mlear
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New to composting

Hello I am new to composting I have a quistion I got my pile going just about a week old but what I need to know is do I keep adding greens and browns to them as I can find them being that we are going in to spring the browns will be harder to find. Also if I keep adding to the pile when the stuff starts to compost How do I get the compost out but leave what still needs to compost in there. Or do I need to start a new pile and let one compost and empty it and start over. Thats for the help

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rainbowgardener
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Different people do it differently, over time you will figure out what works for you. But there's really two questions in there:

1) it's spring and I don't have as much browns around, do I still need them? YES. Whether you are adding to the old pile or starting a new one, either way, you still need a mixture of brown and green. In the fall, I collect at least a dozen big yard waste bags that people put to the curb, full of leaves, to feed in to my compost pile gradually through the season. If I run out of leaves in the summer, I buy a bale of straw to use as browns. Other possibilities are shredded paper, sawdust, etc Check the greens/ browns Sticky at the top of this forum for ideas.

2) do I just keep adding to the old pile or start a new one? This is the controversial part. Some people do batch composting, where they pile a whole bunch of stuff up at once and then let that sit, while they start a new one. I do continuous composting, where I just keep adding to the pile as stuff comes along. I layer/mix greens and browns as I add them, but I don't do a whole lot of turning the pile. That means the oldest stuff that has been composting longest is on the bottom, and going up the pile it is progressively newer. So in spring, summer, and fall, I turn my pile upside down. That is I take all the new stuff off the top, to be the bottom of a new pile, down to the level where you find a ton of earthworms. That's the part that is being actively worked and below that is the finished stuff. Once all that is exposed to air and stirred around, the almost finished stuff finishes up quickly and you can use all the compost. So essentially I have two compost piles, one that is being added to and working, and one that is finishing up and being used. And they alternate spots which is which. After the finished compost is all used up, that spot is where the next new pile will go. Some people have three, one they are adding to, one that is just sitting there working, and one they are using.

toxcrusadr
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I prefer to do it batch style. When the bin gets full, or the pile is reasonably big, I start a new one. The old one can then 'finish' and be used while the compost is at its max. volume and biological activity level.

You can also make a long pile (or windrow), adding to one end and using compost off the other. Kind of a 'continuous batch' system. :wink:

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rainbowgardener
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The continuous batch idea has some appeal to it, kind of the freedom to add at any time that I have, plus the leave it alone and use when ready.

It wouldn't work for me, because takes up more room than I have and would be difficult to enclose properly. I have to have compost makings well enclosed or the critters get to it, eat all the kitchen scraps out of it and spread the stuff around the yard.

Last weekend I brought a bucket of kitchen scraps out to dump on the compost pile, but then was doing a bunch of other stuff and somehow got distracted and left the bucket sitting out - with a tight fitting lid on it that you have to pry off. Sure enough in the AM the bucket was tipped over, the lid off, much of the contents eaten, and the rest spread around. That HAD to be the raccoons, nothing else in the garden would have been able to get the lid off. I'm sorry I missed it, I'm sure it would have been entertaining watching them work on it! :) They apparently don't like used coffee grounds, though they will eat pretty much anything else.

cynthia_h
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rainbowgardener wrote:The continuous batch idea has some appeal to it, kind of the freedom to add at any time that I have, plus the leave it alone and use when ready.

It wouldn't work for me, because takes up more room than I have and would be difficult to enclose properly.
I'm confused about a continuous batch taking up "more room than [you] have" and that it "would be difficult to enclose properly."

I run "continuous batch"-style compost in a BioStack composter. It's been with me since the mid-'80s, when DH and I purchased it from the City of Berkeley at a serious discount.

I throw stuff onto the top of the pile--brown, green, whatever--mix it up with an aerator (a glorified stick), and harvest the finished compost when I turn the pile every few months and screen it through a half-inch hardware cloth raddle/sifter into a wheelbarrow and thence into however many 5-gallon buckets the compost fills. (My raddle is made from furring strips and hardware cloth, finishing-nailed and staple-gunned together. I designed it from scratch originally for Bermuda grass roots, not knowing that such things already existed.)

Everything that's too big to fall through the raddle goes back into the BioStack for the next turning.

The BioStack's footprint is 3'x3'; it's easiest to turn the compost when 3'x6' are available, so that the former top "stack" can be made into the bottom "stack" of the next location. But it would also be possible to run a BioStack in a 3'x3' footprint; turning the compost would just be a little more cumbersome.

What space considerations are you referring to, please? Thank you! :)

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

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rainbowgardener
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cynthia I was referring to the windrow system toxcrusader described, where you have one long pile that you add to on the front end and subtract from the back end.

So I was imagining that it would have to be pretty long, therefore the space and enclosure problems.

I do continuous composting in a pile as I described at the beginning of this thread.

toxcrusadr
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Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
And so between the two of them
They licked the platter clean.

Or, as Granny used to say, "To each his own, said Charles as he kissed the cow." My Granny was a bit twisted. :()



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