Yippy Skippy I've Got Hot Compost!

Reminder to self: Find heavy cardboard pieces to cover compost pile!

The sad part is that 2 weeks ago I cut up a huge refrigerator box so the recyle truck would accept it!

miniponyfarmer, loved seeing your photos of all your animals. Lots more fun looking at your photos than going outside in our 15 degree weather. Donna

I had monkeys jumping this morning! But that was taken care of by adding a new layer of greens and browns I drug home late last night. I am hopeing to keep them in their cage by piling on a few more layers before I cover it with cardboard.

Shoot, I was hoping you were going to say you had monkeys, Mike! Oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I'm thankful that I have ya'll to talk dirt with.

I don't think my compost piles will be doing much decomposing for a few months. Temps. have been in the teens all week and just to freezing daytimes. Today is quite cloudy and i wouldn't be surprised to see snow. You people in the warmer south enjoy your composting.

Donna

Donna, you can do it - just get some of the leftover beans from dinner yesterday out there, dump 'em in and start turning that pile! It's the microbes, not the weather.

Go Donna, go Donna, go Donna....

pinto or green beans?

Fine, SALAD!

Don't be mean, cathy. Pfffbbbttt!

I wasn't being mean, I'm serious. I have a big ol bag of dried pinto beans that my husband bought by mistake, he won't eat them. If I soak them overnight, will that help get my compost hot again?

I don't know about the beans but I have a five gal. bucket of coffee grounds from the S. Center to spread on the piles, also more alfalfa pellets, BUT the piles are frozen solid and besides with my angina have to be careful of too much lifting, I just can't even try to turn the piles. They will just have to wait until spring.

Donna

Well, it certainly won't hurt - I was thinking more along the lines of something a little more green, to get Donna's pile heated. But of course, I don't know the C:N ratio of pinto beans - could be fabulous!

Edited to add: That makes perfect sense, Donna - it'll be waiting for you in the spring. And if I happen to get up that way, I'll do it for you. But don't hold your breath, lol...

This message was edited Nov 23, 2007 10:46 AM

Donna, try digging in the pile with a pitch fork to make a hole, and put a hand full of alfalfa pellets, and cover it.I think you will love the results.Mike

Donna - I'm over here on the west side of the Cascade range, and my compost piles are frozen, too!
When this happened last Winter, I took a couple cardboard boxes out to the piles & filled them with whatever was available for composting, topped them off with some leaves & inverted another box over the top. These were placed on the frozen pile, and were there ready for me to deal with in March. Don't know if this is do-able for you, but it worked ok for me.
Question for those of you in the southern states: do you experience extended periods of frozen ground in the Winter? For how long? Just curious, as I have never been down that way.

Frozen ground! Here on the west coast I can't even imagine that! A light frost, a dusting of snow occasionally, a short burst of small size hail and rain. That is winter for us. The blankets of snow and frozen ground, icy frozen lakes and sleet are things out of movies and story books!

Those of you living in the frozen areas amaze me!

Zany, you haven't gardened until you go out in a full winter coat, hat, scarf, gloves, long johns & boots, and that's just for part of winter here in Missouri. haha, makes spring that much nicer. C

Z - we don't normally have frozen ground, and it certainly doesn't last as long as it does in Eastern WA, or the Rockies, etc...
Composting can be a challenge, especially when the Winter temps hover in the teens to 20's for several months. A frozen pile is not really "workable", and probably hard to imagine if you've never had the pleasure of prolonged freezing temps. it's not something you can just "stick a fork into"...LOL!
On the west side of the Cascades, we have more of a problem with frequency of rain: covering the piles is necessary, but I only do this during the winter & part way into spring. Every region has challenges & that's why this type forum is great. I do like knowing what others experience, in hopes that I can learn & apply that knowledge.

I lived in Northern CA for many years, in different places, but not up in your area (south of Eureka? my memory is fuzzy).
I think 40° was the coldest I had ever known while there!

LOL then I guess I am never gonna garden... But that's ok...I still enjoy spring!

I does drop to below freezing here, occasionally. Mostly in the low teens, so the bins keep on working. As it gets colder, we'll line the 2 windward sides with plastic or cardboard or both to help keep the internal temps up. DH has just gone to pick up more bagged leaves. One our friends called, she's got a pickup load. I have "corrupted" her, she slowly coming around to the idea of gardening. She tried container planting with tomatoes on her deck and got hooked........LOL

We get into the mid to lower 30's for awhile every winter but never frozen ground cold. It does get snowy on the mountains around us but we are very close to the coast and snow here is rare and never lasts longer than a day. Rain is another story for us. Not as wet as Washington and Oregon''s coastal areas but usually pretty wet into late spring. Overall we are a nice temperate climate in everything except politics... in that respect this is an area of extremes in all directions.

I enjoy reading about putting gardens to bed for the winter and seeing pictures of them coming out of hibernation. It sounds romantic in a way. But I leave that kind of "romance" to those of you made of hardier stock than I am !

doccat5, that is how it starts. First a container and then the addiction grows until you end up on DG and have to sit down at a computer and type "Hi, my name is ____ and I am a gardening addict...

Too true, Zany..........ROFLMAO!!! Far be it from me to correct the impression that once started there is no stopping. LOL I figure I'll be out bagged leaves from that source soon. She's already made several trips over to check out the compost bins and I've already suggested DG. So there ya go.........smiling evily!

Sad day for me, my neighbor who bags everything has decided I'm not so crazy afterall and piled his leaves and grass clippings in his own garden. He used to put the bags over the fence for me. Boo hoo!

Ah, Cathy4, time to make new friends, preferably with many trees and lots of leaves.............LOL

Cathy - although you will be missing some ingredients for your compost pile - you should be proud of converting someone to the idea.

I am secretly happy, they are a young couple learning to garden. But I will really miss the fresh grass.

Cathy4,if you have a parks dept. make a point of getting to know the guy on the lawnmower. I did and the clippings are plentiful :~}

Oooooo Zany, that is a great idea, and it woke up my brain. There is a man at church who runs a lawn service, why didn't I think of that?

LOL isn't it wonderful when the lights go on!

and even more wonderful when they stay on.....

Now if I can just remember until Sunday....sigh :-(

LOL - cut out a picture of a lawnmower or grass & tape it to the dashboard!

I especially like getting the clippings from the ball park soccer fields. They keep it almost weed free and what weeds they do get never get a chance to go to seed. That make it good since the compost may or may not stay hot enough to kiil the seeds.

LOL, the last time I picked up from him he had 4 bags left on his cart that he didn't give me "cause they were from the weedy area at the back of the park" I still drove home with 8 of the 32 gal. size bags so full I had to drag them cause I couldn't lift them into the wheel barrow!

Or find yourself a long piece of dry grass and use it for a book mark in your bible...

sounds like a great supply of greens...

You can also make friends with your newspaper carrier. One of our friends delivers and passes the leftovers on to us. I would love to get more grass clippings, but our previous parks and rec manager was heavy into herbicides and I don't want to introduce that into my compost. I have however, complained to the local board of supervisors about the expense involved and the toxicity of using these products on fields our children are playing on. The reaction was really interesting, since 3 of the supervisors are organic gardeners. They thought the issue had already been resolved. Hopefully, next spring the county will be implementing different methods for dealing with the issue, as we have a new manager for ground maintenance. That came as a pleasant surprise. So we shall see, I will certainly ask if I can have some of those clippings in the spring.

doccat5, raises the question I have always had about using grass cuttings that i didn't grow myself. I don't have much lawn, and my clippings always go back into the lawn, so I don't have grass clippings to use in my compost. But I do have an almost weed free lawn. I just don't think too much about composting in the cold winter months, that is my time to relax, study catalogs, etc and look forward to spring.

Donna

Fortunately the only thing the parks dept. uses here is organic fertilizers. I love having their clippings since I do not have any lawn at all of my own. A tiny yard and a dog guarantees no grass will survive.

I hope all had a filling Thanksgiving, and I was a divious grandpa at my daughters house.I told her in lew of the drought, I bought some "large paper plates to conserve water".Knowing that there were three kids I could count on to leave a portion on their plate, so good old grandpa took all the mess put it in a big sack, and with help of my cat, and two feral frends, we had the meat seperated from the worm food, and WOW!! Mike

LOL mqiq77 that makes for happy cats but the only thing left after the ferral cats here were finished was a little 12 cup portion of cranberies and fruit salad! Not much for the compost but the cats are feeling pretty well fed ;~)

You can believe the cats, and worms, and grandpa were all happy.BTW, my little "Paxil" was a feral, and little by little we met at the compost bin, and became buddies.I don't know why the other two want let me catch them, but its moments like Thanksgiving that makes them come closer.In time, this morning they were booth on my back patio to see what Paxil was having. Mike

A pic of Paxil