Composting

It's been more than twenty years already. I'm happy.

 

Not a whole lot at any one time, although there was quite a bit during our last snow. I don't know what it amounted to in inches but it drifted a lot, so it was deep in some places and shallow in others. The main thing is that it's been cold so we've had very little melting going on since the first snow.

 

Although I have used a few paper grocery bags and scattered some other stuff in loose, most of what I have in my compost pile, besides the leaves, are in sealed cardboard boxes or sealed double-layered lawn bags. Inside each of these boxes and bags are a collection of compostables.

I begin with a thick layer of shredded paper and cardboard, to keep any liquids from soaking through. Then I add anything compostable, which may include table scraps, vegetables and herbs that have gone bad in the refrigerator, paper towels, floor sweepings (minus any obvious plastics), filled vacuum bags, which may include some plastic, but generally not much, coffee grounds, tea bags, and any outdated packaged foods. Whenever anything potentially smelly is added, I'll cover it with more shredded paper and cardboard.

When it's reasonably full, or earlier, if there's an odor, I'll seal the box or bag with paper tape, and take it out to the compost. Although critters can, and sometimes do, get into these, I don't add much meat to the compost, so they usually leave them alone. When I was adding more meat, they'd make a mess of things.

For the most part, I place the boxes along the outside, and the bags and the loose stuff in the center of the pile. Since the cardboard boxes compost at a slower rate than the bags, they create a wall to the compost pile.