Yesterday, while driving down the street, I saw a bunch of black garbage bags full of grass clippings. Before I realized what I was doing, I had stopped the van, and loaded up as many as I could (I already had a large bag of shredded paper from work) and headed home. All the time laughing at the foolishness of throwing away such precious material. Now, I've always kept my eye out on trash day looking for treasures, like the time I picked up a perfectly good Nordic Track, or baby stroller, or a hall tree that just needed some new hooks. This has always embarrassed my wife, but, since I was bringing "useful" or resellable things home, she tolerated my trash picking, but if she knew I was picking up OPGCs I think she'd have me committed.

Do I keep this secret from my wife, or fess up and risk 72 hours of observation at the local mental hospital?

Dan

Seriously, though, you can tell people without fear of committal, but you won't escape their judgment. Your wife will worry in the middle of the night, after you've fallen asleep, your friends will raise their eyebrows at each other when you're not looking, and they'll start calling you 'Captain Compost' behind your back. You'll be an object of ridicule, but you probably won't be committed. Unless you start talking about 'the Microherd', that is. Then all bets are off. It's best to only talk about 'the Microherd' here, among friends, and even then maybe not.

You don't have to be nuts to be a compost enthusiast, but it really comes in handy!

Lloyd

ron

Has anybody ruined there garden/ by using such material?

I can't remember the manufacturer, but last year some compost bags were sold that were contaminated with...hmmm...chlorifpyros or some such chemical and lots of plants died. I'm sure others can remember better than I can today.

Dan

DH only complains if I don't get right to dealing with them since they go cabbagey quickly in 90+/90+ weather.

DH likes to ride his bike around town. Back when I was making lasagna beds, he used to scope out the neighborhoods and report back with sitings of bags full of leaves & clippings. Is that true love, or what...

Good luck with your pile I just scored 5 yards of fresh maunure tonight!

Now, we're going down to visit next week, for a whole week, and I'm wondering whether I should bring lidded 5 gallon buckets with me to collect compostables. A whole week! Think what I could score!

I concur with Dan on grass, though. If they aren't mulching it in and are so ignorant as to bag it for a landfill then they may also be the type that are drenching the lawn with chemicals. Unless, of course, it was someone that just moved in and had 2 foot tall grass because the home was a foreclosure and nobody mowed it for a long time or something. Mulching in that instance is not a good idea. And the grass is likely untreated at all in that instance, too.

Bagging it is illegal here. In fact, I don't know of anyone that wants to anyway. Nobody around me composts, but most are in the know enough to be aware that mulching is best and saves money. Not aloud to bag leaves here for landfills either.

When said compost was used as a soil amendment or mulch.

ron

A problem with reading safety reports is that you have to relearn your own language thanks to corporate influence on redefining words in laws. Much like the current fight over the Monsanto influenced farm bill. For example, people usually assume that if a chemical in an herbicide is said to become inert, it means it will be inactive. Not the case. People misunderstand the word "inert" because it is redefined by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. The very fact of it's redefinition should make all people concerned of the integrity of the act in the first place and the integrity of the claims of safety of certain chemicals. In chemistry, inert is understood as chemically inactive. Redefined by our government to put money before human safety it only means it will no longer affect the target. Has nothing to do with being safe to humans or animals or chemical inactivity in general. Funny, this is the second time in the past week or so that redefinition of words for corporate advantage in agriculture has come up. The sad thing is that most people fall for it.

Another thing often overlooked is inactive ingredients. Some people assume the active ingredient is the only one to be concerned about. It's like some people think that if it isn't listed as an active ingredient it isn't a dangerous chemical. Not at all the case. In fact, inactives commonly are actives in another product. It's another twisting of words. Inactive doesn't mean not active. For the purposes of labeling products it means that the chemical doesn't directly perform the product's objective. It is purposely misleading to put the words "inactive" or "inert" on a bottle of chemicals and not use the chemical definition of the words.

Snagging OPFLs are an entirely different story!!

I'm glad to know that others are persecuted at work for their composting and scavenging habits. I bring a container and a sign for "donations" to work. I get rolled eyes only a couple of takers. I also snag shredded paper and cardboard boxes for my lasagna beds. More rolled eyes and knowing looks.

i do need to think about me more often than just will the tomoatoes die, if i use this for compost. Sadly i have used these chemicals on my own lawn this year..we purchased them before i was conscious of the health effects. Now my lawn looks great, i feel a little guilty but not much. I have a semi organic garden going this year. i had some blue left over, a little 10-10-10 left over, and some hydroponic fert i got from a friend. Ive used em all this year they are almost all gone, and then i will be using fish emulsion and urine after that.

weening myself slowly away from the bottle.

ron

The downsides are these:
* New weeds: I have wild radish growing in my sideyard now, because that was the primary weed from a nearby public thoroughfare where I picked up a bunch of bags of cut grass.
* Unfamiliar trash: If you collect a lot of other bags, expect to find gum wrappers, cigarette boxes, candy wrappers and assorted other kinds of nastiness. For that matter, one bag I picked up was full of grass that had been accidentally painted red. The grass composted down just fine, but I'm still picking out tiny scraps of red latex paint out of my compost.

Suggestion: Quarantine your "borrowed" compost materials away from your household goods for a while. Easier to remove the trash and manage the new weeds.

Remember that the definition of insanity changes depending on where you live - lol. Living in the country is different from living downtown. But here, or wherever you live, it is all the same. Get as wild or obsessed as you like. Here at GW people may still raise their eyebrows, but you are never going to see it. The diversity is just fabulous. Some threads get full of vigerous discussion, and that is great too.

Jonas, what is a person supposed to do with their grass clippings (or all the other yard waste for that matter) if they do not compost? Go door-to-door asking people if they want their stuff? I have several neighbors giving me their grass clippings and none of them think I am crazy because they all get a few nice tomato's each summer in return. Aside from using it in the compost, grass makes one of the best mulches you can get. I live in a typical urgan development where my entire property is 120' wide by 80' deep (approx). I don't generate enough material for a compost pile on my own so I ask my neighbors for theirs. The nice thing about this arrangement is that I get to control when and how much material I get. If all my neighbors were composting all their own mateial I would hav to go to the HomeDepot and buy compost. That would mean that HomeDepot would have to buy it from somewhere else and turck it to their huge earth-covering parking lot location so I could drive my car there, buy it, drive home, and stick it into my garden. But hey, that happens already. No big deal.

I don't drink coffee but I go to the local Starbuck's on occasion and pick up some coffee grounds. Funny, but they are the people who think I am crazy, not my neighbors.

After 15 years of raising my small garden (8'x15') I watched my neighbor turn his entire backyard into a vegetable garden. His wife was not too happy about the idea but she reluctantly went along with it. Now he has a garden that is about 15'x30' and he has all kinds of stuff growing. I hope my other neighbors are loyal - I want to keep getting their stuff. It is so cool to see my neighbor, who is an IBM sales rep, who drives to work in his Lexus wearing a white shirt and tie replace his usesless grass backyard with a vegetabele garden. And he did all the work himself... I was impressed. I am asking myself why I did not do that years ago. I know that my wife wold never have gone for it. Having a nice grass lawn for the kids to play on and such is nice.

I can understand that people might not want, or even be able, to compost at all. I don't care or judge them either way. I only do it because it helps me produce fabulous vegetables and helps me keep my costs down. Not because I am trying to save the planet. I don't care that all my neighbors stuff is getting hauled to the landfill because, even at the landfill, it just decomposes go back into the earth anyway. Nature is great about that. All the green matter my neighborhood is sending to the landfill is not poison, not toxic, not harmful. It is just green matter going to a different location to continue the cycle of life. Actually, I believe the city sells it to a company that turns it into compost for sale. Gee a symbiotic relationship between a city and nature - good idea.

Did I raise any eyebrows?