I've considered verimicomposting, but I'm rather anti-worms in the house - I just can't bring myself to keep them in the kitchen and the garage is too cold during the winter.

So, I checked into other options and found the NatureMill composter. I've been considering it for a while and I've seen some on eBay for a relatively reasonable price (under the $299 they charge on the NatureMill website) and I think I'm ready to suck it up and get one. Has anyone tried one or known anyone who has tried one?

Impatient composters & their money are soon parted - Gumby said it.

Gumby - You really don't need to be rude. I am not an impatient composter. I'm not looking for faster compost, just better compost. I built piles last year with all my yard and kitchen waste, turned them, babysat them, etc. and this sring the grass and such had barely broken down. The piles weren't too small, they were't too wet or dry, the thermometer said that they were at a good hot temp, etc. I just can't get stuff to break down. I think a year is a reasonable amount of time for compost to break down. I don't appreciate you saying that I'm being impatient, it's been a year after all. I've wasted so much time and energy on these piles it's insane! I just can't handle the stress of them anymore. They're like a part time job! I need something easier.

I'd appreciate if anyone who has actually tried the composter would reply and the people who just feel the need to be mean and call me names refrain from posting.

I haven't tried the composter that you mentioned... but I find it odd that you said "I just can't get stuff to break down."

You don't have to do anything, nature does it all the time without mixing, without measuring the temperature, without proper moisture...unless you live in the arctic circle or the mojave desert, I have a hard time believing that stuff isn't breaking down.

Perhaps you could describe in more detail why you think you are not getting good results?

From what I have read on this forum and other forums, it seems the commercial units are much less forgiving when it comes to ratios, moistures and odors than outdooor piles. I'm doubtful that you would get "better" results from the unit that you mentioned.

joepyeweed - Well, it all comes down to my compost looking nasty. Okay, well "nasty" is a bit extreme. Perhaps more disappointing. I built several piles of grass clippings, peat moss (left over from a project), UCG, kitchen scraps, etc. This spring I had a pile of half rotten grass clippings with no sign of the kitchen scraps. I obviously can't use half digested grass clippings in my garden, so it just has to sit there for another year, I guess, although, I'm tempted to dump the whole mess over the fence into the woods and give up.

So, as a failed composter I'm really disappointed. I really thought I was doing a good thing by devotedly saving all my kitchen scraps (and by "kitchen scraps" I mean veggie and fruit peelings, over the hill bread, etc.) and composting them, but if all I'm going to have for my efforts is a mess of half digested grass clippings, I'm so over it.

Should I just skip the grass clippings and just let my kitchen scraps rot in a pile and eventually be absorbed into the soil and give up on getting useable compost?

So for every bucket full of kitchen scraps and grass clippings, you should have three buckets full of leaves, shredded junk mail or straw.

The peat isn't really a brown or a green... its decomposed organic matter, a form of compost, in essence. Its not going to decompose any further.

You can probably rejuvenate your poor pile simply by mixing in some browns.

Another problem with your compost pile could be that it wasn't big enough. You really want a pile to be at least 3ft*3ft*3ft so it has sufficient mass to heat up.

Believe it or not, you really don't have to do all of that turning and fussing. Try and get a better 1 to 3 ratio with the greens to browns, build it at least 3*3*3, water it if it gets really dry, and in a year you'll have great compost!

PJ

I am going to agree that is sounds like you don’t have enough carbon (browns) in your pile. Without a source of browns (leaves, paper, cardboard) the microbes have nothing to eat. Grass (greens) is the fuel microbes use to get energy to eat the carbon (browns). Thus, if you have only greens you have not given your microbes anything to eat, so they have been sitting there starving for food (carbon). When I place both greens and browns together the party starts, and in the end I get compost. The real beauty is that I only have to use @ 1/3 the amount of greens (nitrogen) and 2/3 the amount of browns (carbon) and I end up with pile of soil revitalizer for my garden.

The problem is timing; an abundance of greens are available in the spring/summer, and an abundance of browns are available in the fall/winter. Members have come up with some ingenious ways of having greens in the fall and browns in the summer; that is where the "wacko" part comes into play at times. Each location (zone) calls for different techniques/plans, thus each member has to work it out for him or herself.

Finally, weather to make compost using the hot (fast) or cold (slow) method is a personal decision as well. Both are easy to do in their own right once one gets the hang of it. However, both methods are best done with a mixture of browns and greens for best results. When most members start off composting they are too hard on themselves because they do something minor wrong; pile too wet, too dry, not big enough, not enough browns/greens in a close enough ratio, or in a hurry for results. These problems work themselves out in time, if one allows him or herself enough time to get the hang of it.

IMO SFG Newbie, you now officially know what happens when a compost pile is lacking in browns; I am willing to wager you will spot that problem quicker the next time it happens (if you don’t give up too quickly). Rest assured, there will be more lessons to learn as we journey together on this composting adventure, IMO the reward is well worth the effort…

Blutranes

I too think that gumby was joking around - and, it does not diminish the frustration that you obviously feel over your compost practices.

Rest assured, your "attempts" are not failed - they're just a work in progress. I think Blutranes is right on the money. I would follow his advice. And, if it were me, in the meantime while I'm finding "my groove," I'd buy the compost I need from the garden store, or get it from the town's free recycling/composting.

And, if, after sleeping on it, you really really don't want to take Blutranes advice, and you really really want to buy a commercial bin, and if you don't find any good referrals for it in this forum now, don't fret - try a search in the little search box in the upper right hand corner of gardenweb.com. Bottom line, if you like NatureMill, get it. Try it. It won't be perfect - but making your own bin isn't perfect either. If it keeps you composting - and thus, adding "gardener's gold" to your garden - and replenishing the ground w/vegetative waste that'll become useful rather than it going "to waste," then by all means do it!

I haven't seen the NatureMill much - but just checked it out - that's cool that it can be used indoors. You should know that a lot of people's compost still comes out ugly - until (if) they screen it. [BTW, mine usually comes out ugly - and btw, this was my first spring w/my compost pile, and it didn't decompose very much over the winter - but I think everyone's experience is different - it just made me decide that I'm not into winter composting b/c I enjoy it & can get good compost out of it in the summer.]

And, I wouldn't expect the NatureMill compost to come out of the bottom bucket looking like it does in the pix. As others have said, the containers seem to be less forgiving if the rations, moisture or air is "off," thus resulting in (usually) more slimy sludge-like stuff.

Hope this helps, wishing you,
All the Best, Tree

I also agree with the comment that containers are much less forgiving of mistakes. I have one (not the brand you mention) and my open piles consistently outperform it. I have to be very careful with the balance of ingredients, the amounts added, and much more conscious of its moisture levels for it to work at all. The ingredients you listed, in most any closed container would not have composted either and would have become far more "stinky".

That said, IF kitchen scrapes are your primary contribution then perhaps the Nature Mill would be ideal for you. It doesn't produce much compost, uses electricity, and you have to buy the carbon additives capsules or have access to sawdust so a bit complex and expensive for my tastes. But from what I have read about it, will handle kitchen scraps. My primary concern with it would be an infestation of fruit flies - they say no problem - yeah, right. ;)

Dave

SAMM
Size of the bin 3-5', I like 4 foot diameter, 18" to 24" hi
Air and Moisture
Material mix small particles of good mix of greens and browns.

Bob
Owner of one Tumbler, one Jerry Baker plastic bin, and seven happy mesh bins.

*meaning, a compost-making contraption, not a person who composts

All the Best, Tree

tkharp - Oh good! Once you try it out, would you mind posting about your experiences? Thanks for the review! It was really helpful. I wish I'd had one to play with when I was living in my high-rise apartment in Montreal! Kudos to you for composting in the city!

blue_berry1 - I'm still here. I just got lazy for a few days and didn't check the forum. I'm glad to find another NatureMill composter. Once you get your first batch you'll have to tell us about how it comes out. It's nice to hear that it's working well for you.

I kept it in the kitchen until guests came to stay for a week, when we moved it to it's current location: the garage. I don't mind the odor but didn't want my guests to deal with it. It smells when I open the top to add scraps - minimal because I do it at night and then leave the room. It also smells when I pull "finished" compost from the bottom tray. Not minimal. That smell lasts longer because we have the door open longer. More about "why the smell" later.

I say "Finished" compost because I have been pulling it out before it's really cured enough. I use it a LOT. And when I pull the compost from it, I take it to my garden compost pile and add it to that to continue composting. Prior years I have only had outdoor worm-run compost piles, which were GREAT, but I'd been trying for hot piles. Never succeeded. Ever. This year I have a hot pile too. I can now add seeds & weeds that run and root all over to this pile and they are not a problem.

Also, I have a smallish yard and the prior compost piles were not near my door, so I'd stock up on compost to take out and it would get moldy and gross and I didn't want to deal with it so I'd end up throwing it in the outside garbage. Now it goes into the NatureMill every other night.

Why the smell? I am really getting an education using this composter. It takes carefully managing the browns to greens. So I'm learning what works and what doesn't and my outdoor pile is benefiting from what I'm learning. Nothing like some nasty odors in your house to make you jump to attention and find out where to come up with more browns!

In the end, I really don't think the NatureMill is for everyone. But it is for me. I'm composting 3 times what I had been, I'm successful with it, I can handle the smell when I'm doing it wrong, and I'll be composting through the winter this winter. There are lots of ways to accomplish all of that. My way is a NatureMill.

Best of luck to you what ever you choose.

Re. the compost: I *have* been making compost with another container system since the early '80s. The first couple of years were pretty weird, because there wasn't a lot of info that I could find on what to do to get GOOD compost. So it was hit or miss, with a lot of "miss."

I've done shredded newspapers a LOT, since neither place I've lived here in California had an on-site compostable tree, and I never thought to enlist others in my search for leaves. Until now...heh heh...

So I know what it's like to make compost without leaves, straw, or any of that nice stuff. With kitchen waste + newspapers, period.

What saved me was screening my compost. I made a from-scratch screen with 1/2-inch hardware cloth staple-gunned to a 24' x 30' or so frame made out of 1" x 2" scraps.

The good compost, the ready-to-use stuff, fell through the screen and looked absolutely beautiful. The other stuff--the yucko stuff--stayed on top and I just threw it back into my compost system for the next time.

It is possible for even finely shredded newspaper to clump. It happens. Just break it up with a garden fork whenever you come across a clump.

In good years (I've been dealing with chronic pain since 1984 due to a bicycle accident; The Car Wreck was 1995), I turn my compost quarterly and screen out whatever's ready to use. Everything else goes back in for the next time.

Since I'm always tossing in kitchen stuff, etc., I just think of my compost as a continuous system. It is NEVER finished; I just harvest what is.

Good luck, with both the compost and the SFG.

Cynthia

I'm not giving up--yet--because I still love the idea of this machine. Though my husband would like to chuck it out the window for the smell. Only time will tell...

As for the composter itself, I jsut got mine last week and it's been an interesting experience. It's super easy to use, and after an initial mishap with overloading it with coffee grounds/filters that I'd been saving for its arrival, it's been working perfectly. There was a BAD odor after the coffee grounds incident, but after I added more sawdust pellets and some baking soda it's been smooth sailing. I'm going to give it a couple days to finish composting what's already in there, and then I'm going to start a new load coffee ground free. They just take up too much room. I have learned that you have to put in the two handfuls of sawdust pellets and 2 tbsp of baking soda at the beginning, and when adding wet stuff I add an extra handful of sawdust pellets for good measure. After adding the extra sawdust pellets there's been practically no smell at all, and no sour smells, just an "earthy" sort of smell.

So, all in all, after my learning curve batch, things are going quite well and I'm looking forward to my next batch of straight veggie/fruit scraps (plus sawdust pellets!!).

Eillen's post is very typical of posts that I have read from many other composters on various gardening sites (besides this one). It just seems in general, the tumbler type units are very picky, smelly and have maintenance issues.

Even so, good luck and keep us posted with the progress with your composter.

If I wanted to spend 300-400 dollars to baby my compost instead of just sitting back and letting the machine do the work, I would just have stuck to turning my hot compost pile and buying a nintendo WII instead

I don't get the perfect compost you see in the pictures either and I live down here in Louisiana where the climate says everything should rot. I know part of my problem is that I don;t shred everything into microscopic pieces first. I use whole leaves and alot of them are oak (which have their own layer of scotchguard to keep water out). I add shredded paper but it I put too much in one spot without mixing it will clump. I add grass clippings and coffee grounds by the pound plus everything from my kitchen that I can.

If this goes into one of my big fenced compost piles (4' X4" ring of field fence) and I keep it watered and then turn it every 3 or 4 weeks, I get to use a pretty degraded looking leaf mulch mixed with black stuff...after several months. But you know what? it works just fine in my garden, flower beds, as potting soil for container plants etc.

So basically don't sweat it.... if you find clumps as you shovel the stuff to use, toss it into a second pile, chop at it with a shovel and put it in a new batch of compost stuff.

I also have a compost tumbler and a black square plastic bin. The bin seems to heat up better than the big pile, and the tumbler seems to break some of the pieces and mix the stuff up better,but it still doesn't give me what they show in the advertisements.

I never get anything like the pictures in recipe books either. :)

I suspect there is a tad bit of embellishment in any advertisement and compost tumblers would be no different. It can be done, otherwise it would be false advertising, but it does take time.

Lloyd

I remember once when I was a kid and was watching TV. An ad for some game that we had came on and all the kids were laughing and having a great time. One of my brothers turned to my mom and said, "That can't be the same game we have. Nobody's fighting."

Yes, the machine can be finicky but if you FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS, it works fine. I'll admit that I burned through my first machine by not doing so - NatureMill sent me a replacement. My new moto: Nothing stringy, only 1 inch pieces of stuff (my scissors are now very active! much better than using a knife to chop things up), don't overload. If it's too wet or smells sour, I add more pet pine litter or cross-shredded newspapers and baking soda. Above all else - being patient helps. There were times when I was tinkering the inside of the mixing chamber with a screw driver and a knife trying to free up a jam, instead of waiting forty-eight hours like the instructions advised - that wasn't a good idea and contributed to my first machine's demise. If you stick to the motto, you shouldn't be getting jams. I love it when the organic waste gets cooking and really steams up!

I've been using the NatureMill Pro for a few months now. We do a lot of cooking using fresh veg and eat lots of fruits so we generate a large amount of organic waste. Add to that coffee grinds and egg shells. In fact, for just two people, I find that my NatureMill is not fast enough to process the organic non-meat waste we generate. The waste from eating just one watermelon or a couple of cantalopes will keep the machine busy for at least a week. In the meantime, I generate several small bags of organic waste waiting to be processed! So I get backlogged regularly.

In two months I have generated 3 trays of compost and will have a fourth in a couple of days. It's rich, black and looks like a nice soil. There is one full tray in the machine being heat-cured, and I have the contents from two trays sitting in planters on the balcony being air-cured. I intend to air-cure the compost for at least two weeks before I put it on top of my growing suger snaps and tomato plants.

I can comfortable say that I've reduced my landfill waste by around 70% since I bought the NatureMill.

As for the future, I'm going to add small chopped up pieces of corn cob and used kleenex tissues next.

So far, I haven't had any problem with my machine. I did have one jam but it was because I put in a mango pit. The instructions say DON'T put any hard items (i.e. chicken/steak bones, avocado pits or any fibery item that can wrap around the mixing bar) so it's my fault. This composter works really well but you do have to follow the instructions.

I found that balancing the green-brown matter isn't that difficult. Every time I open the lid to add foods scraps, I just look at the compost in the machine. If it looks wet, usually mean too much green, I add more brown stuff. I don't have a lot of dry leaves or shredded paper so I use wood pallets that come with the machine as a starter kit. If it looks dry, I add less wood pallets. Compost is supposed to smell like dirt, mushroom or earthy. If it doesn't smell like that, it usually means the compost is too acidic (too much green), I just add more baking soda to reduce the acidity and make it alkaline. Basically, if the compost look wet or smell a little funky, just add more wood pallets and baking soda. I follow this formula and I haven't had any bad experience with my compost. Hope this work for you!

http://compostingmadeeasy.yuku.com/