Composting Adventures

What's growing in your compost pile? I have several compost piles scattered around the yard that I use for garbage disposal and garden soil enhancement. Maybe I’m a bit eccentric but it is an adventure for me to go out in the yard and poke the compost to see what is growing there. I like turning the dark rich soil with a shovel. Compost is kind of an unsung hero that helps lock up carbon into the ground and improve garden productivity. (Plants take in CO2 and give out oxygen when they are alive and when dead the carbon is present in their materials)

There is a lot of information on how to get a pile started and layer the material properly. I’m not that technical about it and just pile all my organic materials together. It is not that hard to get started with it - I’ll share what I know from experience.

Here’s a picture of my uncovered compost pile. It doesn’t have much growing in it this time of year but the rats still tunnel through looking for food. I don’t put any materials that aren’t at least partially composted here so that I can keep from feeding them much. I used this pile for mostly weeds and dry materials.

Dealing with Critters

Anytime you have food in the yard things will come to eat it. It is important to try to keep this to a minimum so that you are not disturbing the neighborhood. I was trying to bury my table scraps and waste directly in the ground in piles but this was not working out too well. No matter how well buried things are the rats will tunnel into the pile and get to the scraps.

I’ve heard you should never put meat scraps in the pile because of this reason too. I love taking pictures of large birds so this is a bit of a temptation but the smell and the possible negative results would not be good. Besides I’m mostly vegetarian so I would need to canvas the neighborhood asking for spare moldy meat and that might cause some concerns. (Bears love fermenting meat too so I think it is best not to try this)

My neighbors were really nice and gave me this great plastic tumbler. They said it was too big for them to turn. It really solved the problem for me and seems very rat resistant. I put mostly food scraps in it with some paper and dry weed materials. I put a bit of soil in it too to get the worms started.

Here’s a picture of the plastic bin. There are lots of worms and bugs in it. When you take the lid off a swarm of insects come out. I turn it occasionally to let it mix and get more air. It usually doesn’t smell much. If your pile starts to stink turning it or adding more dry material will help.

Looking inside the tumbler

Here's a picture of the inside of that compost pile. There's some potatoes growing in the top left. I should have probably planted those potatoes but they were so dried up I didn’t think they would grow.

The white material is all cabbage that we were trying to make sauerkraut out of but it ended up tasting really bitter so we ended up tossing it out. Right after we started fermenting the cabbage it got really foamy on top. Sauerkraut usually comes out good but the last two times we tried to make it we had issues. I’m not sure what happened this time but I think there might have been some type of contamination on the cabbage. Or maybe something was in the tap water or we used too much salt.

Sometimes little mushrooms grow inside of here and a variety of tomatoes, sunflowers or other plants may sprout. It always looks a bit different when I open it up. I love going out in the yard and seeing how it is doing.

Heating up the pile

Getting the compost hot can help kill the weed seeds and make the process go faster. My attempts never get that hot though. If things get too hot all the worms will die so I haven’t really tried going that route.

I’ve seen a pile of wood chips heat up so much it started to smoke. I’ve heard silage can catch on fire too – read details on why hay catches fire.

So it is probably best not to try to heat up the pile too much in a neighborhood. One could imagine the problems it would cause if it heated it up so much that methane gas started forming on black carbon crusty contents. Adding a little charcoal, sulfur and a good oxidant might heat it up a bit too much and get composting banned by the bureaucrats along with gardening, raising chickens, etc…

A little horse manure seems to help heat the pile up and not cause issues though. When my friend added some it really made the pile get smaller fast.

The Advantages of Composting

• Garbage can does not smell as badly
• Adds carbon from plant material to the soil
• Helps the garden grow better
• Worms love it – they help the yard and garden grow too
• Entertaining (your results may vary)
• Composted materials do not need to be hauled away – saves fuel
• Saves on the cost of fertilizer

This bug wasn’t in the compost pile but showed up on the window while I was writing this.

Image Sources:
Images were taken on my Galaxy S7 phone. The some were enhanced by using software.
Formating template graphics from @sykochica.