What Do YOU Put in YOUR Compost??

Carole
by Carole
We started composting in a big way recently, using a 3 bay, hot composting system. We already have the usual compost bins for cold composting kitchen scraps and lawn clippings etc. but we needed to make a large volume of good soil so we can plant out our garden. So far we have managed to completely fill the first bay of a three bay system and this has been turned several times. It consists of the following materials and reached and exceeded the required 50 degrees C that is needed to kill off weed seeds. We used: Green leaves, brown leaves collected from local streets in autumn, green lawn clippings, shredded newspapers (unsold newspapers collected from our local newsagents), shredded documents, the contents of our kitchen scrap composting once it had broken down sufficiently, sawdust and horse droppings, straw, outer leaves from our vegies that we are growing, coffee grounds (collected from a local café) weeds (both from our own garden and from a neighbours garden, brown cardboard, brown cardboard toilet roll tubes and kitchen roll tubes, cardboard egg boxes torn up, garden prunings and so on. In the cold compost bin (these plastic bins are not large enough volume to reach temps required to kill weed seeds) we put all our kitchen scraps (not dairy or meat), egg shells, used kitchen paper(providing it does not have chemicals on it or blood from meat or milk/dairy on it) and even the contents of our hoover bag gets emptied into this bin. Along with some lawn clippings, green and brown leaves, shredded newspaper and so on.
What do YOU put in YOUR compost bin??
3 bay compost bay we built when it had only just started a couple of months ago, the second bay is now full and we have started again on the first bay. Won't add any more to the 2nd bay but will keep turning it till it is ready to use
  4 answers
  • Douglas Hunt Douglas Hunt on Oct 31, 2014
    Your commitment to composting is impressive. I have to try to again to get coffee grounds. I approached our local branch of a chain that shall be unnamed and they told me they just dump them in with all their other trash. Sad and such a waste.
    • Carole Carole on Oct 31, 2014
      @Douglas Hunt Hi Douglas. We are in a tourist area where there are quite a few cafes. The first cafe I approached said they already had a chap that came in to take theirs, but they took my phone number anyway in case he discontinues this practise at some point. The second one is a cafe I have eaten in a couple of times and they said they normally bag theirs up and put in the garbage. They said they would keep them for me. I go in there every Friday afternoon about the same time of day and they have them bagged and ready to go for me when I arrive. I have been doing this for the past 8 weeks. Our local newsagents bundle up any unsold and out of date newspapers for recycling and said they are happy to give them to me if I arrive before their regular recycle guy to take them away. Both parties are happy that these things are going to a good cause - making my garden soil better! LOL!
  • Kim Smith Kim Smith on Oct 31, 2014
    You are doing an excellent job! I am impressed and motivated to do better on my bins!
  • Katie Katie on Nov 01, 2014
    Very impressive!
  • Catherine Smith Catherine Smith on Nov 02, 2014
    Great job! I'm curious, are you using Bokashi composting for your kitchen items? If so, meat and dairy scraps would not be a problem since they are jellied by the microbes.
    • See 5 previous
    • Carole Carole on Nov 04, 2014
      @Catherine Smith Yes using weeds - who would have thought a weed could be so useful? LOL! We also took 6 sacks of pulled weeds/grass and stumps and sticks from another neighbour earlier who had been ripping up their 'garden' and trying to level it and when she mentioned they were going to take the sacks to the local tip I offered to take them off her hands. But there is other stuff in the sacks besides weeds she cried. Don't worry, I will go through the lot and take just the weeds and clods of grass and soil away. Well it took me a couple of hours and about 8 barrow loads and I whittled their stuff down to one bag of sticks/rocks/shrubby stumps for them to sort out, plus an old sock and a flip flop/thong and took the remaining stuff - 5 sacks of it away and layered it through our compost heap. The heap should get hot enough to kill any weed seeds. I did make sure there was no holly/ivy or thistle or blackberry in there as these things can be indestructible and we don't want them spreading through our garden via our compost. I am nothing if not determined on the composting front. LOL!