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April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Posted by sylviatexas z8a Tx (My Page) on
Sat, Apr 2, 11 at 13:21

It's a little early in the day as yet, but so far the hungry microherd has gotten coffee grounds & filter, dog hair, pencil shavings, a couple of eggshells, & a boatload of nice green weeds.

& what have you fed *your* compost today???


Follow-Up Postings:

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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

live oak leaves that had collected in the gutter
kitchen scraps
weeds
water from the hose...it's been real dry here lately


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

The boys and I took a little walk to the compost pile today... :)


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Typical food scraps
Vacuum contents
Spring lawn rakings
Nothing all that exciting yet- will be borrowing a chipper soon to chip up x-mas tree and other woody material as well as sunflower stalks from last fall, etc


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

grass clippings from the front yard,
micro-shredded 2004 tax records,
15 meyer lemons that had been on the tree too long,
6 or 8 bearrs' limes,
coffee grounds & a handful of leaves for garnish!


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Three grocery bags of shredded papers & tissues

app. 3 gallons of chopped up dried leaves, stems, twigs, other dead stuff from the garden

contents of the compost bucket (coffee grounds, apple cores, pear cores, etc. etc.)

app. 1 gallon, maybe a less, of barren strawberry & garlic mustard

a whole bunch of spent malt from a local brewery

a piece of chicken


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

A whole car trunk full of paper lunch sacks, each filled with dried up vegetation samples, the lot coming from a range assessment done by the consulting firm my DD was doing data entry for.

I will confess to a puff of fatherly pride when graduated-from-college-no-longer-pig-tailed-and-now-higher-than-4-foot -tall DD brought that home to the pile.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Scrapings from the chicken coop's poop board, veggie scraps (on the menu tonight: cauliflower & potato peels), coffee grounds & filter, tea bags, a bag of grass clippings, a bushel of shredded bills/med. EOB's/credit card statements, dryer lint...the usual...


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

UCG& filters, Letuce roots from kitchen garden, 5 gal. of rabbit poo from my recyclers, a few scraps that were too nasty for the bunnies

Curt


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

"graduated-from-college-no-longer-pig-tailed-and-now-higher-than-4-foo t-tall DD brought that home to the pile."

Well, now, see, ya brung her up right!

Today I added kitchen scraps, coffee grounds & filters, couple of teabags, shredded/torn-up junk mail, a cardboard box full of cardboard boxes (get to your drugstore, dollar store, grocery store on the day they receive their shipments & set it out on the shelves!).


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

A whole bunch of coffee grounds, newspapers (I work for the local paper, although I don't like to put too much of the colored stuff in), potato peelings, paper towels, leaves from the fall, etc.

My boyfriend has a huge pile of branches in his back yard near the fence. I asked him what they were doing there, and he informed me that it was going to compost. [Yeah, in about 10 years. :)] Guess I have some teaching to do...

Kim


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

contents of the kitchen compost bucket

whole bunch of the usual weed: barren strawberry

grass + clover, with the soil, that had grown over stepping stones

some really old cardboard left lying in a garden bed all winter

contents of a can of cat food

contents of a jar of Nutella someone gave me -- whoo boy that stuff has a revolting smell, not to mention a texture like glue

a grocery bag full of shredded paper, dryer lint, etc

I still have lots of spent malt from the local brew pub + bags of coffee grounds from a local Starbucks. Gonna add that stuff in stages, with lots of browns. As it is, the newest pile is steaming after just 2 days! I am in heaven.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Just the usual kitchen scraps and shredded junk mail.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

cardboard with a bonus of cat spray!

Sunday newspaper inserts, junk mail, & office paper, torn up & wetted down to keep it from blowing away

coffee grounds/filters

tea bags


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

a headless vole


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

  • Posted by batya Israel north 8-9-10 (My Page) on
    Tue, Apr 12, 11 at 7:19

Regular kitchen scraps
Shredded paper from office as browns
old nettle tea
old plants that didn't make it through to Spring
Am only adding to the second pile, as the first has 6-7 potato volunteers and I'd like to what happens to them.

Both piles are unfinished and waiting for two weeks (for my garden elves - permaculture course members who keep meeting on our own 'cause we like each other. Every month we show up at someone's house and install, plant, and do garden elf things. End of this month is my turn!) Hopefully I will be ready, with plantable seedlings, more than half-ready compost or, if too unfinished, we'll dig it in alongside the beds.
Forked up all of the top layer of the lasagna bed put foolishly up against the trunk of a huge euc. Transferred it all to the lifeless, rocky "soil" in the new veggie bed, and dug it in. Boy does that place need OM. Found two worms. Started checklist of things to do before elf arrival. Cleaned kitchen for Passover. Waited for rain that has not come yet. Hand cleared hundreds of feet of monster weeds, leaving the wild medicinal herbs and some large monsters for the bees. Took advils.
Getting hair cut off today, will bring it back to put in pile. Will ignore looks/commnets of others in hair cutting place.
Peace


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Tea bags, cucumber peelings, and paper towels. I acutally had steam coming from it for the first time this year! :D

Sylvia, that's hilarious. Nobody but composters would be so excited about a urine covered piece of cardboard.

And Batya, great idea about the hair. What's the weather like there right now??

Kim


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Tea bags,
shredded oak leaves
chopped up carrots
orange peels
banana peels
old lettuce
lint from the dryer
some shredded newspaper


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Contents of shop vac (mostly dog and cat hair, dirt and pine needles)
contents of compost tumbler
orange and banana peels
used napkins and paper towels
ripped up food boxes..taco kit, jello, and brownie mix


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Urine and humanure.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Furry strawberries and paper towels.

Wanted to throw in a dead mouse from the neighbors, but got to thinking about what it ingested, and decided against it.

Kim


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Several large garbage bags full of used straw bedding from a horse barn, layered with partially composted leaves and garden cleanup waste from last fall, veggie peelings, egg shells, and coffee grounds.

I more than doubled the size of my modest pile today. I'm hoping the new additions will getting cooking again after our cold winter.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Alfalfa! Listened to a podcast interview of Helen Atthowe and she and the interviewer, Paul, said alfalfa has a really awesome ratio of what compost needs.

Question: My mom told me that banana peels were bad for the compost because they naturally repel bugs from breaking them down. True?

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Podcast (also talks about going


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Oh, I hope not, I threw that in today.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

I can't imagine banana peels *not* breaking down;
I put 'em under roses (roses like potassium just like we do!), & they've turned brown & shriveled to the point of invisibility within a day or so.

Today's pickings are slim;
torn-up wet cardboard, coffee grounds/filters, soggy teabags, dog hair, cold coffee with a bug in it.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

New to my compost today were some spent iris blossoms I deadheaded, and most of a bag of Tapatio Fritos that were too disgusting to eat.

I bought 3 Silkie chicks at the feed store yesterday, and all the poopy papers from their brooder will be going into the compost and/or the worm bin. Yay!

Banana peels break down just fine in my compost. We eat a lot of them here and the peels disappear very quickly in the bin.

--Maureen


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

A whole bunch of spent malt from a brewery

A whole big plastic bag full of coffee grounds + filters from a local Starbucks

Contents of the kitchen bucket

Contents of a vacuum bag

Dryer lint

Large paper bag of shredded paper + tissues and the like

About 5 gallons of chopped up dead stuff from the garden

A shrew that semi-feral kitty left me this a.m. She apparently loves me and is now showing it by leaving presents for me on the patio. Sigh


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

oh and if you have bunnies they may attack your flowers from time to time BUt bunnie poopies are awesome tomatoe food SUPER fertilizer!!!!


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

  • Posted by jolj 7b/8a-S.C.,USA (My Page) on
    Sun, Apr 24, 11 at 0:03

egg shell,coffee & tea grounds, fruit peelings,leaves,grass clippings,weeds,2 cases of sliced Mushrooms from a local pizza place.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Egg shells, coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, banana peels, lettuce, weeds, cardboard egg carton, strawberries, paper towels, kaiser rolls.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Today rotten potatoes and onions, coffee grounds and filters and urine. Yesterday lots of grounds, apples, rotten carrots and urine. All watered with nutrient water from big pot by back steps. Yummy. Oh, and thank you for the heads up about hair and dryer lint. That will be next.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Yesterday we were driving by a local market and I noticed five large transparant bags of something vegetative sitting beside a garbage can. Stop the motorcycle! Screech!!! Went closer and they were pure GUAVA PEELINGS. Oh yeah!!! I put one big bag in the front basket of the motorcycle and laid another one between my legs. The compost received the guava peels this morning after I gathered some dry leaves for layering.

-Paul


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

You might be a compost wacko...
if you carry bags of guava peelings on your motorcycle!

I think Paul wins the Compost Wacko prize this month!


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What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

A storm on Monday blew rain into the storm cellar...
which hadn't been swept out for a very long time.

so today's compost feast included what we scraped out of the cellar, a muddy mixture of grass clippings, old dust, & something that smelled like a ripe cow barn.

Also, of course, the usual:
coffee grounds & filters,
tea bags,
plate scrapings,
paper napkins,
torn-up newspaper...
& some droopy cut flowers left over from Easter, along with the greenish water from the vases.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

An old, thick fruit smoothie, raspberry jelly, an onion, carrots, junk mail, tons of coffee grounds, strawberries, napkins, and green pepper waste.

When the flooding goes down in the yard, I will mow and add grass clippings. The rain just won't stop!

Kim


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Yesterday I gathered up magnolia blossoms - filled a ~10 gallon bucket 2 1/2 times. There are easily as many blossoms down on the ground today.

Also contents of the kitchen compost bucket and various garden odds and ends -- the usual stuff.


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RE: April 2011 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?

Oh Sylvia, that's... that's... the nicest thing anyone's said to me this week. I'm just touched. I'll try to live up to the nomination. :- )

-Paul

Here is a link that might be useful: My Blog: Magic Compost


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