GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: composting

Make Better Compost With This Addition – GF Video

You can make better compost by having the ideal carbon nitrogen ratio. Unfortunately, most home compost bins don’t have that ideal ratio. There are several compost accelerators on the market, here is one by our sponsor, Eco Scraps.

How to make better compost

The ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio, or browns to greens mix, according to Cornell University, is 30:1 by weight. That means 30 pounds of brown leaves to 1 pound of green grass. Coffee grounds are also high in nitrogen, btw.

If you compost pile smells like ammonia, it has too much nitrogen. I worked at a community garden with a large compost operation and found that by adding wood shavings from a local wood shop made a huge difference in the ammonia smell. Plus the curly nature of the shavings helped us make better compost. The woodworker was happy to get rid of huge bags of shavings, saving him carting fees and landfill space. Pretty amazing how they broke down quickly.

But too much nitrogen is rare, the average home compost pile has too much carbon (browns) in the mix, so a compost accelerator like Eco Scraps adds nitrogen. I suggest layering the accelerator as you add material to your pile. Just tossing it on top of an existing pile wont help.

From Cornell University

Another key if you want to make better compost is to provide air to your pile. This can be done just by turning it, but if you have the pile in a bin (like my pallet compost bin) that’s not always easy. You can buy a compost auger, Augers on Amazon link, I have used these and the good ones work well. (You get what you pay for) You can also find a neighbor who is throwing out some 1″-3″ pvc pipe, drill holes in it, and layer these in the pile as you build it.

We have a bunch more composting videos here, let me know your thoughts below.

June 10, 2016
Composting 101 – Backyard Composting Basics – GF Video
Composting! Learn how to compost in this video. What food can you compost? What food should not go in the composter? What kind of bin should I buy or build? Watch the show and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

To compost in your backyard, you’ll need a bin of some sort. You can buy one – here are a few models – or you can build one – here are some GF videos with compost bin plans.

Composting Ingredients

Here is a brief list of things you can compost:
- Eggshells
- Coffee Grounds
- Salad Greens
- Corn Cobs
- Vegetables
- Newspaper, napkins, paper towels
- Light cardboard
Stuff you should not compost:
- Meat
- Foods saturated with oil
- Cat Litter and Dog Waste
- Cheese & Dairy Products
Most backyard composting takes months to break down, because of the lack of a large biomass, the pile cannot achieve the ideal temps for hot cooking of the material. But this isn’t a reason not to do it. Taking food scraps in to the backyard instead of the trash can is a super eco green way to live, and its real easy. There’s really no wrong way to do it.

Backyard Composting can be as simple as a pile of leaves and yard waste in the back of the yard, or in a more structured bin, its up to you. Whatever type you go with, be sure to aerate the pile, turning it over on itself, or lifting it up and poking holes in it. The pile needs air to work.

I’ve found that most of the compost accelerators don’t do much more than a good shovel full of manure will. What do you think? Let us know below:
October 2, 2013
DIY Worm Composting How-To : GF Radio

How to do worm composting in your house is our main topic. Rick has almost zero waste in his house by using worms to compost his kitchen scraps. Rick tell us how to make your own worm composting bins and where to get composting worms, aka red wigglers. You can also use night crawlers for worm composting.

Rick shreds paper, be it junkmail or newspapers for bedding material and mixes this with the food scraps from the kitchen into his worm composter. He tells about how to make your own worm composter and where to locate the composter in your home. And how to aerate your worm compost bin with a home made rig.

Fruit flies are easily controlled with the shredded paper and keeping the worm bin not too wet.

How to build an aquaponics system is next, Rick tell us how to make your own aquaponics or aquaculture system. If you have an aquarium, you have half the the parts to an aquaponics system. Balancing the pH of the system of a challenge. Right now Rick is using goldfish to fine tune his system, he is growing tomatoes, lettuce, peppers with his aquaculture system.

You can read some of Ricks aquaponics how-to posts here.

photo by Kahanaboy

June 4, 2012
Don’t Dump Me, Bro’

106 bags of leaves

You can hear the discussion I had with Eric on “Tom Sawyer Composting” here on Gardenfork Radio.

Here’s the leaf composting bin I created just yesterday. 106 bags of leaves (mostly 30 gal. bags) gathered from around my neighborhood, shredded with a mower. Add a bit of high nitrogen fertilizer before the rains this evening and it will be cooking by morning.

If I’d had the time, I’d have been able to build 3 more yesterday, based on the number of bags at the curb in my neighborhood. They’ll all go to the dump today.

Pity. All that good nitrogen and carbon going to waste in the dump.

Don’t Dump me, Bro’.

(and yes, I garden and compost in the front yard. That’s the edge of my winter garden to the right of the compost.)

November 29, 2011
How to make a compost bin – GF Video

Its easy to make a compost bin like this. I’m all about simple when building compost bins, these wire screen compost bins are easy to make and work well for leaves, garden waste and kitchen scraps.

If you want to make a compost bin like this, you can use any screen you have. Or maybe your neighbor has a roll of stuff they want to get rid of. This is one of those projects where checking out what your neighbor is throwing out can come in handy.

What you don’t want is screen that has large holes, as your compost material will fall out of it. Avoid what looks like wire fencing for chickens or goats, it usually has rectangular openings and are too big.

Its better to make one large bin than two small ones. Because compost is all about mass. The more mass you have, the better the compost will break down. We talk about this in another one of our compost bin videos here. Mass allows more heat in the pile, which is good.

If you put screen across the top and bottom of this composter, you can turn it upside down. Its a cheater way of aerating the pile, and it works. Not sure if you want to devote the time and energy to cutting wire caps for the bin though.

The beauty of this design is how easy it is. 3 pieces of scrap wood, a staple gun, and a hammer. done. I usually cut the wood stakes 18″ longer than the screen height so I have plenty to drive into the ground. If you cut the bottom of the stakes with an angle, or even a wedge-knife point, they will hammer in easier. This cut can be done by hand or with a chop saw. Use what you got!

We have more compost bin and compost 101 videos here. Let me know your thoughts below.

October 7, 2009