SteveB wrote:
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

I'm late to this thread, but have made a feeble start at composting.
When we broke sod on a plot, I picked out the clumps and threw them in a
large plastic bushel basket I found in somebody's trash and an old
wheeled plastic garbage can, both with holes in the bottom, left them
sit all summer. My son dumped them back by the alley, they are pretty
well broken down but didn't get hot enough to do whatever is beneficial
about that, so I don't know what I'll do with that stuff. By spring,
stuff will probably start sprouting in that, I levelled if off so it
doesn't look so untidy.

This fall, I got more ambitious, and rather than bag up umpteen bags of
leaves (bags don't cost that much but add up, fall pickup you don't need
a sticker for about 6 weeks), I built two chicken wire cages and staked
them 3 rebar stakes driven into the ground. In later years we have been
mulching them and letting them feed the lawn. Before that for years I
only raked the really bad piles that accumulated near the terrace, 10
bags or more, fed up with that, and let the rest lay. Grass and things
come right up through the fallen leaves in the spring.

Why should I give my leaves to the city and then go back down and "buy
them back" in the form of compost for $1.50 a bag? I did buy and stack
12 bags of that, used half already.

I started filling the cages, then my son mulched for me with the mower
the other day and used the catcher. Both bins are nearly full,
containing about 70 cubic feet of leaves, lots of neighbor's oak leaves
mixed in.

I liked the idea I read on the other thread about alfalfa slurry, but
hoses are put in basement for winter and just think I'll wait until
spring, see what mother nature does with them, and then decide what to
do. I'm expecting the levels to go down considerably over the winter,
may keep topping them off with oak leaves from the alley, plenty around
here.

It will help that more than half of their contents of leaves with a few
last grass clippings are shredded.

I have to keep things simple, don't have the energy, strength and
dedication to turn large piles of stuff, my tiller would work up piles
on the ground but I didn't want that mess, and I don't want ugly plastic
bins sitting around or the expense of them although they would be easier
to turn, would need several going.


Steve