Composting

Of course, I could. In fact, my shredder will shred cardboard. With my first pile, I did that, but this is much more efficient. I still shred several of the boxes that are put into the compost pile, and the shredded paper and cardboard is mixed with food scraps in each of these boxes. All of these boxes are full of compostable material when they are added to the compost pile.

When I shred all of the cardboard that I add to the pile, I have to turn it over periodically to add oxygen to the lower layers. When I was shredding everything, I would find paper towels and shredded paper and cardboard that was massed so tightly together that it took forever to compost.

The boxes have air in them and since the cardboard composts more slowly than much of the other compostable materials, that adds air to the center of my compost pile without my having to turn it over.

This is the second winter for this compost pile. This post shows where it was a year ago. last winter, the pile was almost as high as it is this year, although not quite as high because we were gone for much of that summer. Once we get some warm weather, that pile is going to drop quickly, since the stuff in the center was probably kept warm enough that it was composting throughout the winter, although not as quickly as it does in the summer.

I don't enjoy turning over my compost pile, and this makes it unnecessary for me to do that.

 

It's time to add some worms.

 

Although I am fairly certain that it already has plenty of worms near the center, since they do survive the winter, I am going to add some to the top of the pile. Yeah, I think this is the good time to do it. Already, I picked up a piece of wood from some construction we had done just before the snow came, and found worms underneath it, so I know they're active. Yeah, I buy the worms. I have bought some of the ones that are sold for bait before, since they're cheaper, but each spring I add some red worms from a composting place online. I have 2,000 red worms coming, along with 500 European red worms, since they work at different levels of the pile.

The first time I added them, I placed them in different parts of the pile, after digging a hole into it. Later, I read that it's best to place them all in one place and let them decide where to go from there. They come in peat moss, and I bought another small bag of peat moss, so I'll just dig a small hole as close to the top of the pile as I can reach, dump some peat moss in there, and add the worms to that.

Last fall, I noticed that my old pile was rich with worms, and I hadn't added any to that in a couple of years. Yet every shovel full of compost that I turned over had worms. If I can remove the stuff that I added to the top of it this winter, the compost from that pile should be ready to use. I plan to lay a foundation of concrete there and build another pile like my new one, only with a thicker gauge fence.

I probably don't need to add any because we have plenty of worms volunteering for duty. I just get impatient and well, I guess I am composting on a larger scale than most people do.

 

We have a lot of trees on and around this property, and the ones that are the worst problem are the needle trees. The neighbor has huge old pine trees just on the other side of our southern fence line, plus we have some kind of cedar trees in the front and back yard. All of them shed needles year around; but in the winter, they accumulate more.
People use the needles (called pine straw) for mulch on pathways and around plants, but we have way more than we can ever use for that. Plus, we have the immense leaf trees (maple ? Elm? ), one in the front yard and one out in back.
I have been making a compost area out behind the house and putting our household compostable materials on it; but then I read about anaerobic composting using heavy-duty plastic bags, which are supposed to break down the pine needles faster than the regular aerobic compost pile can do.
We went to Walmart and i got a large plastic garbage can and a box of the heavy construction weight plastic bags, and I am going to start filling up the bags, one at a time with a mixture of pine needles, leaves, house compost (banana peels, eggs shells, etc), and grass clippings.
Once the bag gets full, I can tie it shut, pull it out of the plastic garbage can, and let it lay on the ground until this fall, and then see whether it is ready to use or needs to compost longer. I should have plenty of bags, and once the material is composted into dirt/humus then I can probably even reuse the bags.

http://www.plasticplace.com/blog/how-to-make-compost-in-a-garbage-bag

 

I haven't heard of anaerobic composting being faster than aerobic, but I know that it can be done.

 

It is the pine needles that are the problem, and they shed moisture so well that it is hard to get them to break down and turn into mulch. Even when you soak the pile of compost every day, it just seems to run off of the needles. By putting them in bags and closing the bag, they have to stay moist and can disintegrate better.
I am not sure that the overall process is any faster that the typical way of composting , but we have lots of the needles and leaves that can be used for making compost; so even if it has to sit for months, at least it is using them and not just bagging them up for the garbage collector, which is a total waste of good mulch.
Anyway, I am going to give it a try and see how well it works.

 

When we rented an apartment in Fayetteville, NC for a while, the entire grounds were covered with pine needles and yeah, I guess they never seemed to compost.

 

My worms came today, and I have added them to the compost pile. They were a lively bunch of critters so I refrained from naming them, or counting them, but there's supposed to be 2,500 of them. Now I've got to go out and say goodnight to them every night before going to bed.

 

I started the anaerobic compost barrel today. I put the plastic in the garbage can, filled it about half way full of pine needles (which will squash down), added the bucket of compost that i have been saving, and then piled some grass clippings and chopped branches that Bobby put through the chipper,
The lid is on, and the project is started.
Then, I noticed that the poison ivy was starting to come up; so I got the weedeater and cleaned off all of those that I could get to. As long as I can keep them weeded back, hopefully, it will stop it from spreading.
Now, I am in relaxing and drinking my carrot/coconut smoothie.

 

After living up north for a few summers in a row, I found that I had poison ivy along the fence on two sides of my yard, and on a tree in the center of the yard. I think I got rid of that though, but I watch out for it when I'm here.