Composting

Even though our garden is fairly well done now (well, it was done about a month ago after weeks of 100+ degree weather), we are planning for next year by working on a compost pile.

The garden went from this (above) to...

***The owl is there to scare away squirrels/rabbits, they were nibbling on things***

 ...this and got progressively worse and more brown.

The compost has been a pretty simple process so far.  First I went out and bought two large plastic bin at Lowe's (or Home Depot, can't quite remember which at the moment).  I bought two so once one is filled up, we can let it do its thing and keep adding to the second bin.

Next we drilled about seven holes, 1/4 of an inch each into the lid and the bottom of the tote.  Then it was time to start adding stuff.  You are supposed to start out with about 1/2 to "browns," some soil, and then add "greens" in as you go.  Browns include things that you generally associate with being brown, dried leaves, dead grass, and even shredded paper.  Greens include old fruit/veggies and their leftovers (rinds, etc.).  Since it was the middle of summer, I didn't have access to many dried leaves, so I chose to shred up some newspaper.

The instructions I followed said to fill the container with 1/3 of the shreddings, so I got to work.  My printer had a little trouble with all the newspaper, so I had to keep making sure it wasn't getting plugged up, but I got it to work well enough to get a good pile going.

It was much less messy to have the shredder in the bin while working so the little slips didn't go everywhere!

If you have access to leaves, that would probably be a more favorable option, but I used what I had!  Next, I took the bin outside and added a bag of soil (you could just dig up some soil from your yard too).  That smushed all of the newspaper down and barely filled 1/3 of the container.  So, I added another bag of soil on top of that.  Next, it was time to add some rotten fruit.  I have been adding whatever we have about once a week.  To keep the fruit flies at bay, I just keep a small bag with all the soon to be composted items in the fridge.

Yum!

The only thing to do after that is stir things up a bit, keep adding, and wait.  I haven't noticed any crazy smells coming from there, but there have been a few small bugs (most of which ) and a little mold.  I believe the bugs and mold are just part of the composting process.  When there is a lot of mold (which I think is caused by too much moisture) I have added more browns to balance things out a bit; we have some random bags of cotton that didn't get used for their original purpose that I've been throwing in.  Everything seems to be working for now!  Hopefully we'll be able to use it next year for our garden, and hopefully next year all of our plants won't all wilt because of abnormal heat and extremely small amounts of rain!

You can find a good list of items to compost here.  Careful with anything dairy though, I've heard mixed things about adding it.