How to Start Composting

Three people have asked me about composting this year, which gives me hope that it's catching on.  I think a lot of people, when they first get curious about composting, read some description online or in a book, of a long and complicated process of layering browns and greens and finished compost (where exactly does one get that first batch?), carefully watering to achieve the oft-repeated "wrung-out sponge" moisture content, then stirring faithfully once a week.  Not to mention the amounts of money that you can spend on bins, kick-starters, kitchen buckets (with filters), and just the right kind of worms.

It's really not that hard.  Some of you are composting right now in your refrigerators!

Here is Shaela's busy mom foolproof composting method:

1. Get a container.  Arguably not necessary, but I said foolproof, and foolproof works better with a container.  Mine is a set of 3 stacking squares made from ordinary 2x12 boards.  The bigger your pile, the warmer the pile will stay, but bigger bins are more work to move around and can be more...conspicuous.  I like bins with open bottoms, set on soil so insects and worms can move in and out freely.
2. Fill it about 90% full with "browns" - leaves, shredded paper, straw, hair clippings, natural cloth.
3. Add some soil.  A few shovelfuls will be plenty for even a large container.
4. Put a jar or bowl in your kitchen and use it to collect "greens" - non-meat, non-dairy edible scraps like eggshells, potato peels, apple cores, coffee grounds, or rotten veggies from the crisper drawer.  You can put the jar or bowl in the fridge for longer shelf life and to deter insects.
5. When your bowl is full or the bottom starts to accumulate water, dump it in your compost bin, then cover the scraps up with the surrounding brown material.  Add browns if necessary to completely cover the greens.  Don't worry if there is a mild smell when you first dump the greens in - it will fade in a few hours.
6. A few times a year, stir by moving all the material out of and then back into the bin.
7. When compost is finished is a very subjective question.  If it looks like chunky dirt (maybe even with a few leaf clumps here and there) you can call it done.  The longer you wait, the more nutrients the compost will lose.*  I usually find that my compost is done when I need it to be done.  Once it's done hold off on adding more scraps to the pile for a couple weeks.
8. If you want that smooth, even consistency of store-bought compost, shovel it through a screen and put any large chunks back into the bin.
9. Marvel at the magic and mystery.

 If you do it this way, it won't get stinky, it won't attract flies or rodents, and it won't be overgrown by weeds.



*Note: you may read elsewhere about underdone compost burning plants because it has too much nitrogen in it, or temporarily robbing the soil of nitrogen as the excess browns decompose further.  I can only say that neither of these things has ever been a problem for me.

Changing of the Gaurd (Fall Cleanup)



Inside my compost bin

A bunch of fall cleanup work is slowly getting done around the house.  I screened the last of the 2011 compost and started next year's pile with some of the earliest leaves.  (Since this photo was taken the bin has been filled to above the 2/3 line.)  Our three maples and neighbor E's big tree will fill this several times over.  Extras get stored in contractor bags until the compost starts to shrink down.

Garlic shoot in my home garden

I brought in the basil plant I potted up earlier in the month, and my new ginger plant.  Now the only things in the home garden are the last of the hot peppers (soooo many of them), some lettuce seedlings that were probably planted too late, and these cute garlic shoots. 

 I also painted the adirondack chair, and N and I watersealed the new picnic table.  N cleaned out the rain gutters, though they may need another look sometime in December.  Finally, I emptied the new water barrel, which the Aquabarrel people say is not for use during winter.  The representative actually said I needed to find it an indoor spot for the winter, but our shed is too full (what on earth do people do with 10 of these things?) so I settled for a nice sheltered spot next to the back fence and the shed.  I'll put a couple bricks on top later to make sure it doesn't blow away.

On a more fun note, remember the volunteer potatoes that were sprouting in the container near the back fence (see Apparently I'm Incorrigible)?  I cut down a bunch of weeds/trees that were shading them and they look really happy.  Maybe I'll have another round of new potatoes next month? 

Worms!

I can't get over how wormy my compost is right now, so I had my nephew make a video of what I see when I mix a new batch of kitchen scraps into my compost pile.  For anyone who's thinking about it, please note that I didn't have to order these worms - they found my pile on their own and are flourishing.  I should probably turn the pile sometime soon to see if the rest of it is as finely broken down as the material on top, but this is one task I can't do with a baby carrier on.

Composting Monologue

I just wanted to point out that I'm adding a page to this blog about composting.  It's an email I wrote to my nephew when he was thinking about doing a boy scout badge on composting, and includes probably far more information and opinions than most people ever wanted to see on composting.  Check it out if you're interested.

Spring is in the Air

Today was a really pretty, warmish weekend day, so N and I decided to take R outside and get some yardwork done. We cut up several fallen branches and moved them and many sticks around to the front for the city to pick up, and also picked up several from my neighbor's yard to put out. I trimmed several of the front bushes and cut a couple big branches off of my butterfly bush (more on that later). Then I put the trimmings into my compost bin and turned it for the first time in several months.

It was interesting how stratified my compost pile had become. There was a layer of damp leaves at the top, wet by recent snow and rain and by the addition of several months worth of kitchen scraps. Then there was a layer of dry, warm leaves in the middle that hadn't really been touched since they were put in last fall (A Last Breath of Fall). Finally, there was a cold, wormy, very well broken down layer at the bottom, basically just humus and sticks, from the small pile I started before the fall leaves started to really drop. I am taking this as a sign that the aeration tubes (see Coffee and Compost, II) may have done some good. Anyway, it was good to mix it all up and blend the layers together. Unfortunately, the cafeteria in my building was shut down several months ago for renovations, so my source of free coffee grounds dried up. I guess I'll have to seek out another, now that I see there isn't enough nitrogen in there to break down all the leaves I put in last fall.

Here was a little treat I found waiting for me when I got out there: my spring bulbs are coming up! This bed was actually planted by a previous owner and is just gorgeous for more than a month in the spring. I didn't get any pics last year but I'll try to do better this year. The only problem with it is that it really only blooms in the spring and it's so densely packed that I don't like to disturb it for fear of slicing through a bulb. Last year, as the last of the bulbs stopped blooming, I tried to sneak in some summer-blooming perennials where I could see a blank place. They didn't have enough time to bloom last season, but at least the spot didn't look bare. Hopefully the bulbs won't feel too crowded when the perennials start to wake up.

Fall Cleanup

In the garden this is the season of cleanup, so here are some pictures of my fall efforts during the blogging hiatus. I emptied most of the finished compost from my back bin and distributed it between my cold frame bed and my big garden plot (at least the parts that aren't still growing lima beans). I didn't put any on the last couple feet of the big garden bed because I am thinking about seeding that back to grass, or maybe putting some shade-tolerant shrubs there. That part of the garden did very badly and I think it is just too heavily shaded by my neighbor's tree.

I saved a little compost to "seed" the new bin. I also pulled my big basil plants out of the ground and made yummy pesto. Look at this beautiful basil bouquet!


I transplanted several of the little basil plants into pots to bring inside for winter, but left a few in there. I planted some spinach where the large basil plants were.

Compost Gift

I have been meaning to post this for some time - it is a big bag of compost given to me by N's uncle T. We went to visit their homestead in PA for Father's Day, where they have a huge garden with beautiful soil. (Oh, my soil envy knows no bounds!) I watched my 5-year-old niece's feet sink into the nice, soft, soil and disappear. They used to run a CSA from this garden, so they really know what they are doing.

I am pretty certain that T makes his compost with manure from local animals. They are surrounded by farms, including many Amish households, so it is easy to get manure. Here it is not so easy to find, and I am always a bit reluctant to bring in manure to my compost pile, knowing that it will be only several yards away from my neighbor's home.

Anyway, T. said I should put it in a raised bed and plant something there that I want to just grow and grow. I think I'll put it where my tomatoes were and plant my garlic in there this fall. I sure would like to have some luck with my garlic next year!

I Overdid It

Yesterday was our first cool, dry day in months, so I decided to get a little work done outside.

First, I moved my highly effective squirrel cage and pulled out my dead tomato plants, and R helped me pick up the rocks I had put around the bottom and put them in a bucket. (This was fun to him, I suppose, because afterwards he threw many of them back out so he could pick them all up again!) Then I trimmed/pulled the weeds, grass and ivy growing through the fence next to the tomato bed.













I also raked the paths back into some semblance of order, and mulched them. This sounds simple, but my mulch bin was completely buried behind the remains of a 10-foot volunteer tree I hacked down by my back fence. It was time to take care of that anyway, so I cut all the branches off, bundled them, and set them out front for public works to take away. (I'm a bit concerned, though, after looking at some of the branch piles around my neighborhood this past week, that I may be low on their priority list after these big storms we've been having.)


Then, since I was having such a good time, I moved about four full wheelbarrows of mulch and distributed them around my yard. I didn't quite need all of it, but I wanted to use the rest of that bin up so I could pick it up. The bin I removed was about twice the size of the one you see in the background, partly because the chicken wire had started to give in and the whole pile was falling off the platform N. built for it to rest on.


That bin had been there for more than a year and a massive system of tree roots had grown in and was consuming the chicken wire. This tree and I have done battle before, but never quite like this. One of the root segments I pulled out was taller than I am! Here's a picture of the pile of roots I left behind.


I didn't quite need all the mulch from the bin, so I decided to finish moving my compost pile and get a new one started with the grass/weed clippings from my garden. I mixed the leftover mulch into the old compost, heavily laced with coffee grounds from this past week.


Some of you will have long since figured out that I am procrastinating finishing chapter four of my thesis.... thank goodness it was rainy today!

Coffee and Compost, II

When I started thinking about making more compost, my main concern was the turning. When I first started composting I used to move my whole pile every other Saturday, in order to incorporate air. Fresh air helps keep the aerobic bacteria in the pile digesting the materials, and prevents smelly anaerobic bacteria from building up. If the pile is large enough, the body heat from the bacteria warms it up.

My pile that first year was extremely well managed, going through a very hot phase at the beginning and gradually moving on to the wormy, buggy stage that ideally precedes use. The hot phase helps to kill bacteria and weed seeds - commercial/city compost operations use a thermometer to monitor the heat and make sure it gets hot enough for long enough to kill pathogens. (They have peoples' pet poop in their compost, after all.) It is also just lots of fun to watch steam pouring out of the pile when you turn it in December.


Since R was born, I am no longer the composting wonder woman of old. Above you can see my current compost batch, which is crawling with worms and bugs - that's great, but it indicates that the pile isn't very warm. The weed seeds will just have to live on, I decided, and I've been turning my pile about 6 times a year, just enough to keep the tree roots from moving in and the plants that grow in it from going to seed. The result is that the pile finishes more slowly, and not as completely as it did before. Stuff near the edge is more likely to end up back in the pile after I screen than it was before.

The trouble is, I want to make more compost in the same amount of time in the same compost bin, which means I need it to finish faster. So how does a lazy composter like me get more finished compost without much more work? Well, here is my idea:


I took some scraps of PVC pipe from an old project, cut into lengths a few feet long, and drilled three sets of holes going down the length, about 2-3 inches apart. There are five pieces, and my plan is to set them down into the compost bin and fill in compost around them, so that the tops just stick out of the pile. This is something that I've had in mind to do since I built the pile, but it seemed to work so well without them that I never got around to it.

I'm not sure exactly about the length or the number of holes, I just tried to squint at it and ask myself if I thought fresh oxygen was going to get all the way down into the tube, and into the pile, on a regular basis. Hopefully I am not too far off.

Coffee and Compost, I

As you may have noticed, I've had a "take bucket to Starbucks" on my to-do list for some time now. Well, I actually took my bucket to Starbucks quite a while ago, but I discovered to my dismay that someone else had tapped my coffee grounds source and drained it dry! Apparently there is a man who visits that Starbucks twice a day and takes all the grounds they have. Big, big bags of grounds every time! What is he trying to grow?

I've been sort of floundering for a new solution since then, though now I don't know why. One day, a light bulb came on in my brain and I realized, I work in a building with a cafeteria that serves coffee every morning! So, voila! I have all the coffee grounds I need and then some!

This has prompted me to re-evaluate how much compost I can produce in a year. The great thing about coffee grounds is they have a high enough nitrogen content that they can keep a compost pile nice and warm. Normally I can only do about 1/3 cubic yard per year (final volume) because it takes me that long to gather enough nitrogen-rich materials to break down the appropriate amount of fall-gathered leaves, my main carbon-rich ingredient. With this much coffee grounds, though, I may be able to do twice that much, depending on how I manage it and how much carbon-rich material I can find. (Hmmm, maybe Starbucks will give me their newspapers...)

If you would like to learn more about composting, I really like the Washington State University's website on backyard composting, both the layout and the content.

Litter Stinks

As I mentioned before, the compost I used for my new garden bed is produced by the city of College Park. Every fall the city sends a great big leaf vacuum up and down the streets of CP to suck up piles and piles of leaves from the curbs, where city residents are instructed to leave them. Occasionally the leaf piles spill out into the street, and the vacuum operators do their best to get all of those, too. They take this material, along with all the bagged yard waste and lawn clippings they collect all year, and pile it in long rows about 6 ft high by 16 ft long. (It so happens that these piles are located on the other side of a stand of trees at the end of my block.)

Periodically the city workers drive a huge machine through the pile that chops and shreds everything, mixing it and incorporating the all-important oxygen. They can tell when it needs to be mixed again because they monitor the temperature of the pile, and (according to Stacy, the very helpful city employee in charge of distributing the compost) the gases that it gives off. This is also how they know when it is done.

Once the compost is finished breaking down and ready for distribution, they bring in yet another large machine to screen out any pieces greater than 1/2 inch in size. For this last step they charge about $19 per cubic yard. Or, if you're cheap like me, city residents can get up to 5 cubic yards of unscreened compost per year for free, while supplies last. (I called in January to find out when this year's pile would be done and Stacy offered to call and let me know! And then she did!)

Now, I know you've long since guessed what the picture at the beginning of this post is. It's litter that I pulled out of the compost that went in my garden. Much of it is bits of plastic grocery bag (rendered horribly small and well-incorporated by the shredder/mixer). There are also a lot of soda bottles and bottle caps, and some really random things: glove bits, mechanical wiring, shoe heels, wiffle balls, plastic mesh, etc. Sadly, this is just the big, obvious stuff. For the first couple weeks after I put the compost in I continued to find more trash in it, especially after a rain.

It is gross picking trash out of my garden, and I'm bothered by all the little bits that I'm sure get away from me and blow away to start their second life as litter. I'm really glad that cities here in the tree-covered northeast have municipal composting operations. I just wish they had tidier citizens.

Composting and Friends

From time to time I see people ask on message boards what they should hold their kitchen scraps in until they are ready to dump them in the compost pile. This is what I use: a tall glass jar with a tight-fitting lid from IKEA. I leave it open most of the time without odor problems. From what I have read, the reason that rotten plant material (not meat) starts to smell bad is usually because of a buildup anaerobic bacteria. They can only live in the absence of oxygen, so if the jar is open and doesn't have water in the bottom of it, it doesn't really get smelly. Some people keep their jars in the fridge, but this is only necessary for me if it takes longer than a week to go empty it.

I also have, from time to time, apartment-dwelling friends who want to compost but can't have a pile of their own. I have accepted donations in jars and 5-gallon buckets. Recently I received my last donation from a pair of good friends whose landlord let them keep a trash can full of rotten kitchen scraps outside his home. They drilled holes all over a regular outdoor plastic trash can to allow air to flow in and liquid to drain out, and put in all the veggie peels, apple cores, corn husks, coffee grounds and eggshells they produced. (They eat mostly freshly-prepared vegetarian, so it was probably more than the average married couple.) About half of it would be completely broken down on arrival, and I was always interested to see what was still identifiable at the bottom! Once when they delivered during winter I found a layer of dead maggots just above the frozen-solid stuff - fascinating! Sadly, they are moving on and I will be missing their scraps - as well as RM's company.

My Compost Bin

My compost bin is approximately 3ft x 3ft x 3ft, a little on the small side. It is basically three wooden squares that stack on top of one another, which is very convenient when it is time to turn. I take the top square down and set it in front and then throw things down into it, trying to mix things that were near the outside towards the middle. Then I just keep doing one square at a time. If my pile is good and hot, or if it's made of mostly new material, it shrinks down quite a bit between turns and the top square will be mostly empty when I go to turn it again.

I started composting in early 2007 and in 2008 I added the lid you see here. It is made out of old bed slats cut to fit just over the outside of the top square, with one across the top middle to keep it from sinking down. Then I stapled chicken wire over it to keep out the raccoons. Later I discovered that this doubles nicely as a screen when the compost is finished. I turn the lid over and set it on top of my wheel barrow, then throw the compost into it. The stuff that is well-rotted falls through the chicken wire and the rest goes into the new pile.

The plastic thing you see to the side is an old shower curtain that I'm using to keep rain out this spring. Spring in Maryland is very wet.

Not Breaking Ground on the New Garden

Last evening I got started putting together my new garden bed. It's about 10ft x 20ft, compared to my old bed - an oddly shaped 20 square feet that I stole from an old flower bed. I am so looking forward to this new bed.
I decided not to double-dig this one. I've done it for the past three years with my front garden bed and I am starting to think it is just not a good idea with my soil. The soil gets really fluffy when I dig it, but water runs right through it. Seeds don't germinate well, and after a month or so of rain it's packed down much worse than before.
I've heard a lot of buzz about lasagne gardening/sheet mulching/no-weed gardening, whatever you want to call it, including some stuff on the state extension website, so I've decided to give it a try. (Or at least a version of it.) Witness my cardboard and compost collection - still just a little short on the cardboard.