Well, I will definitely need the moral support!

I'm right here.

Once you've got a working compost system going, and especially once you've harvested your own compost, you will be so glad, and you'll also be hooked! Bwahahahaha!

Thanks! Now I'm actually looking forward to going out there this weekend and starting!

Oops, just lost a post about prepping the ground. It's late. Point was, you don't really need to, there's ways around it. Makes it easier in some circumstances.

I'll post more about that tomorrow if it might help. Heck, it's only MOnday night. There are days left!

Kyla said:
>> a pile for brushy things that I am too lazy to cut up for the official pile, so it just piles up there, and that is mostly yard waste and larger trimmings, and the third pile is where I dump things like thorny stems and grass that might spread and things that propagate from runners a bit too easily.

I recently started one like your third pile. Anything with weed seeds. I put it on top of a pile of unusable clay that is like rock. If anything DOES manage to put down a root into that clay, more power to it! Also, if every weed seed is piled in the same place, they can compete with each other to get a few leaves into the sun. Then I'll chop them up with a mattock and bury them in clay. Take that!

My policy with stems too tough or woody to compost rapidly used to be: "incorporate them into my compost heap to keep it well-aerated". But it was very hard to turn, and I had to screen the heap to get the compost away from the twigs. Then I started chopping them short enough that I could turn the heap, but they still remained too large and hard to put into the soil when the softer bits had all composted.

Lately I've been throwing anything woody in a heap like your #2 and mumbling "hugelculture", with the plan of some day accumulating enough to be worth burying under a bed.

But now I'm thinking, after the wood softens a little, and after I sharpen my lawnmower blade, I might just chop up that woody heap with the lawn mower and add the shreds to my main pile. I did that with one batch of low-growing juniper bushes, but I did it on my driveway where the chips flew around everywhere. I couldn't get the chips small enough to compost quickly or small enough to add whole to soil after a brief composting. I think the mower blade was too dull, and the wood too green.

Some day!

You know, Rick, there is this machine they call a 'chipper'--works pretty good. You can rent them.
Of course they don't work very well if you don't use them...I got a pretty good deal on a good one on craig's list and my honey welded the perfect directer chute for me and rigged up a nifty pen to catch and screen for me...but I have a brush pile about the size of a minivan right now

I've thought about turning my little electric lawn mower upside down and cutting the bottom out of a plastic trash can to use as a chute. However, considering that I'm prone to losing balance and falling, I would have to call it a "limb aputator".

A place to store a chipper would be nice to have, but even then, I would only use it twice per year so it wouldn't be a wise purchase for me. I'd rather spend the money on multiple trunk-loads of compost or mulch.

Renting sounds good - if I could lift it in and out of my little trunk.

I had a shredder, a gas one that was pretty heavy duty, but I much prefer the lawn mower, no clogged shute to fool with. No feeding the material though what seemed like a funnel. I spread the leaves and grass out over an area about 20x20 feet on bare dirt and it doesn't take long to shred them all. I try to always work so that when I am finished I can rake all the shredded material down hill into a pile. Raking downhill is so much easier than trying to rake uphill I learned pretty quickly, shredded leaves and grass mixed with some dirt gets pretty heavy in a hurry. I set my mower to the top height adjustment most times when first starting, then work down to a lower level. One lever on the mower controls all four wheels, so the adjustment is not a hassle. My composting area is higher up the hill than my garden area, so when I need compost I use the wheelbarrow, and the full load goes downhill, and the empty load goes back up hill.

>> I set my mower to the top height adjustment most times when first starting, then work down to a lower level.

Me, too. When the pile of twigs is high, I often tilt the front wheels up and then push forward about one mower-base-length, then ease the mower down onto the twigs. Then rock up and down a little.

Lift up again, move forward, and take another bite.

Do you have a special mower blade, or do you re-sharpen it often?

I do resharpen the blades pretty often, but a dull blade works surprisingly well for leaves, especially if they are already decayed to some extent. I have a mulching mower, but I try to just use the old worn out mulching blades or the cheaper regular blades when shredding. I go though several blades during a year, but I do mulch up a lot of stuff.

Leaves, sure. I understand and agree.

>> I go though several blades during a year, but I do mulch up a lot of stuff.

OHHHH!

So, after 5-10 years of whacking pebbles and chopping twigs, I should replace the blade?

Hmm, spending money, what a concept. I've been looking at those blades in hardware stores with some longing but never actually thought of spending the few bucks. Yeah, I think you have a good idea there!

Thing about the chipper is, they are *so* loud, and as some famous gardener whose name I've forgotten once said, they disturb the peace of the garden.

Of course, YMMV on that opinion.

Piling up brush does work, if you just leave it for several years, you find under it is some lovely humus.

Funny thing going on here. My housemate is so impressed with my compost -- she called it elegant when describing it to the lawn guy she's known for years -- that she has been inviting friends and relatives into the back yard to see it.

So I've given a few impromptu composting for beginners lessons.

This is my current setup:



I'm happy with it, but I wouldn't call it "elegant".

It looks simple, efficient and effective ... what more could anyone want?

Do you lift the wire fencing before turning the pile over?

Is the black plastic to conserve moisture, to shed rain, or to raise the temperature?

Elegant? My compost piles are well...Piles. Here are some piles I have going now, some finished and waiting to be put to use, other piles just being started. I try to keep several piles going all the time.

Nice! I bet they build up some heat with all the greens you get into them!

Mine max out around 2-3' x 3-5'. They are just piles or, sometimes, short rows.

Yes , early on the piles with a lot of grass clippings really heat up, I like that for killing the majority of weed seeds mixed in with the grass. Even the all shredded leaf piles will actually heat up pretty good, but not nearly as hot or as for as long as piles with lots of grass clippings. I like to turn them every two days after I first make the piles, but due to the size of the piles and the limit of my energy that does not always happen.But when I am able to turn them several times early on and keep them moist it speeds up the process tremendously.

RickCorey said:It looks simple, efficient and effective ... what more could anyone want?

Do you lift the wire fencing before turning the pile over?

Is the black plastic to conserve moisture, to shed rain, or to raise the temperature?

@RickCorey, it works for me!

Earlier in this thread I think I described my method, but I don't actually turn this pile. I do lift and sort of stir what's in there sometimes as I am adding new material. When I am ready to harvest some compost, I lift off the wire cage then, fork the unfinished stuff onto a ready tarp I will have spread next to the pile, then shovel out the finished stuff into bins or whatever. Then I replace the wire cage, fork the unfinished material back into it as the start of the next round. I can harvest a decent amount of compost at least twice a year this way. It's a lazy method that works for me.

The covering (which can be kinda anything) is vented and loose and is there to help regulate moisture, keeping the top part from drying out, and helping keep the pile from getting oversaturated during heavy rain. I have used feed bags (with holes sliced in to vent), old sections of blanket, nearly wornout tarps, etc.

@Seedfork, those piles look great. If you have room to do it that way, why not? I have in other circumstances done similar piles and it works just fine.

Heck, when I very first started trying to learn to compost, I called Mom and Dad, because I knew they had done something but as a teenager (during the time they had a wonderful garden) I was too stuck up to pay attention.

They said "Oh, you can do all that fancy layering if you want to, but all we ever did was dig it into the ground."

They would just collect kitchen scraps and carry them out to the yard at the end of the day and dig them in, somewhere or other, wherever they thought needed some organic matter, But, it worked just fine.

I later learned they were doing a version of what's called "sheet composting". I guess. Or maybe a version of "trench composting."

Takes all kinds!