Thursday, July 29, 2010

Compost, The Lazy Woman's Methods

I am a lazy composter. I don't pay attention to the ratios of greens and browns. I don't turn my compost. I basically make a pile, well, 2 piles and let them rot. But I think that my stuff comes out pretty good in the end.

So here it is, the lazy woman's guide to two methods of making pretty good compost.

First the more complicated method. Start with a big pile of trimmings from oak trees, lavender bushes, and various other twiggy and woody growth. Here's where it gets complicated - send it through a chipper-shredder to turn it into this:



Next, pile it all into a compost bin, preferably adding raw chicken poop as you go. Wet it down as you add layers.  Fill the bin to the top, stick a compost thermometer in it and water it every few days.



Watch the temperature soar and then gradually drop. This is my latest pile which got up to 160F and stayed there a few days and over the last few weeks it has been gradually cooling down. Today's temperature....


The chicken poop really makes the pile cook but it is not really necessary, without it my compost didn't get as hot or stay warm as long but I still got good compost in the end. Next I just wait. I don't turn it. I give it some water every once in a while since we don't get summer rain and it will dry out quickly if I forget to water it.

Below is shown a pile that I put together last fall. The bin was originally full and mounded above the top of the bin. It doesn't look all that great at first glance....


But just under all that dry twiggy stuff is black gold. The worms have been hard at work. (If you build it, they will come). I have to admit, the worms are really the key to my success, they do most of the work. And truly, if you build a compost pile and let it sit long enough they will find it, I've never purchased a single worm.


Here's what it looks like when I sift the compost, this is a portion of the vegetable garden that I'm preparing for planting carrots, beets, and parsnips.


There's one downside to putting all that compost that is full of worms into the vegetable garden - moles. You can see a fresh mound at the top right from a mole that is tunneling through the worm buffet (aka my potato bed) that I prepared last week. I'm fed up with the moles and just ordered some heavy duty professional mole traps today.

The chunky stuff that is left after I sift the compost gets strewn around other areas of the garden as mulch, this batch was spread around my new (and struggling) fruit trees.



Lazy Woman's Compost Method #2 requires no special equipment or livestock. Fill a compost bin with anything that doesn't have to go through the chipper-shredder, just keep filling it as it shrinks down (which it does surprisingly fast), and when you just can't add anything else to it then it's time to start another bin. OK, here's the hard part, when I start the new bin I move the top half of the old bin into the bottom of the new bin. You know you've removed enough from the old bin when you run into stuff like this:


I put the chunkiest stuff in the garbage can where the worms can continue working on it and the best stuff goes into the garden. My fruit trees got this load:


Here's the new cold compost pile, which is really just a big open worm factory (and the sow bugs work hard in there as well):


I put all my fruit and vegetable scraps that the chickens won't eat into this bin. Used paper towels also go into this bin, as well as coffee grounds with the filters, tea bags, used loose tea leaves, etc. I generally keep this pile covered. Empty bags that potting soil came in that I cut open so they will lay flat work well. I use rocks to keep the plastic weighted down. I can continue to feed this bin for at least 6 months or more until it won't hold any more.

17 comments:

  1. Good advice Michelle, as composting isn't very complicated inspite of everything that's written about it... and you've reminded me that I need to water my two piles!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You definitely make composting look easy. We have 2 compost bins, and I am bugging the husband to build another one. How long does it take for the worms to make broken down compost.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your lazy woman's composting method as it is exactly what we do with one of our compost piles. While it does not heat up or break down real fast the soil is very nice in the end, just like yours.

    Too bad about your moles, I have been battling with a vole in our potato bed this week...he's winning so far.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some years I do hot composting and some years I'm just lazy. It all works.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I do pretty much your second version of lazy composting, only I do add the coop and chicken yard cleanings into the pile, along with grass clippings from the lawn, and I do turn it with a pitch fork once in a great while. It takes a long while, but I get beautiful piles of finished compost in the end with a minimum of fuss. Nice pictorial walk through of the process. I think composting is made far too complicated by many folks and it intimidates some people from just doing it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You know that every garden task that starts with the word "Lazy" has to be good! Ugggh, I've been ignoring my compost pile for almost year now simply because I don't like the system I currently have. I definitely need to come up with a simpler method.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jan, It really doesn't need to be complicated, rot happens, you just have to decide how much work you want to put into helping it along.

    ---

    meemsync, If I keep my pile moist, not too wet though, and there are plenty of worms they can get their work done in a few months. In a nice controlled environment like a worm bin they can get through kitchen scraps even faster. I found that I tended to overwhelm the worms with the quantities of stuff that I generated and the cold compost pile works better for me.

    ---

    Mr. H., The hardest part of the cold compost method is the waiting.

    Voles, ugh, I'm not even sure how you can control them. Do you trap them? One of my cats (Zeke) has gotten pretty good at catching them and that has helped a lot.

    ---

    Daphne, I used to do full on hot composting, layering the greens and browns, turning it, etc. In the end the lazy method works just as well, it's just slower.

    ---

    kitsapFG, I agree, I think the compost experts make it too complicated, stuff rots, pile it up and let it happen. If I didn't have so much oak tree trimmings and other shrubby stuff that just won't compost in less than half a decade without shredding it I would do the cold method exclusively.

    ---

    Thomas, That's the key, find a system that works and that isn't too much work. I bet you have some really good stuff in that pile after sitting there for a year!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great post ! Love your bins and methods. I rely solely on worms to do the job here. They do a fine job. I do turn the heap every once in a while though because, well, I like to !

    ReplyDelete
  9. LOL Michelle, the lazy woman whips out her credit card for the delivery boy! You are efficient, not lazy ; )
    Last winter husband spotted a large pile of garden waste in the back yard. He helpfully (not!) loaded it into the truck and hauled it off to the dump. Suprise honey i cleaned the yard! Grrr.

    ReplyDelete
  10. miss m, that's as good a reason as any to turn the compost heap. I do like to dig in there to see what's going on, check up on the wildlife in there.

    ---

    Julie, I like that, efficient, not lazy, yes indeed. Your honey should get a point or two for trying, after a mild scolding. The training never ends, does it! I hope he whipped out the credit card and bought you a load of finished compost this spring.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "If you build it, they will come" = too funny. I've often thought about this. I mean how do the worms survive the summers around here? The soil gets so dry because of the lack of rain, that I'm thinking they must go down very deep in the ground.

    My compost is basically like your method #2...but now with chicken poop.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Our chickens have access to the outskirts of most of our garden area and are very effective in scaring the voles away. The one spot where the chickens can not roam is where we sometimes have a few voles find their way into the garden. We trap them using mousetraps and fennel root (they love it) as bait...mousetraps are not very effective though, we need to come up with a better method.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'm always surprised that my hands-off methods produce any compost. I know it could always be better, but this post reassures me that some is generally better than none, so I could just relax. . .

    ReplyDelete
  14. There is a trade off between patience and laziness when it comes to compost making and I guess each gardener ends up finding a comfortable arrangement soemwhere between those two poles.

    I am finding that I need hot compost for weeds and diseased plant material, I need rodent proof bins for food scraps and can take the lazy route for everything else. I haven't manged to get my weedy pile to 160 degrees, so I guess I need to get myself some chickens.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Great post! My method is similar to yours. I don’t have a thermometer and I don't shred anything. So I'm lazier than you.
    I do water, as worms would not stay in there if it was dry.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Jackie, It is amazing how they get through our dry summers especially since I don't think that red worms go very deep into the soil.

    ---

    Mr. H., I'm starting to think that the critter running around my potato bed is a vole and not a mole. I'm going to have to try some mousetraps in that area since Zeke isn't being very helpful of late.

    ---

    Stefaneener, Oh yes, you should relax, compost just shouldn't be that complicated.

    ---

    Angela, I probably should put my fruit and veggie waste into a rodent proof bin but I haven't seen any evidence of rodents in the compost pile (unless you consider deer to be giant rodents), so I'm not worrying about it for now. It's interesting that when the compost bin was closer to the house I did have rodent problems in there and had to start a rodent proof worm bin.

    ---

    vrtlarica, Oh, I wouldn't shred a thing if it didn't take so long for the oak and lavender trimmings to break down without doing so. There would be too many piles sitting around in the process of decomposing.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I don't put a lot of work into my compost bin either, but I do like to turn it once or twice a year. Right now the pile is overflowing it's bin. Actually, it overflows its bin most of the year. Time to get a bigger bin.

    In anticipation of one day having a bigger garden in a warmer climate, I'm already starting to worry about moles. I'm imagining I will build raised beds (tall ones) right over the top of a couple horizontal layers of chicken wire. Will that do it? How quickly will the chicken wire rust away? Do they sell galvanized chicken wire?

    I go to bed at night thinking about things like this.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. I value your insights and feedback.