Anyones Compost Tumbler giving you compost?

I can't get mine to heat up. Any secrets? I have enough green and brown in there. Even tried the compost activator stuff a couple years back and...nothing.....

We used a compost tumbler for several years (and still have it in the garage) but since have been able to set up an old fashioned outdoor compost pile courtesy of a rural gardening friend who offered us some space next to his on his acreage. We had mixed results with the tumbler, mostly positive, but it tended to turn out something more like compost mulch (which we happily used) since we utilized wood shavings as part of the "brown" so we did not get the rich, dark, "coffee grounds/chocolate cake" type of compost you see pictured in the photo.

Our most successful "green" was manure but this tended to produce an odor for a couple of the more extreme cooking days early in the process. I was concerned about the impact on the neighbors (although we never received an explicit complaint) and thus searched for an alternate method. Leaving out the manure (and leaving it drier) minimized or eliminated the odor, but also did not generate much heat and we saw few tangible results over the short term.

I found that I needed to add a little more water than sometimes called for in order for the materials to become activated. The traditional cliche is the materials should be "damp but not wet, something like a wrung out sponge" but we found sometimes it took a little more moisture (not a lot, but more than the bare minimum) to get things cooking. This also accounted for the odor, I'm sure, which never lasted more than about 48 hours during the initial heating phase early in the process.

We may pull it out of the garage again next season but for now the tumbler is in semi-retirement. Others with more (or different) experiences should jump on this thread. Good luck!

Are you adding a large load of material all at once? I have composted stuff off and on for 13 years and only one time did I get a real hot pile going. That was after I emptied my bin and gathered several bags of stuff and was able to fill my bin up in one shot. Most of the time I am just adding handfuls of stuff and my piles never heat up...though everything eventually breaks down.

- Brent

We've been using our "composTumbler" for a couple of months now, and are about (as soon as we get around to it) to harvest our first batch of "black gold". We've just been sticking everything we can think of in there. At first it was very smelly and unpleasant, but now the kids say it "smells good." I do have some questions about what we can put in there.

kitchen scraps, esp. when we clean out the fridge
moldy? bacteria-infested? food...
no one drinks coffee - is it worth going to Starbucks just for the grounds?
cereal moths - those things that hatch in the Jiffy mix if you don't use it fast enough?
other peoples "yard waste"
cardboard?
teabags - what to do about the tiny metal staple? Or if there's a plastic tag?
ice cream? soda? other sweets?
sticks? branches? wood chips?
dog poop?



what else?

I'm hoping that some good stuff will come out.

xx, Carrie

I'm no expert on the subject, but I think you need to avoid the dog poop in the mix. Here's a quote from The Rodale Book of Composting (Martin and Gershuny, eds., Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA; 1992) which is considered pretty legitimate on the subject as far as I know:

"...the wastes of dogs, cats, and birds are potential carriers of organisms that may cause disease in humans. Such materials should not be included in the home compost pile. Wastewater from aquariums, however, contains a certain amount of algae and organic matter that can be beneficial to plants. Use aquarium water to add moisture to you compost heap or for watering plants." (p. 100).

I added a big load in and even set the vents upwards to catch some rain to get it a little wetter. I add new stuff in when I get a load. Maybe I should stop that and let the stuff just get old in there. I might start a pile in the yard next to it and put it all in tumbler when I empty my hope to be compost, so I won't have new things in there that have not broke down yet. I am so short changed on buying mulch that I was hoping to rely on this to get me by. Short changed and the dread of getting a truck to go up to the nursery to get mulch in. 7 scoops would be nice to satisfy my mulching needs! garden-yard-play area.....

One year I even tried the tree shedder for all our branches. I was going to let it sit a couple seasons so I could use it. Well, you don't get anything from a huge pile of branches to even mulch a tree! - Forget that idea! ....Back to the tumbler.....

How about barbecue sauce?
Charcoal ashes? Wood ashes?

Wait, you're using compost for mulch?

Confused


xx, Carrie

Yea...I am a little confused as well. I have two plastic compost bins that are probably each about the same size as your tumbler. If I am aggressive about collecting waste and turning my piles I can produce about a yard of compost per year. On the other hand I could use 6 to 10 yards of shredded wood mulch per year. I create enough compost to amend a new bed and top dress a bed or two each year, but not nearly enough to replace mulching.

I got by for a few years with just one compost bin, but like you mention this complicates the matter because you are always adding new material. Adding a second bin made things much easier for me. I would love a larger 3rd bin to hold shredded leaves, but my wife does not understand why I need the two that I already have.

- Brent

I have one. I keep a pile of old leaves in the back and move it and a pile of grass into the tumbler. Then over to a concrete bin to age. It does a good job this way.

And here is a fresh batch I pulled out the other day.

I guess it's not hard to get it to the recommended temps in FL. Here we have to keep it in the sun.

xx, Carrie (New England)

BBQ sauce to heat it up?
Yep, I am trying to compost for mulch.
kwetz you have some nice future piles going there!
...darn composter.....

I use it around my bananas. I have ummm about 35 large ones in the yard and I surround them with full sections of newspaper and a good layer of compost. And lots of other trees and plants like a hit of compost along with our sand. That grass pile in the front was as big as the dead area I bagged all my neighbors yards in the spring a couple times for the grass ;) . And the leaves in the 2 piles behind it started out as 45 large bags of leaves from a neighbor with lots of oaks. ( I have a snapper highvac lawnmower ) I shredded them and ended up with a couple smaller piles. I'm on a mission to improve my sandpit of a yard and not spend a fortune doing it. I figure 3 or so more years and I should have nicer dirt. Neighbors kinda like it too.

My neighbor has a black barrel composter that turns out the blackest, finest compost I have ever seen. Wow. And she is doing nothing but putting her garden and lawn clippings in it.

As to dog poop in the pile, I had a big pondering about this, as I have a suburban 0.19 acre lot, and 2 beagles. Needless to elaborate, but I have a quantity of the stuff, and its all over the yard, needing to be cleaned up. I have been using it since earlier this year, and it disappears into the pile very quickly, and the pile seems to burn hotter for it.

Now, I don't let my son play in the pile, and I don't grow vegetables in the compost, but I use it on my flower gardens and the lawn in the fall.

Like I say, I pondered this a long time, and decided that since dog poop was all around me anyway, and horse and cow poop was OK, dog poop couldn't be much worse, carnivore or not.

There are dogs in our neighborhood - should I start collecting their poop?

xxxx, Carrie

I chuckled at the collecting poop comment...but then it crossed my mind that my neighbor's pay good money for a service to come in and scoop up after their dog. You could make money on one end collecting the poop and then have a large supply for your compost! Sounds inviting...but I think I will pass. ;-)

- Brent

I use plastic composters and throw everything in there except meat, dairy products and
dog poop. I even empty my vacumn bag and use laundry lint & shredded paper. This
is my 3rd year and so far so good. Just hard to keep rain from seeping in and making
it a little mushy.

I use a tumbler, but it doesn't heat up enough (120 degrees) to make compost fast. It isn't in the sun, will move it when it ever gets empty...
It takes about a year for good compost this way, but I'm very happy with it anyway. It makes the tumbling a piece of cake!
Christie

I'm finding it hard too, to keep that temp. up there...I have added the actavior even.
I last weekend went to a farm and got some goat stuff...he was cleanning the barn.
And that has barely got the temp to 118...
II did have the compator full, and now my other side is full... so not sure what's going on...
Had to mow the lawn just to get a few clipping on Friday...that's bad!

Still working out the bugs.

I'm using a compost tumbler for the first time this summer and our compost turned out too wet and very very smelly. It got hot, but it was too rich -- too much kitchen waste (just vegie and fruit) in the mix. So I bought a couple bales of straw, as we don't have enough leaves and brown stuff all summer long. That seemed to help, at least it's not so wet and I eliminated the maggot problem we had at one point (Yuck!) but it's still taking a lot longer than "advertised" to produce decent, good-smelling compost. I've kind of given up and I turn it less often now than I did. I mean I turned it every day, just get a gross smelly unusable compost.

I would like to get a real slow motor attachment to turn my Tumber every day. Not only do I get lazy but I forget... I've heard some people use old cement mixers for compost. Sounds like a great idea. Cement mixer on a timer. Not very attractive, but hey, you can't have everything.

I've also started a heap for general end-of-summer garden waste-- the tumbler is taking too long -- I mean it's full and it's not done and won't be for quite a while. Maybe I can use some of that heap next summer when I run out of brown.

So anyway I have mixed feelings about it. Yeah, it's MUCH easier to turn and without it I don't think we could handle kitchen waste unless we buried it ala the Bokashi method -- that's impossible in the winter even in VIrginia.

I guess if I'd known what I was doing I would have got the mix right to start and avoided a lot of stink. Our yard is fairly large, so I don't think the neighbors could smell it, but the dogs sure could. (Just our dogs, it luckily didn't attract any others.) They loved it and we had to move it further from the house to keep them from eating and/or rolling in any of the drips or fallout.

Oh- yuck! I have a twin and I have never had maggots or really bad smell, well I guess I would not like to stick my head in it. Yeah- all garbage probably is not good. I do put all mine in and coffee grounds, but also some grass cuttings and a bucket of dirt now and then. I add my dead plants too, not weeds or plants with seeds, but we have lost a bunch of things this summer due to the drought, the grass clippings are dead. It does really well, I have a healthy crop of worms in it too - you might add some of them.

Can I put wood ashes in?

carrielamont - I've heard a moderate amount of wood ashes is very good.

Azalea -- yeah, I don't know what went wrong I never put *just* garbage in, I always added lawn clippings and dead leaves, but it was just yucky until I started to add a lot of straw. It still tends to clump up, resembling cow manure, and it still smells, but no more gross fly larvae. I think it was just way too wet, not that we got that much rain this year, so I just don't get it. We produce about 10-15 gallons of vegetable waste a week, so maybe that was the problem.
I've heard worms are good, maybe that's what I need. Or maybe I'm not putting enough dirt in.

Do you turn it *every* day? Does yours turn to compost in 8 weeks?

No, I don't turn mine every day - I do it at least once a week- I think it would be best to turn it whenever new stuff is added, but I put some in daily. Not sure how long it takes, but not 8 weeks, maybe 4. I hardly ever totally empty mine tho, I take some out when ever I need it to mix with soil for planting or potting soil. I do have a twin tumbler, I use one side and put the new stuff in the other.

I just received my new tumbler, and the directions say turn two times a week.

Good Luck Cathy- I really love mine, but I'm sure it would work better if it were in full sun.

Thanks Azalea, I did put it in the sunniest spot in the yard. It is near the gate, but I don't expect too many visitors until next spring. I have lots of indoor vegetable/fruit waste, need to find grass and leaves until ours start falling. A neighbor mowed yesterday, I'm watching his curb for the bags, lol.

Cathy

I have a tumbler, forget the brand, have had it for 13 years now. I don;t try to make compost in it in the winter months. Has never had a bad smell. If I could turn it every day I think would make decent compost in about a month. I have angina and have to be careful what I try to do so turning the tumbler is not something I do everyday. I also have 6 small compost piles, three are wire containers about 3 cubic feet. I keep adding to them until all has settled, then we (the fellow who works for me and I) remove the wire container and i start to fill in the layers again. IN the summer takes a couple of months to get the containers filled, the filling will stand alone after the wire is removed. Also have space alloted for 2 about 4 x 8 free standing compost piles.

I have large shredder that is powered by my old 10hp BCS garden tractor. All the shreds go into the compost piles or is spread on garden ground to decompose by itself. So prunings etc. large weed, garden stalks, are shredded.

I just went out to take a picture of the 3 dumploads of Utility company free shreds, that they delivered a month or so ago, that I plan to just let sit in place until next spring. Of course when I started to take a picture the battery exhausted came up on my camera, so have to wait for batteries to be recharged.

Here is a photo of the three dumploads of Utility Shreds, they are a mix of whatever trees they were trimming at the time, evergreens, and deciduous.

Yummy yummy. (I feel like Cookie Monster!)

Nice!

i think if your going to use a composetumbler you might as well get you some worms. they spead up the process and the end result is better then any dirt you can buy in a store.

They don't mind being tumbled? We tried to "harvest" some compost the other day - nothing came out of the screen but maybe a little dust. Too cold here? Not enough greens? What????

Dust????? Your mix must be too dry. Yes, add some worms and greens, or at least coffee grounds and veggie scraps.

Tip it so it is horizontal and add a gallon or two of water. Let it sit for awhile, then flip it to the other side horizontal. Now you can follow Azalea's instructions. My grass this year has been very dry from no rain and I've had to add water despite lots of moist kitchen scraps. Try some torn up newspapers that you've soaked in water in your next batch if it is too dry. Hope this helps.

It was ONLY kitchen scraps and stuff, then I added three bags of a neighbor's grass clippings.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/775852/
x, Carrie