20 replies to this topic

[nancykind]

what can one NOT compost, besides meat?

also, what do you use for 'brown', i think it's referred to?

[little frog]

no dairy either .. and if you're going to use it for fertilizer i think they say you should not add citrus to the compost.

[KindGeeGirl]

I have failed at food composting. Grass and shit I'm all set but not food. Too many animals and neighbors. Mix your shit with grass type shit and it should decompse more. Add your shit and it may help. Good luck

[KindGeeGirl]

I am making no reference to brown. No clue.

[KindGeeGirl]

But shit is brown.

[Baidarka]

Leaves, paper, paper towels, shredded cardboard (corrugated or paperboard) all work for browns. Citrus does tend to change the pH and inhibits the growth of the good microbes. We've even gotten to the point that our junk mail and things you would normally recycle go in our bin.

[nancykind]

i have a barrel type so no worries about animals. thanks Jay. i'll have shredded paper/cardboards, that's a start.

[Goose]

The guy on npr said paper never really breaks down or add nutrients to it, but it does add fiber and bulk, it's like filler. I do
put the coffee filters in with the grounds though. Worms are important. I have one bin that just has leaves and grass and the worms can't
get to it naturally and it's not really breaking down.

[Jam Fan]

have you seen the indoor composter for city folk?

[Jersey Thug]

besides the stuff already mentioned, i've found that tomato seeds do not break down and that if you add them anyway, when you lay the compost down you'll end up with a big tomato garden rather than whatever else you'd planted. which is great if what you really want is a tomato garden, but if you want other stuff to grow there you might want to leave out the tomatoes

also, don't add human or pet waste. although it can be done safely by someone very experienced with composting, there are certain conditions that have to exist to make it safe, and that's not for a beginner.

and don't throw in pesky weeds from your yard. even if you chop 'em up they have a way of regenerating when fed all that compost goodness.

good luck!

[JBetty]

No egg shells

[fire_rocket]

We add hay every now and then which kicks things into high gear.

Don't put anything harmful in there that will spread. Most piles don't get hot enough to kill off the bad spores and it will only spread further once you use the compost (things such as knotweed etc). Thug touched on it with the tomatoes.

[Eddie Z]

I compost regularly into nothing more than a 3 sided fenced enclosure, maybe 3' x 3'. I mainly just put in vegetable food scraps. ex, peels, rinds, skins. I also put in tomatoes, orange peels, Eggs shells, coffee grounds, the occasional layer of leaves (which i consider to he the "brown" layer), and sometimes a handful of pulled weeds. Certainly no meat or dairy. Maybe once a month, or whenever I'm near it, I toss it around with a pitchfork.

Every so often, i notice a critter pulled a banana peel or a Cantaloupe rind out of the pile, but it just doesn't matter.

Every couple of years, i dig it all out, run it thru a couple of sieves, and shake out the black gold, which goes into the gardens. It doesn't seem as if my process causes any more than the usual growth of weeds.

Between composting, and recycling everything we now recycle, and my near vegetarian diet, I'm really not generating much garbage. I virtually generate zero stinky (meat rot) garbage.. I think I send a kitchen sized bag to the street once every three weeks, and it's mostly plastic wrappers or plastic bags of one sort or another.

[Julius]

Watch your nitrogen levels. I've had luck leaning towards more rather than less nitrogen.

[staggerlee024]

No egg shells

We always use egg shells in our compost. Not sure that this is true. If concerned, just rinse them.

[JBetty]

It's not the rinsing, it's that they don't break down easily.

Crumble them up and sprinkle on top of the garden to kill the snails and slugs.

[nancykind]

I've had luck leaning towards more rather than less nitrogen..........

by doing.................... ??

[Lazy Lightning]

I want to compost, but there are bears that amble around our neighbourhood.

Brown is usually dried leaves and such.

[nancykind]

i won't have leaves till fall really, so that's why i was looking for alternatives. my brother is mulching the lawn but i'll ask him to bag once for me next time he's here

[Julius]

This is a good primer on nitrogen levels:

http://www.compostin.../c-n-ratio.html

You can buy a bag of nitrogen crystals really cheaply and just throw in a handful of it into the mix when your raw materials are carbon-heavy.

[nancykind]

ahhhh, gotcha. i thought it was the kind of green or brown you were adding from the kitchen/yard.