Compost and timing
 

I started a compost pile about the same time as I started my garden, so I think four weeks ago. Last weekend we made a compost bin out of a plastic garbage can with lid. My boyfriend drilled and cut holes in it. I had the brown stuff from my pile plus some leaves, and a big bag of green grass clippings. Layered those. Also added a little Lily Miller organic compost additive. It was over 3/4 full, now has reduced to maybe 5/8 full. It seemed warm at first, but today I dug in there and it is not warm. Things have compacted and all is brown, no green, doesn't smell bad, but it doesn't seem to really be breaking down more. I added some chopped food scraps, a bit more additive, sprinkled with water and stirred, added a few handful of pulled grass from along the fence, but there wasn't enough grass growth to merit mowing. (Had I started earlier...) I also pulled out a wad of longer weeds from last week that was too dense. I will have to hack that up and add small pieces a bit at a time. Read someone's suggestion nere of using the weed wacker in a can to crunch up leaves, and I might try that.

I think it had gotten too dry. I have turned it every couple of days by rolling the can, but felt I got it churned up more by digging in there. I also thought I would have more green to add for a few more weeks. The lawn isn't dead, just not growing as fast.

I did notice some seeds had sprouted in the bin, possibly the cantelope seeds.

I am hoping I can revive it. Hoping to have enough homemade compost for the next phase of my garden, a raised bed for Feb planting. For the current seedlings they are going into purchased garden soil and commercial compost for container gardening.

i followed a youtube users guide to making a trash can compost bin. it had tons of holes from a 1 inch drill bit and the inside was lined with a mesh cage to keep the good stuff in when rolling the can.

in short it didnt do well for me. it never got very hot, animals chewed into the plastic and ruined the garbage can and i also realized the amount of compost you'd get from a trash can half filled is very small.

i decided to get a couple totes(like earthtainer totes) of rabbit manure/hay, some grass and dry leaves and made a nice big pile. this pile got nice and hot and broke down very well

i now have a pile of just grass and leaves and its also heating nicely. i didnt add any compost starter or anything like that.

oh and i pounded some metal stakes into the ground and and used chicken wire to form my new compost area. works great

Hmm, good to know, Jeff. We watched a similar video, P Allen Smith's, and the ventilation holes were smaller but more frequent (we used a half-inch drill bit and a 3/4" hole saw). There was another video with a woman who used a plastic can and only used nail holes!

It may be that it's just not enough ventilation. But I'm going to try to keep it going for a bit. I do have a small pile of "remainder" from my original pile which is getting there.

So far, no critter problems with my compost, that I can tell. I know I see raccoons and a small possum who comes to try to steal cat food, and something has dug some small holes in my back yard. I am sprinkling coffee grounds in that area to see if it stops the digging. Hard to tell because it looks like the critter just moves. But the compost doesn't look disturbed.

I guess I'll have to shake/aerate it more frequently for a week or two and see if it's doing better.

KC, I've never been able to get a small pile (trash barrel size) of compost to heat up over 120F for long enough to kill off weed seeds. I have always used a pile at least 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall to get the temp over 130 (and over 150 for a few days to kill other pathogens) Do you know if the barrels you are using are intended for a hot composting or are they for the slower "cold" composting?

Your mixture of ingredients sounds about right for the C:N ratio - maybe a little low in nitrogen (green stuff).

For aeration I include a mixture of coarser materials - small sticks, corn stalks, etc. layered in. If your mixture is chopped too fine it will compact and not supply enough oxygen for the microbes.

For moisture, it should feel like a wet sponge but not dripping water when you squeeze it.

Also, I would save the money spent on any inoculate (not necessary) and instead invest in a compost thermometer. This will allow you to monitor the internal temp of the pile - absolutely necessary to tell you what stage of composition your pile has reached. (The long-probed compost thermometer is also handy for checking soil temp in pots if you grow tomatoes in containers.)

Good luck!
Steve

Ann, btw... I use an outdoor setup similar to Jeff's - just 4 t-posts, spaced in a 4' square, and wrapped in 3' tall chicken wire. I have two such contraptions made, so, to turn the pile, I just transfer the 'working' pile into the empty bin. Otherwise, it requires a lot of work to turn (and aerate) the pile.

Thanks to you both for the advice. I started off with a fair amount of green as I had a mower bag packed full of grass clippings last weekend. But, wouldn't you know it, the grass finally started slowing down growth with our cool weather coming in suddenly. (This after my mower conked out in mid-summer and I had it in the shop for a while, but I bought a nifty backup, the manual reel mower made by Fiskars which is a beautiful thing. However, I can't bag the clippings for compost yet, so back to the cordless electric, repaired.)

Good to know about the "too fine" part because I actually did take out some of the bigger clumps of things, and it may just not have enough sticks. I don't have corn cobs and such, so may just have to break up a few downed small branches. We did get lesser Sandy winds over the weekend.

I used to use grass clippings (mmixed with "brown" stuff) in my compost pile. I found they tend to heat up quickly (to as much as 140-160 degrees), and then cool just as quickly, all in just a few days. But they do make real nice compost. I used to mow, then rake the clippings up for the pile. Now I have a lawn vacuum, and use the dried clippings (basically fine hay) for mulch around my veggies. Keeps the lettuce (for example) nicely grit-free, as well as weed-free.

A lawn vacuum! Didn't know there was such a thing. Yeah, it may be that it just cooked too quickly and the thicker stuff didn't get swept up in the action. It's making *something*, just not the heat action I thought I'd have. I have a small lot, a rental, with some leaves but not many, so my resources are low unless I ask for others' lawn waste.

I was looking at cocoa hulls for mulch for a small raised bed, but read on here that someone had problems with them getting mildewy in humidity, so that won't work I guess. Plus, I can't seem to find them here.

Ann - I doubt that you'll need to ask for others' yard waste -- I don't anyway. Within a few weeks folks will be piling bags of leaves on their curbside for pickup by waste disposal. When that begins to happen in my neighborhood I'll drive around subdivisions with lots of good looking oak trees on Monday mornings and grab the bags of leaves before they go to the landfill. Last season I collected hundreds of bags within 5 miles of my house and they're in my leaf bin now where they'll break down in time. I did shred them but I never turn them so the action is slow but someday I'll have gold for my garden.

I feel like.. if you're in Orlando.. you're way overcomplicating it. If it were me, I'd spread it in your raised bed and let it decompose till spring. Maybe some black plastic on top, if you really want to, to help warm it up. Compost activators are totally unnecessary. Nitrogen fertilizer of any kind is more than enough.

I troll for leaves like Jerry, but I usually use it as mulch - I don't bother with composting it. Layered with other kinds of mulch over time, it creates this gorgeously spongy layer that's extremely inhospitable to weed seeds that are somewhere underneath, extremely hospitable to actinomycetes, and provides plenty of habitat for beneficial insects. Any weeds that do grow are very easy to pull out, though I usually smother them with cover crops anyway.

Take advantage of our non-existent winters :) Just topdress whatever organic material you can find, and let nature do the hard work.

All good advice... Also, if collecting from neighbors avoid using lawn clippings unless you are positive they didn't apply herbicides to the lawn. Some herbicides won't compost and the resulting compost will wreak havoc on your tomato plants.

Steve

Thanks, everyone. So in other words, I need to get that raised bed built now? :)

[QUOTE=kilroyscarnival;308678]A lawn vacuum! Didn't know there was such a thing..[/QUOTE]
Well, I live in the country, and my "lawn" is almost two acres. So the lawn vac is actually sold as a leaf vacuum, and attaches to the back of my lawn tractor as a sort of trailer, with a hose that attaches to the throw port on the mower deck. So for leaves, the mower starts to chop them up, and the vacuum has blades that further shred the leaves a bit as it boosts them up and into the top of the box on the trailer.
[URL]http://www.drpower.com/Content.aspx/Leaf-and-Lawn-Vacs-Tow-Behind-Series?N=so[/URL]
That's a link to the brand I have, and I just put it to great use before Sandy came through, cleaning up the lawn of my neighbor who has three huge oak trees which dropped leaves that were over a foot deep unraked, directly underneath the trees. It took a lot of trips to empty the box, but I have a real nice pile of stuff for next year's mulch and compost pile - right now it's about seven feet tall and about 16 feet across the bottom. Of course, it will settle over the winter, and in the spring the leaves will be packed and clumpy, but sucking it through the vacuum again fluffs it up nice, and shreds it a bit more, making it a joy to spread around my young plants. The vacuum doesn't handle fresh green grass well - it's too heavy and plugs up the hose. So I choose a nice day to mow in the morning, let the grass clippings dry in the sun for a few hours, then suck the hay up and either add it to the pile or put it directly around my plants.

Oh, who doesn't love a neighbor who picks up their leaves for them? Nice win-win there.

So, this week with daylight coming so late and ending so early, lunchtime is the best time during the week to get anything done in the yard, and often in dress-and-heels so I am a weird gardener. I had some veggie scraps to add to my compost, so I gave it a good shake-up, added some water, and noticed it looks like a gray/white powdery mildew is forming on the dryest stuff.

I have lettuce coming up in the box, finally, which I guess means my cat Bella didn't mess it up too badly when I brought it in the other night and she dug it up a bit just for fun. No spinach yet but those seeds were bigger than the mesclun, hope they are still germinating.

Found one *very* mushy and rotten green tomato beneath the patio tomato plant, but two which are looking a bit golden on their way to red and some new growth on top, finally a few new flowers. I think that plant didn't settle in well initially. It already had green fruit on it when I brought it home (was that four weeks ago?) but it looked traumatized. I finally noticed *one* of the Sweet 100 cherries getting red. So many new flowers and tiny fruit setting on that one; it's a monster. The Better Boy are growing but so far all green leafy.

And the seedlings? By my count, out of the original 32 seeds I planted I only lost four; had to pull two runts which were partnered with bigger seedlings who wanted topping off. One of my cups of 2 red currants never germinated. The second batch, less than two weeks old, I can spot the beginnings of true leaves. Green bean, zucchini, snap pea and cucumber plants all coming along. One zucchini cup is germinating a full week behind the other. Got a few carrots in the box, fewer than I think I seeded, and neither pepper has broken through the soil yet.

So looking forward to having a little sunlight in the morning, even if it means it's dark before I get to Jazzercise class at night.