How you got into Composting

This is just a point of curiosity for me. What is your story?

Something you were taught by your parents, just part of gardening or did you have a disastrous garden spot?


Here is my story:

My parents had a garden most years sometimes not, but my involvement in gardening in my early years was that of weed puller...

Consequently after I moved from my parents and had purchased my own home I decided that I was not going to have a garden because all I would do is pull weeds, right?

Fast forward ah, well, a few years. My beautiful wife was struggling with our (her) garden. My involvement in gardening was that of running a tiller, and occasionally yeah thats right - weed puller.
After a few years of poor yields from our garden and listening to her become more and more discouraged, I wanted to help. I didn't know how or where to start.

You must understand I'm a bookworm who will research anything to death. So I started performing Internet searches on Gardening to see what I could find on the subject. I just love the Internet, there is more information there that can be absorbed.

I read about many subject areas of gardening and finally realized that our "garden soil" was more like concrete than garden soil!
I purchased a few books on gardening, soil and composting. I completely immersed myself in gardening related reading from that spring until the next planting season.

By now I'm armed with some compost that I had made from the previous year, plans of the "perfect" garden and some concrete in which to plant our bounty.....
Actually I used a double digging technique and loads of compost, that fall, in about a third of the garden plot. I was amazed at the tilth and at how soft the soil was at the end of the year. You could actually poke your finger in the soil. Before you would break a finger nail had you tried that!

Part of the plan of course included what I read about seed starting, heirlooms and companion planting.
So, now its spring. I watched the soil for the perfect time to work it. I didn't want it to turn to concrete again. When the time was right I started building raised rows. I was still amazed at how crumbly and soft the soil was that spring.

That year the soil did and excellent job of providing an enormous, beautiful garden with many treats for our family.
Now it really is "our" garden. I'm a true believer that composting is a necessity and am fully involved in the planing of what we plant, to where and how its planted and I no longer mind becoming a weed puller on occasion.

My name is William and I am a Composter.

I just had to edit my sig, since I love the way your all signing. ;)

This message was edited Jan 25, 2009 8:14 PM

Interesting subject for a thread, whtex.
I gardened mostly in containers for many years in California. . . then about four years ago I moved to the North East where I had some scope as they say (meaning an acre of regular sandy Cape Cod soil varied with builder's sand left by the developer.) NOT lovely tilth. I joined DG in 2006 and couldn't avoid noticing the myriad references to "soil health," "compost," and "worms." I knew just enough to realize that compost was cool. Like you, I started checking the internet using those terms, and discovered a whole wonderful world (I won't quite call it an "alternate universe") of recycling organic materials into crumbly dark soil. Soon I found myself with three compost bins plus a newly-acquired OCD about never throwing anything into the trash that could possibly be composted. My first wheelbarrow-full of genuine compost was such cause for rejoicing and I parceled it out over my garden beds. I like to think their success is due to my compost.
Then last year I read about the Bokashi method, and now I am shameless about carting home any and all food scraps from the restaurant to augment my own family's dinner-table scraps. Not to mention haunting my local coffee shop for grounds, and begging veggie scraps from my local grocery store. . . oh, it's a slippery slope.
My name is Cape Cod Gardener and I am a compost-er.

I also grew up with gardening parents and while at home wanted nothing to do with it, LOL! Typical rebellious adolescent, I was.

When I developed my interest in gardening (I think it was genetic, it just came on late) I knew I had to get some organic material into the poor soil of the yard I had access to in San Francisco. I got a book and read it (my solution to most things in those days) and was extremely confused by all the various potential methods, so I called home.

I remembered that when my folks had retired and sold their house and moved east, my mother had remarked about how proud they were of their garden soil! I said to them, on the phone, that there seemed to be all these different methods of composting and I could not tell what kind to choose, and would they please tell me what they did? (My adolescent rebellion had been so successful I really did not know!)

My mother said, well, yes, there were lots of methods and if you wanted to you could "do all that" but all they ever did was take scraps out and dig them in to the ground. They tried to remember where they had dug things in and where not so as to spread stuff around fairly evenly, but that was it, that was all the system they had.

This was quite freeing to learn. I could just, well, begin, and most likely, it would work out well.

And, it did. That little garden in SF turned into something the neighbors praised, and even the most grouchy old curmudgeon of a landlord ever found himself unable to resist thanking me for making it nice.

Later on, I took a Master Composting class and for a long time kept my certificate with the worm on it, but I don't think I still have it. I learned a lot in that class, but my learning was mightily empowered by what I learned from Mom and Dad, about how fundamentally simple and natural the basic process truly is, and remains, despite all the levels of complexity we discover within it and the refinements we create to perfect it.

My name is Kyla and I am a composter.

;-)

Wow I am so glad to see this thread. I am a newbie composter, who just started throwing some things in a big pile! lol I started my gardens last year and had a so-so success rate. I know that my soil needs some help. i too read all the info and get a little mind boggled with it. I have raked up lots of leaves into a big pile, have thrown some sticks and branches in there (guess that's not a good idea huh?), grass clippings, coffee grounds, veggie peelings, egg shells, and the branches from my Christmas tree, old soil, garden clippings, etc. usually on the weekends, I'll go move it around a bit, maybe water it. Hopefully, I'll get more into it and learn to do it properly. Would love to grow some of that "black gold"!

My name is Em and I want to be a composter! :)

Em,

Sounds like your doing fine. The sticks and branches will take quite a while to break down. I always recommend that you chip branches down as much as possible. But don't be surprised when you find they are still there when the rest of the pile is ready for the garden.
About the only wood product I throw in is saw dust and only when my wife uses it for her chicken coop bedding, which we try to keep to a minimum.

Keep up the good work.

I started gardening as a teenager. We didn't have the internet yet and no pc's either. So I didn't know about composting.

Then I joined the Navy and traveled too much to have a garden. I married a military man and then HE finally retired as well. We live in Florida and I don't have soil. I have sand. So I found DG and decided I wanted gardens for flowers and veggies. But I needed soil not sand.

I bought a small black composter at Sam's Club and I started piling in grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen scraps. I decided I needed more compost to be able to do all I wanted to do. SO my DH picked up some empty tile crates to use as composters. I have one half full and I plan to use the other bin to turn the first one into. My husbands uncle keeps horses so I've been raiding his composted manure pile. I ran over several bags of leaves with the lawn mower and piled that all in one wide bed at the front of the house and piled the manure on top of that and now I'm waiting for spring. To start planting

Darla - and I'm a composter

I moved in with my dad in '96. He'd kept my mom's roses going, put annuals and a few bulbs in front, and grew tomatoes in back. There was an old tree stump in the back corner of the yard on which sat a birdbath. The rest was grass, and being retired, Dad spent time making it very nice. I began by planting some perrenials around that stump. That soil was pretty good because of the years of natural composting done by the pine tree that was there.

HOWEVER, when I started putting in new beds, the soil was clay. So I bought amendments at the fancy nurseries and dug and dug and dug. Well of course that was getting way too costly, and as I was reading the various gardening magazines and books, I began to learn about composting. I started out with a few piles of leaves and then I was off and running. Now there are four or five piles going including a proper bin, where food waste and lots of other things go. For a while I sifted but now I'm less picky about that.

Such a simple thing, but we gardeners love our good soil!

Great thread!

My last house had lousy sandy soil and lots of gophers. I started trying to improve that soil, and began researching compost as an organic choice.

Our current house had lousy clay soil and lots of gophers when we moved here in 1987. As I did more research on organic methods (which I really wanted to support), I found that composting would be a great way to improve our soil. Got my first compost bin, and started putting kitchen waste and prunings into it. Then we got a bunny---and we've had a "compost bunny" in the family ever since. The bunny eats a lot of the weeds I pull.

I wanted to get a friend interested in composting, so we attended a seminar taught by a local Master Composter. Learned a lot, and also heard about worm bins. Now all our kitchen waste goes to the worm bin. Our shredded paper, green stuff and leaves all go into rolling trash bins I've converted to compost bins by drilling holes in the sides for air & drainage. When one gets full, I switch to another. By the time the 4th one is full, the 1st one is about ready to use. Sometimes I sift it, but more often I use my compost in planting holes.

My name's Janet, and I'm a lazy composter...AND a vermiposter.

Janet, I really like the rolling trash bins idea. Got pictures of those perhaps?

Kyla, also lazy.

I'll take some tonite & post!

Cool! Thanks!

Wow, this is a really attractive photo (NOT!)

I like these plastic Rubbermaid containers that have built-in wheels. I can move them around, and if I get really ambitious I can move them into a bed and water them---then the compost "juice" goes directly into the bed. Or if I'm ready to use it, they wheel right to the spot I want to dump the finished compost.

I drilled 1/4" holes about 6" apart all down the sides and in the lid. These "bins" have held up really well for several years, and I've gotten lots of good compost out of them!

My first gardening experience was at about age 8 - I desperately wanted to grow greenbeans and flowers! So, my mom got me some seeds, and I planted them right behind the house near the A/C unit - in Central FL- in the sand!~ A couple actually sprouted, & I managed to get a couple of very sickly looking greenbeans! My mom cooked them, & I was hooked. I am not a BIG gardener, or even a good gardener, but.....! I now live in South GA, with sand instead of soil, and near 100 degree summers. Watering is a huge issue - even with a sprinkler system. So, I compost to improve the soil so it will hold some moisture! I have 1 double compost tumbler and 1 large wire leaf bin - we have wild critters, so no food scraps go into the leaf bin. I am always searching for stuff to add to my bins - I am blessed to have sharing privileges on a local coffee house's spent grounds! YIPEE!!!! I have also recently begun 'lasagne' gardening, with much success!

My name is Samantha, & I am a composter.

Stop pulling weeds and just dump more compost on them.

Say what, kenboy?

After your plants come up just dump compost between the rows so that weeds do not have a chance to grow. Then after you harvest just turn everything under and start over. To do this you must have large amounts of compost.

I was actually pretty old (relatively speaking) before I started composting. I grew up believing the "common knowledge" that you couldn't compost in Alaska because it was too cold.

I did a little research and decided to give it a try.

I really worked at it. For one whole winter, I ran all my kitchen wastes through the food processor, stuck them in bags, and put them in the freezer. By Spring almost all that was left in the freezer was my bags of scraps.

That Summer, I gathered my browns (shredding them) and started my first compost pile in one of those "Soil Saver" bins. I carefully layered the browns, lawn clippings, and thawed kitchen scraps, and kept the pile moist.

I turned the pile and kept track of the temperature.

What made a believer out of me was the temperature....It was steaming, and sometimes when I'd go to turn the pile, the center was so hot there were ashes!!

That first summer, I made three batches of compost in that Soil Saver. They had a bit of a green tinge because most of the Greens were grass clippings, but I was...

Proud! (smile)