Composting??

I am new to this process. Could someone give me the basics. I know about coffee grounds egg shells etc. I'm interested in composting leaves and weeds etc.!!

Just throw in any organic matter and it will rot. Shoot for a C:N ratio of 30:1. Keep moist, adding moisture as you build the pile. Not wet, just moist. If it stinks, add more carbon. Aerating occasionally by flipping the whole pile from point A to point B (with a garden fork or shovel) will help a lot and speed it up.

Or, just throw stuff in a pile and, eventually, it will rot on it's own. Very easy.

Karen

Well, you can't beat that for easy!! Right up my alley! Thanks-

Really, some of us make it comparable to rocket science. That's more for fun than necessity.

Hot compost will break down faster. A compost thermometer keeps it interesting but is in no way necessary. If you end up with a stinky pile, don't worry. Most of us do that a time or two until we get the hang of it. If it gets smelly, let dry some and add carbon.

Chopping matter into smaller pieces will cause it to break down faster, too.

Also, another thing to remember- if you ever want a batch of finished compost, at some point you have to stop adding to one pile and start a new one. Otherwise, you can keep trying to harvest from the bottom, but I think that's a pain.

There are all kinds of tricks of the trade, but, as I said, anything will rot eventually. If you want more compost more often, you have to manage it some- monitor temp, moisture, aerate, etc. But these things are not necessary.

Karen

Oh, Karen - I love the simplicity of that, but most of all the 'but that's more for fun....' comment! Absolutely true - keep it simple, unless you find it 'more fun' with complexity. Thank you.

If it was once a living thing it will rot given time. When the pile is earthy smelling and the parts are so small you can not tell what they once were you have compost. Two cups in five gallons of water soaking for a week renders pretty good compost tea. Water anything with compost tea and watch it do it's amazing work for you. Spray it on the follage and you will be building a stronger plant that will resist all pathegons longer.

Make it better by adding dehydrated kelp, ground up alfalfa meal, a tiny bit of fish oil with a dollup of black strap molasses.

Add lots of bubbling oxygen and you may be able to render the highest quality of tea called aerobic tea which literally explodes the living biology in the mix. This put into play on your leaves and in your soil delivers living biology to build your soil and further create a living biology on the leaves that occupy the space pathegons have to have to cause you difficulty.

That's raising the tea bar about as high as we know how to do it as of this day.

At the fence behind the birdbath you'll see my bin -- I think I ordered these from Clean Air Gardening -- I have two of them. One is set up with the Stuff composting, and the other is kind of folded and on top of the compost to keep it hotter and moister. After a few weeks, I set up the folded one and fork the contents of the "old" bin through hardware cloth into the wheelbarrow. What goes through the cloth and on into the wheelbarrow gets put in the garden, and the rest goes into the "new" bin -- then fold up the bin I just emptied and put it on top of the new one. It's not super fast, but every couple of months I have enough composted material to matter.

And now that I have a chipper/shredder, things will go much faster!

Whew............every little bit you can make..... will make a great difference in that soil you are trying to build up. Sometimes we Northeastern growers do not realize how lucky we are to have the soil we work in. I envy your efforts.

Well done bridgitlily - I just keep thinking about all of the soil all of us are making - I am absolutely sure the planet thanks us.

The worms...the worms...the worms take what we offer and really make the soil that works not us. We only haul in their most desirable building blocks and try to keep them happy.

I am new to organic gardening. My first year vegi garden. Wonderful thread. On Michigan Morning tv program there was a guy that had a master degree in composting. He give three day classes on composting around Michigan.

Gary

A Masters in composting? Wow. We are getting specialized! Can you get him to join DG?

The nice thing about composting is, it works. If you take a lot of steps and are really particular and all, it works. If you toss the stuff out there and go in and read, it works!

That just about sums it up Bridgetlily! That really makes me laugh.

I suggest it does not work very well if the gardener can't get out there and distribute the finished compost to the needy plants and pull a few weeds now and then. Harr Harr :)

I just dug out a perfect batch of black gold from my little 1cu/yd black composter box and gave my veggies a nice new coat - I love doing that!

Of course you should feel proud. Proud that your little holdings in this big world stand a very good chance of leaving your care someday in much better condition than it was when you became the manager of it. Not to many people can realize this goal. Strange to my thinking but some still don't give a hoot.

I feel that, just as I am the only person in the world I can control, "my" land is the only land I can control -- and I'm obliged to leave it better than I found it. As I used to tell my kids, if each of us will clean up his own mess, the whole house will be clean.