Thinking about composting

[longwinters]

I've been thinking about composting for a couple years now.  I live in town with a small yard. But I can put in 15-18 tomato plants, a couple of 15' rows of greenbeans, about 20' of asparagus, 10-12 bell pepper plants, 7-9 hills of squash, a couple summer squash, about 15' of onions and a few assorted fruit bushes etc. 

I hate buying anymore peat moss etc... from the stores and thought maybe composting would be fun and worth while.  I cannot do the open method of composting since I don't have the room nor the patience to wait months for the finished product.  So I was thinking about one of the barrel type composters.  They certainly ain't cheap but I can get the raw materials for free if I ask around.

So what are your thoughts?

Long

[charles p]

Mine is The Urban Composte Tumbler and I guess it holds about 40 gallons, maybe a little more.  I get about two loads per year.  Helps to chop stuff up before putting it in the barrel.  When everythng is right, I get odorless dirt, but when it isn't right, I get smelly rotten veggie balls that look like ovesized horse droppings and lots of maggot type bugs.  I put a little starter in it a few times a year to keep it going propely.  Only animal waste I put in mine are shrimp shells and egg shells.  They seem to actually help keep everything going.

It is important to add a lot of "brown" matter and not all "green".  I have added wheat straw to keep a good ballance. 

Don't put your bell pepper scraps in your compost maker or you'll have them sprouting all over your garden the next year.

Another idea is to get about 12' of hardware cloth and a few clips and make a hoop.  I like to put yard waste in my hoop and when I am finishing off a batch of compost in the barrel, I put my daily scrap in the hoop.  Once I empty the barrel, I start a new batch from the hoop.  About once per year I get a batch of compost from the hoop.  The tumbler is much faster though.

[bilmac]

I have always just put almost all our organic waste directly in the garden. I can't wait to add my grass clippings in the spring, because once I get a fairly thick uniform layer down the weeds don't grow. Even food scraps just get dumped in the garden. Stuff like fish guts that will stink get buried. If I can find an outside source of organic material I use it. One place I lived I was able to get spoiled alfalfa pellets. That improved my soil in a hurry. If you could get shredded paper that could be put down as mulch to control weeds. Moldy hay is great. I have even just put down several layers of newspaper as mulch, and it controls weeds for awhile, but doesn't last long.

 I never could see a reason to compost. Put that nice black dirt in your garden and you are just laying out a perfect seed bed for weeds. Put your organic stuff on top and let it sheet compost in place and it helps you control the weeds, evens out your soil moisture and temperature, and even keeps your shoes from getting muddy then you tend your garden

[rdlange]

Great idea.  I use plastic trash cans with holes drilled in the sides (not top) because I had them.  You can keep your leaves and dead, brown grass to layer over each adding of kitchen scraps.  I turn it with a big hook screwed into the end of a broken shovel handle.  In the spring I dump and toss it all together and let it sit for another month without adding anything to that container.

The barrel composters are the most useful, larger ones are easier and worth it if you have a large garden or family.  Turn regularly, but you need to fill it full, then compost it, so you have to have something else for the periodic scraps until the first load is done.

Since I have winter and container garden, I can't just add scraps directly to the garden, so composting is my option.  Compost improves my veggies noticably, so it's worth it to me.

[blind ear]

Ruth Stout no Work Garden Book. This is a book about mulch gardening rather than composting. There are others on amazon. ear

[longwinters]

Well I bought a Compostumbler.  Got it put together and when spring comes I will start hunting for stuff to fill it with.  I think the biggest challenge will be to find enough raw materials to fill it with since we live on a small lot in town.  It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

Long

[charles p]

You can shred black and white newspaper and compost it with other stuff.  My problem has always been too much household scrap and not enough carbon material.  The ratio is about 1:10 so you need a lot of brown leaves and stuff like that.

The smaller you chop your material, the easier and faster it will decompose in your tumbler.  Give it lots of air as well.  I have to remove the lid on mine once in a while to allow moisture to evaporate, else my compose product looks more like fresh manure than soil.

[blind ear]

That is what makes hay mulch compost good. the hay composts it's self and at the same time chokes out the weeds. any household scraps that are food based can be composted in a smaller volume container with less leaf/grass matter. The household compost can be used more like a fertilizer mix then, just spread it thin and mix it in. ear

[longwinters]

I started the composter today.  Bought a bale of straw and a bag of alfalfa meal.  Tore up the straw as best I could and layered it with a bit of garden soil and alfalfa meal.  Also threw in a bit of house hold scrap.  I would have liked to run the mower over the straw to break it down further, but since we still have frozen ground and another 2 months of potential snow...its the best I could do.

Long

[Drilling Man]

  I say mulch your veggies in heavy with grass and leaves.  Then put what ever you want composted, under the mulch and let it compost in place.

  DM

[charles p]

Get a soil test each year.  It is free.  My zinc level is high.  A note on my report warned that uncomposed material could be the reason or excess pesticide.  I don't use much pesticide.  Most of my mulch is from wheat straw.

[LunaticFringeInc]

I may eventually get one of those compost tumbers and use it.  However I started out with some good high quality dirt bought from the nursery by the Yard in bulk to fill up my 12 x 4 foot raised garden bed and after planting all of my seedlings put about 4-5 inches of spoiled bedding straw (it got soaked in the rain before they could dry it and get it out of the fields) on top of it.  I find that not only does it improve the soil but before it breaks down significantly, it does a great job of supressing weeds, holds the moisture in my soil minimizing watering and it also keeps the moisture level pretty constant as well throughout the growing season.  By the time late fall gets here and the warm weather crops have pretty muched reach the end of their productivity its time to till whats left under, plant the cooler weather crops and add another 4-5 inch layer.  By next spring it will once again be time to repeat the process all over again.  Bedding straw can be purchased for about 7.50 a bale in my area and one bale will cover a lot of ground!  I only used about a 1/3 of a bale this year on my single raised bed.  At that rate thats cheaper than buying a bag of mulch.

[bilmac]

If you can find it most folks will give you moldy hay bales if you will haul them away.

[Ranger J]

I mulch heavily in my garden.  It keeps weeds down and last years mulch becomes this years compost.  Right now I am tilling this into my garden.  I am lucky as I have a large lawn and 9 acres of mixed hardwoods.  All the grass clippings and an almost endless supply of leaves go on my garden, works for me.

RJ

[Drilling Man]

  As far as i'm concerned, mulching in heavy, IS the way to go!



  DM