"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "JoeSpareBedroom" contains these words:


I know people who toss meat bones into the compost, including some pretty
big ones. They also put really fat vegetable stalks in there. The major
issue with those things would be that they're not going to decompose
as fast
as ***SOME*** (disclaimer - I said ***SOME***) other material, like
small
vegetable scraps. This means you have to sift or pick out the unfinished
stuff before using the compost. No thanks. This weekend, I'll be
composting
stuff like broccoli stalks, 2" thick, and I'll use a meat cleaver to
chop it
into smaller pieces. Otherwise (based on experience), those stalks will
still be there in May.

I don't compost bones (I bury them when planting shrubs). The only
thing going into my heap today which will still be identifiable next
May, is avocado pips and a few small scraps of eggshell. I never sift
veg waste or need to bother chopping up large veg waste like brocolli
stalks, or pumpkin skins.

Possibly winters in my garden are warmer than yours ( a few short
frosts, none colder than -5C) which permits bacterial and worm
activity throughout winter. If your winter is comparable, I'd suggest
your heap could be a bit dry. I have a lidded compost bin under the
kitchen sink, and empty tea and coffee pot dregs as well as veg waste;
so the contents are sitting in liquid before they reach the ourdoor heap
a few days later. I'm convinced that "brewing effect" gets them off to
faster decomposition. The current outdoor heap is uncovered , exposed to
lots of rain . When it's full it will be covered.

Janet. (UK)

The climate is the difference, then. Your version of winter would cause much
laughter here. It sounds like springtime here. Our typical winter...you
don't want to know. Believe me.

To JoeSpareBedroom, do you see how easy that was?

Thank you, Manelli Family..

Gloria

"Manelli Family" wrote in message
...

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
We recently moved out in the country. Nothing to do but we had to make a
compost pile. I admit, it's a handy place for garbage we would usually
put
in the can for a week. Yech!

Does it work?

Yes.

How much work is it?

As much as you want to put into it. I turn the pile every few weeks.

How often are you supposed to turn it?
Do you keep it wet?

Damp is better.

Do you get enough compost to justify the work?

I do. Try Googling "compost."





TIA

Steve

"Gloria" wrote in message
. net...
To JoeSpareBedroom, do you see how easy that was?

Thank you, Manelli Family..

Gloria

It's easy to provide 1/100th of the information needed to understand the
process, thereby providing nothing at all.

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Gloria" wrote in message
. net...
To JoeSpareBedroom, do you see how easy that was?

Thank you, Manelli Family..

Gloria

It's easy to provide 1/100th of the information needed to understand the
process, thereby providing nothing at all.



Don't forget the advice to google composting which was also included..

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
We recently moved out in the country. Nothing to do but we had to make a
compost pile. I admit, it's a handy place for garbage we would usually
put
in the can for a week. Yech!

Does it work? How much work is it? How often are you supposed to turn
it?
Do you keep it wet? Do you get enough compost to justify the work?


Here is how I compost. It's the Lazy Man's Compost pile.

1) Go as far away from the house as possible. Compost piles attract
mice/rats/possums/etc.
Screen it unless you like your dog dragging tasty bits out.

2) Throw anything organic in the pile. Grass clippings, leaves, pine
needles, rotting
fruit, table scraps, etc. Avoid large solid things like bones and tree
limbs. Avoid
meats and fats unless you like bad stinky smells. If you generate a lot of
scrap meat
and fat, buy a pig and feed those to it.

3) Ignore it.

4) When you want compost for the garden, go to pile and shovel about 1 foot
into the
side away, then dig from the bottom.

The pile will shrink as you add stuff to it and the stuff rots down. If you
find the
pile growing too big because your adding stuff to it faster than it's
rotting down, then
start a new pile, and then the next season, advertise free compost on
Craigslist and
the pile will magically disappear with no effort.

Turning the compost pile just makes it become compost faster. I have never
understood
the rationale for this. Either your generating more compost than you use or
your not.
What matter is it if the stuff sits in the pile for 3 months or 3 years
before it finishes
rotting down? My compost pile is at least 10 years old and I've never
turned it. If
anything, the longer the stuff sits in the pile the more nasty chemicals
like pesticides and
fertillizer and such get washed out of it by the rain and into the ground.

Ted

"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote:

2) Throw anything organic in the pile. Grass clippings, leaves, pine
needles, rotting fruit, table scraps, etc. Avoid large solid things
like bones and tree limbs. Avoid meats and fats unless you like bad
stinky smells. If you generate a lot of scrap meat and fat, buy a
pig and feed those to it.

I have a compost pile of all garden waste: weeds, tree limbs, pond scum,
shrub pruning, flower pruning, pond pruning and dead ground hogs. I do
not collect grass clippings. I let them compost in the lawn where they
lie. But I do compost tree limbs, and even entire trees. We had some
weeping willow trees get so big that they fell over. I cut them up into
rounds and piled them up. The pile is now completely flat. The
completely rotted. We have been composting pickup loads of garden waste
in the same place for over 40 years. It does build up some great soil,
but it is amazing at how the pile has not grown much. We had a natural
bank at the edge of the barnyard. We dump the garden waste over the
edge. The barnyard has grown some in that direction. When we need good
soil we take from the part that has completely composted.
--
Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to
Visit my Rhododendron and Azalea web pages at:
http://rhodyman.net/rahome.html
Also visit the Rhododendron and Azalea Bookstore at:
http://rhodyman.net/rabooks.html
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA Zone 6

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

Turning the compost pile just makes it become compost faster. I have never
understood
the rationale for this. Either your generating more compost than you use or
your not.
What matter is it if the stuff sits in the pile for 3 months or 3 years
before it finishes

There are a couple of reasons for wanting to keep piles turned and hot:

1) If you've got diseased plant material in the pile, keeping it turned
(to add oxygen), moist (to keep the rot fungi working), and heated (to kill
most of the pathogens) makes sense. No point applying various plant diseases
right back onto your current plants.

2) Anaerobic piles (those lacking much oxygen) can be pretty stinky.
That's fine for those of us with enough room, but not so much fun when the
neighbor's anaerobic pile is 20 ft from your windows.

3) Soluble nutrients like P and K tend to leach out of slow piles,
particularly those that go on for years and year. If you're just using
the compost to add organic matter to the soil for tilth, that's fine,
but if you'd like to use your compost as a mild fertilizer also, that's
not so useful. You may actually see a shift in flora around large,
slow piles that go on for years as the soil nutrients change.

As I've said before, I used to do hot composting fairly extensively --
it's good exercise as well as giving you a nice product. However, there
are a couple of ways around turning a pile to keep it moving, notably
adding something like perforated pipe to the pile to help introduce
oxygen. Or you can do something like worm bins or sheet or trench
composting.

Personally, I'm mostly using trench composting now -- it's fast, easy,
and very little work, but it's a good idea to keep any diseased plant
material out of trenched composting. No point in helping the diseases
keep up their lifecycles. If I were doing extensive veggie gardens and
flower beds that I was weeding regularly and I was generating enough
raw stuff to keep a big pile going, I would probably do that. But
little of our property is generating vegetation I have to remove.

Even with a couple of acres, I don't have enough compostables to keep
a big pile hot. Part of it is that much of the yard waste here is
downed wood (which I haul into a couple strips of woods and let rot on
the ground) or from lawnmowing -- and I just let that rot in situ.
The day to day kitchen scraps, weeds, and such are easier for me to
dispose of in a trench in the veggies than trying to make a big pile.
YMMV -- this is what works for me.

Kay




but

Didn't your teachers teach you how to learn to recognize simple questions?
Oh, that's right, it was in last night's chapter....you must have forgotten
to read that chapter. Joe, these are very simple questions, try to apply
yourself. So far, you've used a huge amount of words to provide nothing.
Go back and read some of the other posts on this thread. I think you will
learn from many of them, that answering a few really simple questions, is
doable. Now, be careful, be sure that you understand each question, they
are not complex at all. Most of them can be answered using just one word.

Gloria


"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...
"Gloria" wrote in message
. net...
To JoeSpareBedroom, do you see how easy that was?

Thank you, Manelli Family..

Gloria

It's easy to provide 1/100th of the information needed to understand the
process, thereby providing nothing at all.

"Stephen Henning" wrote in message
news
"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote:

2) Throw anything organic in the pile. Grass clippings, leaves, pine
needles, rotting fruit, table scraps, etc. Avoid large solid things
like bones and tree limbs. Avoid meats and fats unless you like bad
stinky smells. If you generate a lot of scrap meat and fat, buy a
pig and feed those to it.

I have a compost pile of all garden waste: weeds, tree limbs, pond scum,
shrub pruning, flower pruning, pond pruning and dead ground hogs. I do
not collect grass clippings. I let them compost in the lawn where they
lie. But I do compost tree limbs, and even entire trees. We had some
weeping willow trees get so big that they fell over. I cut them up into
rounds and piled them up.

Ah, but you had to expend actual effort in cutting them up over and above
the minimal effort needed to drag them over to the compost pile!

I would have taken care of those with the usual Craigslist post "Free
firewood,
u-cut and haul" You would be amazed at the number of stupid people who
would show up.

Ted

"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote:

I have a compost pile of all garden waste: weeds, tree limbs, pond scum,
shrub pruning, flower pruning, pond pruning and dead ground hogs. I do
not collect grass clippings. I let them compost in the lawn where they
lie. But I do compost tree limbs, and even entire trees. We had some
weeping willow trees get so big that they fell over. I cut them up into
rounds and piled them up.

Ah, but you had to expend actual effort in cutting them up over and above
the minimal effort needed to drag them over to the compost pile!
I would have taken care of those with the usual Craigslist post "Free
firewood, u-cut and haul" You would be amazed at the number of stupid
people who would show up.

We don't need Craig or his list. I just talk to my neighbors who burn
fire wood. They all fall and cut what they burn, so they must be very
stupid according to you. They helped me out when a gigantic elm tree
died and when I did some major pruning on the neighbors Norway Maples.
That maple wood is extremely heavy. Weeping willow wood isn't good for
much of anything. I just cut it into pieces small enough so I can
attach a chain and drag them to the compost pile with my tractor and
pile them. Now I mostly use a Kawasaki Mule for the smaller stuff. It
dumps like a dump truck. I have an old Ford 9n tractor to drag the
really big stuff. My compost pile has a peach tree on it now.

--
Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA
http://rhodyman.net

Stephen Henning wrote:
"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote:


I have a compost pile of all garden waste: weeds, tree limbs, pond scum,
shrub pruning, flower pruning, pond pruning and dead ground hogs. I do
not collect grass clippings. I let them compost in the lawn where they
lie. But I do compost tree limbs, and even entire trees. We had some
weeping willow trees get so big that they fell over. I cut them up into
rounds and piled them up.

Ah, but you had to expend actual effort in cutting them up over and above
the minimal effort needed to drag them over to the compost pile!
I would have taken care of those with the usual Craigslist post "Free
firewood, u-cut and haul" You would be amazed at the number of stupid
people who would show up.


We don't need Craig or his list. I just talk to my neighbors who burn
fire wood. They all fall and cut what they burn, so they must be very
stupid according to you. They helped me out when a gigantic elm tree
died and when I did some major pruning on the neighbors Norway Maples.
That maple wood is extremely heavy. Weeping willow wood isn't good for
much of anything. I just cut it into pieces small enough so I can
attach a chain and drag them to the compost pile with my tractor and
pile them. Now I mostly use a Kawasaki Mule for the smaller stuff. It
dumps like a dump truck. I have an old Ford 9n tractor to drag the
really big stuff. My compost pile has a peach tree on it now.

That's amazing! It takes me 2 years plus to compost okra stalks. Sorry
to hear about the Elm.

Kate

You could have a tree guy deliver fresh chips to a pile. let them sit for
one year and you will have good quality mulch.


--
Sincerely,
John A. Keslick, Jr.
Consulting Arborist
http://home.ccil.org/~treeman
and www.treedictionary.com
Beware of so-called tree experts who do not understand tree biology.
Storms, fires, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions keep reminding us
that we are not the boss.

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
We recently moved out in the country. Nothing to do but we had to make a
compost pile. I admit, it's a handy place for garbage we would usually
put
in the can for a week. Yech!

Does it work? How much work is it? How often are you supposed to turn
it?
Do you keep it wet? Do you get enough compost to justify the work?

TIA

Steve

"SteveB" wrote in message
...
I want to thank everyone.

Particularly, I want to thank the level headed people who have given me so
much useful information.

You've gotten about 2% of the information you should have.

I want to thank everyone.

Particularly, I want to thank the level headed people who have given me so
much useful information. Many things I never thought about, or would have
thought about, or found in the vast wasteland of Google. You have shortened
my learning curve greatly, and I appreciate it.

This has been quite a ride on the rollercoaster of Usenet psycholgy, hasn't
it? Psychics, psychotics and just plain vanilla posters. A slice of real
life with the same mix.

I enjoy Usenet for this very reason. And I still say that I personally have
learned far more from this thread and all its contributors than I would have
had I had to dig it out of the Grand Canyon filled with information called
Google. And I think and hope that others have learned a thing or three.

And it still goes on with new and fresh information every day.

Kind of like a compost pile, eh?

Steve ;-)

Jangchub wrote:

Were you online in the late 80's when all we had was Prodigy and I
think the beginning of AOL? The Internet(s) were not available yet or
at least not to the ordinary joe shmo like me. In those early days
the frequent line was, "If it is on the Internet(s) it must be true!"
So, we've come a long way. At least we now know the majority is
bullshit, and the rare gens.

Victoria, were you on line in the 70's when all we had were ARPANet and
the Bell System equivalent and then USENET. We had a huge scientific
community on line, but much of the conversation was about our hobbies.

--
Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA
http://rhodyman.net