting facility now. But I used to do an extremely lazy form of compost pile. I made a containment out of old pallets. I just dumped everything in all year long. No turning. No tending. Zip. Nada. Then in the spring I tore the pile apart. Took the finished compost off the bottom for use in the gardens. Piled the uncomposted stuff back in the containment and start all over again. Not a very efficient system. But it did work and required very little labor.


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## TGus (Sep 18, 2017)

*How I Compost*

I compost in piles directly on the ground along the south (sunny) side of my house. The 3 compartments for the piles only have a continuous back, sides, and separator partitions 4' high, made from pressure-treated plywood. So, each compartment measures 4' X 4'. I also have a thick clear plastic tarp which covers the top and front of all 3 compartments, so that rain will not get in, but the sun can warm them. I keep two covered 5 gal buckets to one side, one with fresh urine, and one with 30+ day old urine, (which I call "aged" urine). Aging converts urea into fertilizer, and neutralizes urine's pH.

The center pile primarily contains mouldered leaves that fell in my yard last Fall. After I've raked up all the leaves which have fallen into our yard, I pile or cage them around the trunks of my fruit trees and bushes to protect them from freezing during the Winter. In the Spring, I run over the dry leaves with a mulching lawnmower until they are in small pieces, then store them in the center "brown" bin. I own a small chipper, and throw chipped branches from pruning my fruit trees and chipped stalks from harvested vegetable plants in there. I have an arrangement with a local custom cabinetmaker to raid his sawdust bin whenever I want to, and some of that goes in too, (Only use sawdust from untreated wood). I also add any untreated paper I would otherwise throw out, shredding it first. This "brown" pile can stay dry, though it's a good idea to mix it up with a spading pitchfork when adding something. Variety helps.

The left and right bins are composting piles, alternating as a "working" pile, while the other is a "finished" pile.

The "finished" pile has been composting for at least a year. I don't add anything new to it except water when it needs moisture (like a moist sponge, not soggy), then thoroughly turn it over. The finished pile, with its moisture, warmth, and uncomposted kitchen scraps attracts a lot of worms from the soil beneath it, (handy for fishing). I mainly use the finished pile to mix compost into my garden soil whenever I plant during the year. I rough screen what I'm about to use, and throw any larger bits into the working pile to compost further.

The "working" pile is the one I add kitchen scraps and aged urine to. I start a new working pile every early Winter in the place of my almost empty finished pile. I leave about a cubic foot of finished compost there to jump start the new working compost heap, and toss the rest over my empty garden plots. As I add kitchen scraps to the "working" pile about every 3 days, I add about twice as much from the "brown" bin, moisturize with aged urine, (Urine has an extremely low Carbon/Nitrogen ratio, and helps balance the high "brown" ratios), then toss the pile thoroughly, and re-cover it. I've learned my lesson to never add any kitchen scraps that attract rats or mice, like meat, grains, or nuts. NEVER put ashes or feces into this composting system, for reasons you can research.

Although effective composting has fairly strict requirements, everybody who knows how to compost seems to have their own variation on implementing it. If you compost, I'd like to hear how you do it.


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## TGus (Sep 18, 2017)

The reply above about how I compost may answer some of your questions.

(Thanks for your good judgement, Denton.)


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## Gunn (Jan 1, 2016)

My composter 9.5'by 3.5'X 3.5'. It is made up of 4X4 corners, 2X4 supports with 1/4" galvanized screen for air circulation. It is divided in to three separate bins. Everything like vegetable, yard waste (Never sticks), egg shells and coffee grounds go in. I also mix soil in. Keep damp not wet. I mix it every three days. When it gets "cool" I add in some ammonia nitrate. When one bin fills up, go on to the next. Using the ammonia nitrate helps speed up the composting. This gets hot enough to even compost bermuda grass stolens.


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

TGus said:


> I just started a thread here called "How I Compost". It may answer some of your questions.


You do understand the notion of a thread, right? You don't go to an existing thread to say you are going to start a duplicate :vs_laugh:


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## TGus (Sep 18, 2017)

Denton said:


> You do understand the notion of a thread, right? You don't go to an existing thread to say you are going to start a duplicate :vs_laugh:


His thread is asking a question. My thread is sharing my experiences with composting. I don't see any conflict.


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## redhawk (May 7, 2014)

TGus, I agree with most of what you say, but do have a concern...you have treated plywood in your bin, and make sure you do not use sawdust from treated lumber (which I agree wholeheartedly with)...just saying.


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

TGus said:


> His thread is asking a question. My thread is sharing my experiences with composting. I don't see any conflict.


He asked a question. You started another thread to answer the question. You don't see a "conflict?" Are you new to forums? I'll assume so. Starting new threads to answer questions makes no sense, and it starts duplicate threads. See, there were other answers in the existing thread, and your information would have gone fine, there. Seems you wanted your information to stand alone. Makes no sense.
No problem, though. I can fix it.


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## paraquack (Mar 1, 2013)

Like Slippy said, no meat type scraps. So if and when, don't try composting bodies. 
That's where I feel so fortunate. The desert is so large and can hide a multitude of ...


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## Salt-N-Pepper (Aug 18, 2014)

Slippy said:


> Do not put any meat or fatty scraps into the compost pile.


VERY much this!


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## TGus (Sep 18, 2017)

Denton said:


> He asked a question. You started another thread to answer the question. You don't see a "conflict?" Are you new to forums? I'll assume so. Starting new threads to answer questions makes no sense, and it starts duplicate threads. See, there were other answers in the existing thread, and your information would have gone fine, there. Seems you wanted your information to stand alone. Makes no sense.
> No problem, though. I can fix it.


I created that description several days ago, as I indicated I might in my gardening thread last week. When I posted it yesterday, I noticed another post asking a question my thread could answer, along with a lot of other things he didn't ask about, and directed the OP to it.

I'm not miffed, Denton. You're the moderator; you know what's appropriate for this forum a lot better than I do.


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

TGus said:


> I created that description several days ago, as I indicated I might in my gardening thread last week. When I posted it yesterday, I noticed another post asking a question my thread could answer, along with a lot of other things he didn't ask about, and directed the OP to it.
> 
> I'm not miffed, Denton. You're the moderator; you know what's appropriate for this forum a lot better than I do.


It makes it easier to keep concepts together, rather than strewn about. Especially when the same thread is active. If not active, it doesn't matter


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## TGus (Sep 18, 2017)

Denton said:


> It makes it easier to keep concepts together, rather than strewn about. Especially when the same thread is active. If not active, it doesn't matter


In the future, I'll look at the other threads to figure out whether I should post a separate thread or piggy-back.

Since I found out about it, I've felt sorry that you have to spend so much time moderating. Thank you for that sacrifice for us.


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

TGus said:


> In the future, I'll look at the other threads to figure out whether I should post a separate thread or piggy-back.
> 
> Since I found out about it, I've felt sorry that you have to spend so much time moderating. Thank you for that sacrifice for us.


Blow it out your ear, pal; I'm not some college kid who likes pats on the head. Besides, if you knew how much we are paid to moderate....never mind; thanks.

It's pretty simple. You don't have to go digging back to find a thread that is old. All you need to do is look in the active topics (fourth GUI button from the left on the top bar) and see if there is a like thread already made. Responding to one and then starting another just like it is what made no sense.

Now, go forth and do the forum thing. I'm getting ready for bed.

Oh, and stay out of the moderator's break room. The PBR in the fridge is mine, and I ain't sharing.


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## maine_rm (Jun 24, 2017)

Denton said:


> Blow it out your ear, pal; I'm not some college kid who likes pats on the head. Besides, if you knew how much we are paid to moderate....never mind; thanks.
> 
> It's pretty simple. You don't have to go digging back to find a thread that is old. All you need to do is look in the active topics (fourth GUI button from the left on the top bar) and see if there is a like thread already made. Responding to one and then starting another just like it is what made no sense.
> 
> ...


So as to keep the discussion going on this post I will post here! Dalton I fear I have lost a level of respect for you PBR? Seriously? I thought you were better than that upgrade my friend keystone light is the way!


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

maine_rm said:


> So as to keep the discussion going on this post I will post here! Dalton I fear I have lost a level of respect for you PBR? Seriously? I thought you were better than that upgrade my friend keystone light is the way!


I don't want to derail this thread about composting, so I will just say, Blatz beer. :vs_laugh:


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## TGus (Sep 18, 2017)

Denton said:


> Blow it out your ear, pal; I'm not some college kid who likes pats on the head. Besides, if you knew how much we are paid to moderate....never mind; thanks.
> 
> It's pretty simple. You don't have to go digging back to find a thread that is old. All you need to do is look in the active topics (fourth GUI button from the left on the top bar) and see if there is a like thread already made. Responding to one and then starting another just like it is what made no sense.
> 
> ...


Denton, I'm seeing a whole different side of you.


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

TGus said:


> Denton, I'm seeing a whole different side of you.


The cut-up? 
Nice to meet you. :vs_peek:

People are multifaceted. Some of us are schizophrenic. The difference is whether the person is conflicted.


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