would like tips on starting a new compost pile
I have alot of small wood chips in the woods behind my house and am thinking of starting a compost pile down there. I just don't know where to start . I will never be able to get down there in the winte but love going down there the rest of the year. ok so I have alarge area of wood chips now what grass clippings. how long does all of this take and how often does it need turned?
You can put as much or as little time into compost as you want.
Turn it every day or once a year; record its temperature morning, noon, and night to see whether it's thermophilic or not; ignore its temperature completely; carefully balance ingredients, holding windfalls until proper amounts of other ingredients are available to counter the windfalls, vs. dumping in the windfalls as they arrive and stirring them in. Et cetera, und so weiter, und so fort.
For a discussion on greens and browns, read the Sticky at the top of the Compost Forum: https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9089
And also Search the Forum for terms like "aerobic compost," "compost bins," "compost piles," and so forth, or just go to the index pages for the Compost Forum and open the threads that seem promising.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
Turn it every day or once a year; record its temperature morning, noon, and night to see whether it's thermophilic or not; ignore its temperature completely; carefully balance ingredients, holding windfalls until proper amounts of other ingredients are available to counter the windfalls, vs. dumping in the windfalls as they arrive and stirring them in. Et cetera, und so weiter, und so fort.
For a discussion on greens and browns, read the Sticky at the top of the Compost Forum: https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9089
And also Search the Forum for terms like "aerobic compost," "compost bins," "compost piles," and so forth, or just go to the index pages for the Compost Forum and open the threads that seem promising.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
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rainbowgardener
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To start with, it helps to have some sort of bin or container, to keep the compost piled up and keep critters out (they won't bother the woodchips, but will if you start adding kitchen scraps etc).
The wood chips are a definite brown, so you will need lots of greens to go with them: the grass clippings you mentioned, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, pulled weeds, etc. The wood chips are slower to break down than the greens or even than other browns like fall leaves and cardboard, so you will just have to keep feeding greens in for some time.
For the winter you might want to start a second pile closer to your house. Let the first one settle all winter, while you build up the second one. You can move some of the wood chips up by the house to add to the new pile as needed. Alternating two piles, one to build while the other one settles works well.
The wood chips are a definite brown, so you will need lots of greens to go with them: the grass clippings you mentioned, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, pulled weeds, etc. The wood chips are slower to break down than the greens or even than other browns like fall leaves and cardboard, so you will just have to keep feeding greens in for some time.
For the winter you might want to start a second pile closer to your house. Let the first one settle all winter, while you build up the second one. You can move some of the wood chips up by the house to add to the new pile as needed. Alternating two piles, one to build while the other one settles works well.