Do you compost? If you are frugal and a gardener you should! It’s basically free, can be done with minimal labor and creates a fantastic mulch / amendment for you soil. Most gardeners find they have only one problem with compost-they can never make enough!
Yesterday I posted a picture to the Frugal Upstate Facebook page a picture of my compost piles. I had been talking about getting a big bag of free vegetable trimmings from the church while helping prepare for our annual Harvest Dinner.
Photo by ME!
My commentary with the photo was:
On the left the “working” pile I’ve been adding to since spring, next the pile I used last year that has been composting undisturbed this year, & in the green fencing leaves to make leaf mold.
This generated a few questions. Whitney asked “Leaf mold? Like, a sculpture? Or a fungus?“ and Thom chimed in with “can the leaves be mixed in with your current pile on the left?”
Obviously this needs a bit of explanation!
Let me describe my system to you. I normally use 2 bins. Each spring I use a bin full of compost-then that empty bin becomes the place where I put all new composting materials. The other bin-which was filled up the previous year-just sits there for a year composting away merrily. The next spring I repeat-the “new” stuff sits, the “older” stuff gets used and then that empty spot starts the cycle again.
That’s my system, but WHY do I do it that way?
There are two methods of composting “hot” and “cold”.
Photo by Bryan Thayer
In hot composting you mix a general percentage of brown composting material (ie carbon rich items-hay, shredded paper, etc) and green composting materials (grass, plants, vegetable refuse etc) in a general ratio of 2 parts brown to 1 part green. Then the bacteria that naturally occur in the pile go to work, eating up the high nitrogen items and breaking everything down. This actually heats up the interior of the pile to between 135°-160° Fahrenheit, assuming the moisture and air inputs are correct. The benefit to this is that weed seeds and most diseases are killed off by the heat. You also get finished compost sooner. . . you can speed the process up even more if you “turn” (or mix) the pile on a regular basis.
Photo by Al Pasternak
In cold composting you stack whatever you’ve got into a pile and let time take it’s course. It will eventually compost down-although it doesn’t usually heat up much (hence the “cold”) so you have to make sure you don’t add any weed seed heads or diseased material. If you “turn” a cold compost pile it will also speed up the process.
I do cold composting myself, for several reasons. First, like most backyard gardeners I have trouble coming up with enough browns to get anywhere close to the ratio needed to have a truly hot pile. Greens~no problem. Every grass clipping, weed and vegetable peeling I have is a green. But browns? Not so easy. I’d probably have to buy hay, straw or somehow find a source of shredded paper or something to really get a hot pile. Second, I just don’t want to worry about it. I’m a busy mother, wife and writer–Why fret about ratios and do the labor of turning the pile when I can just toss it and leave it for a year and let time take care of everything for me?
Composting can be done by throwing everything in a pile, containing it in a fence, building a bin. . . really the options are endless. Yankee Bill built me our two bin system out of old pallets they were giving away at the Dollar General a couple years back.
Having a two bins system allows me to be finishing off a pile of compost while adding to a different pile. After all, if you just have one then you would be constantly adding to the top-how would you ever get the finished stuff? A lot of folks advocate a 3 bin system.
Photo by Jay@MorphoLA
In that you actually move the compost (thus turning it) from bin to bin on a semi regular basis. . . that does get things composting faster. I just haven’t gotten around to doing that.
So what about those leaves?
Photo by Scott SM
Well there is a lot of information out there about leaves–and as usual, a lot of it is conflicting. Some sources say you can compost leaves in your pile. Others say that too many leaves–and who in the northeast in the fall doesn’t have too many leaves–pack down so tightly when wet that no air gets in. . .then instead of aerobic bacterial AN-erobic bacteria go to work. . .a different process. Then there is the fact that leaves can decompose much more slowly than some of the other materials you might be composting.
Just to be safe I decided the best thing to do was to make a separate leaf pile, try to chop it up a bit (ie the part hubs ran over with the mower) and work that separately. This is the first year that I’ve done the leaf bin, so it will be a learning experience for us all. I just couldn’t stand for one more year to see all that lovely, free organic material going to waste. (note: Mever compost black walnut leaves. They contain a substance that inhibits plant growth-not what you are looking for in a compost!)
I also had hubs run over a bunch of the leaves with the mower and used that as a 6 inch layer or so of mulch over the garlic I planted, and some on the leeks and carrots that are still in the garden. Some sources I’ve read say a leaf mulch can actually keep the ground cool in the spring-so I may decide when the weather warms up to pull the mulch back off of some of the garlic (and leave it on some) to see if it makes any difference in the growth.
Gardening is always a learning experience!
Some great composting resources:
There are some things that you should NOT put into your compost pile or bin. Check out What not to compost at Planet Green.com for a good list
Not sure what is considered a “green” and what is a “brown”? This article about composting from Organic Gardening at About.com tells you!
Mother Earth News had an article on “Composting Made Easy” which gives lots of fantastic info. (Note: I really like Mother Earth News)
And I couldn’t write about composting without including a link to “75 things you didn’t know you could compost“. Please think before you compost some of the items on the list. Some of them will break down but take a long time (like rope) others are compostable but might attract critters that you don’t want in your pile (like bread and grains attracting mice).
Thanks for the article! It’s very well-timed, since I’m starting up my compost bin after a two-year hiatus. Our space is very limited (we live in an apartment with a concrete patio), but I still like to have a container garden, and composting on a small scale still keeps a lot of stuff out of the trash.
I sort of do a halfway point between hot and cold, since I like to rely on vermiculture. I do a mixture of green stuff, brown stuff (mostly shredded bills), and potting soil. Then I by a package of worms at the local bait shop and let them have at it. The potting soil not only keeps the worms happy, it helps keep everything processing nicely (not stinking) even without the worms. The brown stuff also helps keep air circulating through. Since I have to do it all in a container, I also have to be careful not to let anything get too wet. When I stir it and notice too much moisture, I just add in more paper.
I guess I’ll be doing a post on it too!
Anyway, I thought I’d comment on the business about leaves. Here, on the west coast, our leaves are often pine/redwood needles…LOTS of them. For us, unless we have a lot of other stuff to include in a compost pile, it’s usually best to leave the needles out, because they’ll make the compost really acidic. That’s also why we generally don’t use needles for mulch. So I’d imagine that the disagreement over whether or not to include leaves in a compost bin probably has a lot to do with what kinds of trees are around. If all else fails, you can put leaves in a burn pile and put the resulting ash in your bin.
I finally got around to doing my post on composting, and I linked back to your blog and this article.
http://trialanderrorhomeec.blogspot.com/2012/01/wfmw-vermiculture.html
Cheers,
Rachel