nyc sod-

One time when I was desperate for browns, I bought a bale of wood shavings for rodent litter. It worked really well. The pile stopped stinking.

Deanna

We've started a new pile now with the new 3 pile bin system and scored a couple boxes of fruit and veggie trimmings from the grocery store. I was so thrilled to get this stuff and hope to get more.

I'm also using the coffee filters from all the coffee grounds we stockpiled. There are a lot of grounds attached to the filters so are a combo of greens and browns.

I'm waiting on our lawn to grow a bit more so I can have the clippings. Have already told DH he has to use the bag for the first cut at least. He'd rather not but I already gave that !@#$% grass some coffee grounds so I *deserve* those clippings! haha I've had a strong dislike for lawns for decades, but DH likes grass so we sort of compromise. I do love the clippings tho, very good "green" and the worms love them.

I'm pretty new to this composting thing so still figuring my way around.

Today I added coffee grounds, old moldy strawberries, 2 wobbly stalks of celery, some rhubarb stalks, 1/2 a red onion, and a bunch of pansies and snapdragons that were past their prime and needed to be replaced by summer annuals. Mixed well into the exisitng pile and topped with mulched oak leaves.

I'm hoping it wasn't too much in the way of greens but I'm also excited to see if this heats the pile up!

Ten coconut leaves (each weigths about 20 pounds), and some kudsu vines

Two bags of Starbucks UCG's

another bag of last falls leaves
yet more grass clippings, and I just mowed thursday
weeds/trimmings from tulips
more UCG
more Rhubarb trimmings/leaves
bucket from kitchen (egg shells, bananna peels, green pepper trimmings, sweet potatoe trimmings, dryer lint)

pile is about half full :-)

The gardeners (I don't do the lawn) were by recently so plenty of grass cuttings and some leaves and dead flowers.
egg shells
strawberry tops
out of control jasmine
pineapple tops
cantaloupe rinds
UCG
dirt
sawdust

fresh clippings from neighbor's shrubs
eggshells
coffee grounds, filters, & leftover cold coffee
used tea bags
shredded office paper (so happy-I get this stuff once a week from an accountant's office that I pass on the way to work!)

Small box of mixed veggie trimmings from the grocery store today as well as our usual kitchen scraps. Apparently our squirrels are also enjoying these goodies as they leave bits on the lawn. !@#$% squirrels.

DH fixed one of the little darlings recently tho. Squirrel had learned he could climb the 6' pole the birdfeeder is on. DH had covered the pole with galvanized metal years ago to stop squirrels but it's become less slippery over time so the critter has been climbing it and feasting on seeds. DH oiled the metal the other day and it's quite amusing to watch Mr. Squirrel trying to climb. LOL he gets only about a foot up and slides down. Don't feel too sorry for squirrels, the birds drop so many seeds the squirrels don't go hungry. As well they regularly feast in my compost.

kitchen scraps from home
kitchen scraps from work
kitchen scraps from coworker
~4 of the clear trash bags UCG from Starbucks
weeds & grass clippings (maybe totalling 5 gal. lol)
DH's daily contribution of liquid gold

turned the piles after a few days of steady rain and saw STEAM GLORIOUS STEAM. The old orchard box that I've turned into a compost bin and piled deep with unchopped leaves/UCG/kitchen scraps and thought would take forever to "sink" has shrunk by about 1/3, had lots of steam and an ashy colored center, and smells soooooo good. This is also the bin that DH "contributes" to versus my smaller bin which is cooking on it's own but no where near as fast. Needless to say, DH is very proud lol.

coffee grinds for me, I also turned today, had a whole onion in there that had grown countless roots, so I chopped that all up... compost feeding compost.

down from a pillow my child urped on
two rotten onions
some very fuzzy salad
shrub trimmings nabbed from my neighbor
potato peelings
TP tube

from the office-

leftover cut flowers
coffee grounds & filters
office paper
leftover doughnuts & the sugar-saturated carton they came in

who has leftover doughnuts?

banana peels, tea bags, pt roll, shredded paper.

lots and lots of crab shells, crushed lovingly with my foot

Heads, skins and entrails from a half-dozen speckled trout (thanks to a fishing friend) topped with a splash of lacto bacillus. YUM.

Sifted out my first batch of finished compost yesterday. Smelled sooooo good! Got a whole wheelbarrow full too :)

Unfinished chunks from sifted compost went back in the bin.
Weeds from garden
grass clippings
kitchen scraps
layered with leaves, UCG, and a good does of water

Can't wait for this 2nd batch to start steaming!

Pulled weeds

All of the leftover snacks from an event that I'll never eat. Sure I'll take the leftovers... not to eat though:
Ritz Peanut Butter Crackers
Goldfish (the cracker)
pesky weeds from my garden
more coffee grounds

1 Yard cow poop,2 yards old peet moss, 1 six pack of bud(used)

yards??

*yards*???

I am green with envy.

"1 six pack of bud(used)"

snork!

I added:

sawdust from a neighbor's woodworking shop

dried-up tomato sauce

icky canned pineapple & juice

eggshells

banana peels

4 o'clock trimmings;
those things grow very tall here & shade out shorter plants

Grass clippings. Lots of grass clippings. Lots and lots....when your grass is very high and you can't use the mulching thinger on the lawn mower and you have to make multiple passes over a few days, you end up with lots and lots of grass clippings. Grass Mountain is currently roughly 12 long x 4 x 4. Or maybe 12 x 4 x 5....does it really make a difference at this point? And there's more grass to rake up! I'm currently breaking up last fall's tomato vines, which I'd piled on a new bed. I have a wheelbarrow full, but that's not nearly enough browns. Time to pull out some stored leaves from the barn I think. Oh, and I rooted round in Grass Mountain yesterday....it's getting very warm!

As a beginner at composting I have a few questions, I have been using table scraps, weeds with soil on roots, shredded paper and a lot of grass clippings. I am hoping to get some hay this weekend but how do I prevent smells and flys?

100lbs of Starbucks Used Coffee Grounds....ummm, mocha smelling!

how do I prevent smells and flys?

You need to have more brown things than green things. A simple rule of thumb is about 3 times more brown than green.

To prevent flies, keep your green things (particularly table scraps) covered with a thick layer of browns.

co-worker's kitchen scraps, including some "beyond stinky" old potatoes

kitchen scraps from breakroom

strawberry tops, onion peels, watermelon rinds, moldy parts of some morrel mushrooms (I almost felt like I'd sinned), used Kleenex, grocery receipts, papertowels/napkins, banana peels, avacado skins, weeds, grass clippings, invasive thistles pulled from the field (chopped & buried deep), old applesauce, and some disgusting science experiments discovered in the back of the fridge.

oh and, of course, the DH's daily contribution of liquid gold.

All sprinkled over with UCG and topped off with layer of last fall's leaves

The large orchard bin is now full again and I can't wait to see it's level drop! I even drove by the fruit packing warehouse and got a second bin, just cuz I'm having such a good time playing in the dirt lol.

Egg shells (with a sandpapery shell, one of the many cool-looking eggs I got from a local woman who keeps hens)

Weeds!

Sunflower Stalks!

Weeds!

Bermuda grass! oops, I already said weeds...

cold coffee with a bug in it.

whatsamatta here?

y'all ain't composting slimy tater salad, icky beer, & such???

Today I fed my compost pile...

papery "wrapping" off some crinum lilies a neighbor gave me;
they hadn't been disturbed in 40 years, literally, & many layers of the papery "onion skin" had accumulated.

whole bunch of clumps of weedy grass from same neighbor

cold coffee & grounds & filter

banana peels

orange rinds

I've been chatting with the other businesses who back onto the courtyard where my garden is located to contribute kitchen scraps to the compost.

My goodness, we sure eat a lot of bananas!

Clearly, I need to learn to read what I've written before I publish. That last posting made no sense at all.

The scent of decomposing banana must have addled my brain.

Three very large garbage bags of the curly pollen thingies that fall from the oak trees that line our street. I took a wide broom and swept piles of the stuff off the curb. My neighbors thanked me profusely even though I confessed my motive.

Having read the multiple threads about bread in the CP, I realize I'm opening a can of worms (fresh from same CP), but I put about 6 or 7 boxes of moldy bread in my pile yesterday, watered it real good, and covered it with last fall's leaves. Today,while my son and I were doing a little weeding and watering of the garden he mentioned the CP stunk. I didn't smell anything offensive, but I walked to the CP and could smell the "stink" of a healthy CP, warm, earthy and glorious. I turned over a spade of compost and saw steam for the very first time. Then I stuck my hand in, elbow deep, to feel the warmth. I got so excited I made my son and daughter feel it too. They weren't as impressed as I was, but thought it was neat to see the "smokin'" compost.

To Annapat whereever you are, I must thank you for the great idea about adding bread to a CP. Somewhere you theorized about the effects of a large hunk of bread in a dog's water bowl, and while spraying my bread laden CP with the hose, I realized it would be even easier to just drop any more surplus bread into a large plastic tub full of water, and when full just dump it all into the CP. I'll let you know how it works out.

Thanks,
Randy

Just what is DH? Divorced husband, directional hose, dumb husband, Dufus urea spreading Hunk, dinky horse, deliously handsome or what? Help me understand.

wow Randy, you're either really brave or something else. Most of us do it and don't talk about it here.

Bruce I always took it for dear husband or dear wife, YMMV.

This morning I added:

yesterday's tea

coffee grounds/filter

*weeds*!
*major* weeds!

4 o-clocks

something my neighbor informed me was poke salad-
dang! & I thought it was a tall verbena bestowed upon me by the garden gods via a bird's intestinal tract...

Lots of weeds
trimmings from shrubs
ucg's
neighbors batch of fruit rinds and ucg's from her church kitchen

Excuse me, but the mention of BREAD gave me a planarium flashback! gurp!

rj, I'm sure I'm something else, definitely not brave.

and today I got home and my neighbor had finally mowed his lot, the grass was a couple feet tall. Half an hour of raking and I increased my CP by about 75% with fresh cut grass, and that was all within 3 feet of the property line. I'm spending more time playing in my compost than I am in the veggie garden. Is there a 12 Step program I need to look into?

Barbie, sorry about the flashback.

Scored two silver bags and one HUGE garbage bag of UCG's from cruising Starbucks's. AHH, cruising sure takes on a different meaning that it did 40 years ago...(sigh!)

A 6' x 8' , 1912-woven Kashan wool rug with orange juice stains, a Louis XIV silk tapestry with an annoying moth hole right smack in knee cap of the plump dame who is eating grapes, and two chocolate filled croissants, air-mailed from Patesserie Chez Edwaurd in the Third Arrondisment. I mean, AS IF I'd eat a chocolate filled croissant.

It got coffee grounds egg shells onion butts, the usual stuff and while turning it, it gave me back a screwdriver from last summer that it apparently didnt appreciate.

I seem to remember poking around in the shredder with it, musta fell in the paper pile.

:)

Haven't fed our compostables to anything except the garbage - the HORROR of it! We're traveling so don't have a choice. I thot of burying it beside our campsite but some dog (maybe ours!) would dig it up and we'd be fined.

Anyhow I have some loads of horse manure/sawdust waiting for me at home which I will start "playing" with shortly. Should be fun.

egg shells, watermelon rinds, strawberry tops, salad scraps, 1/2 roastbeef with swiss, bacon, onions, and yummy avocado on homemade sourdough bun (i almost cried), bones from Friday Night Chickenwings Extraveganza, various paper products that accompanied said feast, old receipts from cleaning out my purse, TP and PT rolls, empty 50# flour bag, lemon/lime slices, and a few gulps of beer I was unable to finish.

Turned the large orchard bin adding the above ingredients together with thin layers of my nearly gone leaves from last fall and the ever-present UCGs. Topped with a good soaking (and, of course, DH's contribution of liquid gold) and am letting simmer for a few days before I turn again. The bottom is already looking and smelling like black gold!

"A 6' x 8' , 1912-woven Kashan wool rug with orange juice stains, a Louis XIV silk tapestry with an annoying moth hole right smack in knee cap of the plump dame who is eating grapes"

Ah, David, as much as I love compost that really hurt! ;-) I'm sure I'd have had to thoroughly wash that rug and the tapestry and repurpose them for my eclectic home decor.

I find it easier to excuse the chocolate filled croissant altho I'm also a dedicated gourmand!

Well, it wasn't today, but last weekend my bf and I brewed beer together for the first time, and all the spent grains went into the pile. For years, I've been kind of half-heartedly been contributing to my compost heaps as I've had very little luck with getting them to produce very much in the past. I was running out of bagged compost and went to my bin to see if I could scrounge a bit from the back bottom of the box, and lo and behold a huge mound of compost spilled out! I was thrilled!

It's a bit stinky right now, and very moldy (I didn't realize the grains would be considered a "green"? - wasn't sure what to categorize them as), but it's cooking like crazy!

Unedible parts of a really sweet terrific pineapple

Small bits of raw broccoli, celery and squishy grape tomatoes from a veggie tray

Weeds

Egg Shells

Onion skins

Lots of rain (not me, God did that!) with good nitrogen from LOTS of lightening! (is that right?)YUMMY!

Oak leaves, and those oak pollen blooms that stain the driveway brown. Grass clippings, kitchen scraps.

Coffee grounds are brown in color, but are they considered "green" in a compost pile?

Rockydoc, coffee grounds are a "green" AKA a nitrogenous addition to compost. Useful as a lawn fertilizer also.

Our compost is fortunate to have the addition of a couple of pounds of old dry cat food. That should kick start one of my new bins.

Three lemons that had gone moldy (sooooo sad to have to waste them, but hey, at least they went into the compost bin and not a landfill)

Spinach that was a little slimy

Chopped up banana peel (that's compostable, right?)

Paper towel that I had mopped up spilled green smoothie with

The last of last fall's dead leaves and a bit of wheat straw

I was going to ask my next-door neighbor for some of his grass clippings, but then I remembered he uses chemicals on his lawn!

Just taking a mid-afternoon break from creating another bin full of sawdust/horse manure from the stables layered with grass clippings with some of the old dry cat food buried in the center. Hope to see that baby steamin' before long. Will do another bin with the same mix.