Does anyone know about compost?

[Seshat]

You can put some sort of container under the drainage holes, and take the liquid away to use to fertilize plants. Dilute it first; it can be too concentrated for some plants!

Good compost contains both nitrogenous stuff (leaves, fruits, flowers - the 'soft' parts of plants) and carboniferous stuff (sawdust, paper trash, small sticks, chopped up bigger sticks, nutshells: the 'hard' bits of plants). You can add ground eggshell, too.

You can add meat, blood, bone, milk etc; but (a) that might attract unwanted carnivores, and (b) it takes a while for that to compost down to something you'd actually want to touch! Ground up meats, including organ meats, can be added and stirred in without causing those problems: but only in small amounts relative to the amount of compost. And give the heap time to 'digest' it before adding more.

You can also add the contents of a litter tray, birdcage tray, or other pet doings: the urine is nitrogenous, so make sure the litter itself is carboniferous. The kind of litter (or piddle pad) made of recycled paper is perfect as carboniferous content.
Note that clay litters and some of the synthetic litters will affect the resultant compost-loam, and may make it turn out badly. Clay litters, for example, will produce a clay-loam blend, not a true loam.


What you're trying to produce as the output is loam: if you've ever been in a rainforest and felt the first five or ten centimetres of stuff under your boots, that's a particularly rich kind of loam. It's water and leaves and sticks and insects and worm-poo-soil and it smells like ... I don't know how to put it. It smells like both rich-life-green and death-rot-returntosoil. At the same time.

If you've ever forgotten about potatos in the cupboard until they start to rot, you'll know the death-rot aspect of the smell. And the rich-life-green aspect is .. is the ground after a long soaking rain, when the grass is growing and the world is full of life.

A good loam, to me, smells like both of those mixed together. More of the life smell than the rot smell; but without the rot smell, you wouldn't have broken-down loam ready for plant roots to take-up the nutrients. You'd just have a bunch of too-large chunks of plant matter.

[lordlundar]

you guys are seriously over complicating this. The most reliable compost bins are 4 walls. A lid to keep things pretty but don't have a bottom. let any water that gets in drain naturally. If you do have a lid you will need aeration holes on the sides to keep airflow going. Remember that materials decompose faster when there's air flowing around them.

[Der Cute]

however don't forget to check it for heat. IIRC they do get hot when they start breaking down - that's where stirring it comes in handy too IIRC.

It's so cold outside (aka 45, 55* F) that there is very little heat happening at all. The black garbage bag over the top of this is my attempt to warm it up a little bit (and stop rain from coming in so damn much)

What you're trying to produce as the output is loam: if you've ever been in a rainforest and felt the first five or ten centimetres of stuff under your boots, that's a particularly rich kind of loam. It's water and leaves and sticks and insects and worm-poo-soil and it smells like ... I don't know how to put it. It smells like both rich-life-green and death-rot-returntosoil. At the same time.
If you've ever forgotten about potatos in the cupboard until they start to rot, you'll know the death-rot aspect of the smell. And the rich-life-green aspect is .. is the ground after a long soaking rain, when the grass is growing and the world is full of life.
A good loam, to me, smells like both of those mixed together. More of the life smell than the rot smell; but without the rot smell, you wouldn't have broken-down loam ready for plant roots to take-up the nutrients. You'd just have a bunch of too-large chunks of plant matter.

Oh, I know what that smell is and I miss it so damn much. Fall is when the rot/wet starts really kicking in - to me the forest smells like cranberries - sharp, acidic, wet, rotty. I grew up in AK and we had that stuff allll over the place. Didn't know the name, loam; to me it's just really rich dirt. I did take some of the standing black water in there and put it into the sage's box. Hopefully he'll like that. I still haven't found a way to drill holes in the bottom for drainage, I think I'll just wait this out til this stuff's gone.
I know the ratio is 2 browns for 1 green; so 2 units of paper for every unit of plant. I've decided to not put any dairy in there except rinsed eggshells already crunched up. Just plant matter, sticks, shredded recycled paper and some news paper. Coffee grounds are occasionally added, but I try not to for the pH to be balanced (note to self get to UW Extention for testing). So far so good, I just noticed today smells like earthy poop, a LOT like horse shit. I think that's good.
Went weeding in the garden too, plucked a few plants and found worms in there. They got volunteered for the compost box! Plucking the weeds was fun and soothing at the same time. Smelling that wet wet dirt was so good!
Spring is here - another clue - bugs are starting to show up! Woohoo!

[Der Cute]

Well, it now smells like cow shit. Very shitty cow shit. I'm adding more newspaper to it and turning it over as much as I can. Keeping the black bag on it, keeping the heat as much as I can. This it totally a learning process aka jury-rigged doohicky.

[Ghel]

I started composting about 4 years ago, when the county was selling plastic compost bins cheap ($15, I think) in an effort to get people to throw away less trash. Mine is basically a 2 1/2 foot square by 4 foot tall box made of plastic slats with small holes at the bottom of each slat. So there's air and drainage holes all the way up the sides. And it has a lid.

The main problem I have is keeping it wet enough. I suppose I could leave the lid off when it rains. I leave it on for the heat, since we don't get much heat here in northern Minnesota. If it gets dry, I drag the hose over and soak it down.

I also have a problem with weeds growing in it, since it sits right on the ground. Turning it frequently helps with that, though.

I feed my compost with weeds, mown grass, spoiled veggies, used coffee grounds, shredded mail or newspaper, and sometimes eggshells (although not much, since they take forever to break down). I try not to put meat, cheese, etc. in mine, since we have stray cats and dogs in the neighborhood.

When I go to use my compost, I run it through a mesh screen made of 1/2 inch chicken wire. Any bigger pieces, like sticks that haven't broken down, get caught on the screen. I throw those back in the compost bin.

I'm not doing anything with the bin this time of year. It's buried under a snow drift.

[Yfandes]

I was trying a patio type compost system (a bag with holes in a bucket), and it really didn't work - soupy rotten mess. A friend of mine told me it had to be in touch with the soil so I set up a bottomless bin over a patch of dirt and its been happy ever since. Compost needs air as much as it needs to be moistened. Mines all wormy goodness and in the spirit of the super lazy I simply plant my tomatoes around the compost bin - works out well for everyone.

[bhskittykatt]

Never actually tried this, but this site gives instructions on how to build a worm bin that could give you some ideas since the basic principles are pretty similar. It also gives some troubleshooting advice towards the bottom that may be helpful: http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/easywormbin.htm

It says a stinky bin could be caused by inadequate ventilation, adding too much food, or having too much moisture.