I’ve got this pile of old garden dirt that’s become a catch all for kitchen scraps. I just started adding to it last fall and now this is happening. Should I just roll with it and see what happens? Mostly cucumber but also have a few apple seeds that have sprouted as well as a potato and some lettuce.

One of the interesting aspects of sifting compost is the intimate relationship developed with the final product. When picking the stones and uncompleted material out of the screen, one can easily recall their history.

Three years ago I cut my hair and decided to chuck it trimmings into the bin. Somehow a clump of hair made it through 3 years of turning and bring transfered between 4 bins relatively unscathed. It's now back in bin 1 for another 3 year ride through the compost conveyor.

I know all of the composting is basically an experiment. So my next question is how long does hair take to break down?

I have chunks of wool, from the neighbors sheep, moving from bin 2 into 3 this year. I wonder if it will be broken down by this time next year when it gets sifted?

After several trips back and forth from helping out an elderly gentleman with his coops in my area I’ve started two more piles and added a significant amount to my main pile. The mix you see is a 3 month breakdown of pine shavings, chicken feed and poop. It started stinking like I’ve never known the first few days but after several wheel barrows full of leaf litter from the property i think I’ve managed to balance it back out. Lucky me but damn was this a shit job

I have a 2 bin system and this has been maturing for 6 months while my other bin is my “active” bin. Mostly kitchen and garden scraps for the nitrogen, and paper and pine shavings for the browns. Turn the pile (at least the top) every week or to to start, then maybe monthly when the fresh pile wants more attention. The worms and larvae are all wild who just decided to move in.

Opened the bottom of the bin because I needed some compost for my herbs and fruit plants and thought I would share a picture.

They are kinda wet and have greenish grass(?). My compost lacks brown material, can i use these instead? Would it make compost wetter or not?

(Grammer might be not make sense, im not english-speaker sorry)

I got my first flock of chickens March 2024. I had them mobile around our yard until building them a permanent run in August 2024. At that time we loaded their run (8ft by 20ft cattle panel hoop coop)with wood chips from around our property. As fall continues we kept loading the run with grass clippings and leaves. Over the winter we have have continued to feed my hens our food scraps directly into the run.

Last fall/early winter the food scraps that were left behygor broken down quite quickly however this spring things seem to have come to a halt. I'm wondering how to jumpstart the compost again.

I was planning to completely empty the run of all the mostly broken down material and pile it because I know the nitrogen is still too hot and will kill my garden if I use it this year. Once I pile it will it heat up again and keep breaking down?

Had to dry out what I had going on in my heap, so seemed like a good time to make some big bins, 4’ wide x 6’ deep x 7’ tall. Divider boards can be removed to make turning into adjacent bin easier.

Pretty much all avocado seeds sprouted from my outdoor compost. Is it normal? What should I do with them? Should I keep them in water or plant them in containers? (I can gift the plants to my friends)

I have a 200 gallon tumbler that didn't get turned much over the winter. I would say the compost is 80% done. In the next 3 weeks, I will be putting my plants in my gardens. At this point, should I just start turning the compost, or should I add some chicken manure/grass clippings to the tumbler to see if I can start it back up?

Does anyone grind up kitchen scraps to speed up composting? It doesn’t look like anything exists on Amazon for this.

I bought a large aluminum raised planter for some veggies. I’m wondering if it will work to put compost in near the bottom layer , even if it isn’t compost yet. Will scraps and shells and coffee grounds and leaves help the soil if I do a big layer ? I thought I would do cardboard and branches - the kind of compost layer- leaves and soil.

I’ve had this for 5-6 months in a tumbler and stopped adding to it 2-3 months ago. Been turning a few times a week. I can’t tell if it’s ready. There are clumps which I’m told is normal for tumblers. Several peanut shells still intact and pine straws but otherwise seems it might be ready? I’d like to use it in my vegetable garden. Thank you in advance for your help!

How many cocoons do you spot on the cardboard? (at least a dozen). Worms are multiplying like crazy with the weather warming up. The castings in the metal tub were harvested from my bottom tray in the tower bin and are now drying. In about a month, I’ll sift it to make worm tea. It’s loaded with worms and a little bit of unbroken down material, which I’m picking out and adding to the new top tray in my tower.

*Pro tip: adding old bedding that’s inoculated with beneficial microbes to a new feeding area will greatly speed up food breaking down.

Newbie…composters, this is my compost, about 9 months old(but I have been adding to this side). I wanna start my garden this week, everything I’ve read says I can use it but I get conflicting answers as to bury it, mix it with my soil or put it on top as a mulch (no pests here and the garden will be gated so my cat doesn’t poop in it)

I filled up a large raised garden bed with chopped up twigs, greens and leaves, added fresh soil on top and has been growing in it for two years. Found out that the bamboo from h*ll had found it's way in so I had to empty ghe boxes to dig out the bamboo. Most of it had composted down into this nice, dark soil - had to sift it a bit though.

Since it's a very low nutrient compost and two years old I thought to just use it for potting soil for my vegetables - do you think I will kill them? Do I really need to mix it with "other" soil? I don't really want to drive off to the garden center to buy some more plastic bags of basically peat and chicken manure...

Hello everyone. I currently live in an apartment, so I have no backyard just a balcony. For the past year or so I’ve been taking my compost to my parent’s house for their compost pile. Recently though they told me they’ll stop composting for now and may or may not continue it in the future. So my question is are there any great places or resources I can look at to give my compost to? Thanks in advance!

Dunno what this bug is exactly, but I remember seeing ducks and chicken eat them during some seasons back home. Anyone know what it is? Should I be concerned for it or my compost? I only bother it when I turn. Noticably the ants and fruitflies that were all over the compost a few weeks ago are gone and it's still here. Thought all insects would run out of things to eat at about the same time.

In Nairobi, Kenya. Compost is on my balcony in breathable shopping bags. Maybe 5 months old.

Hi! I am looking to start my own compost pile. I have access to essentially unlimited materials of all kinds, but I need to find a way to fit the compost bin inside a small fenced area I have my garden in (because we have raccoons, hogs, etc.) Does anyone have any recommendations of small ones I can build or buy? I have lots of pallets, fine mesh, and cattle panel around to use. Honestly I think vermiculture might work best for me but we have fire ants and it get very hot here. So if anyone has solutions for that I'm interested. I thought about putting some worm holes in my raised beds (cattle troughs with holes in the bottom) and establishing worms in them but I think the heat might still be an issue.

First cut of the lawn last week... chucked the clippings into the centre and the core temp has shot up to 70⁰c (158⁰F)

So I’ve been doing my version of composting for a few months now. It’s nothing super fancy because I just compost to keep my food scraps out of landfill, not to make fertilizer (I don’t even have a garden lol). I have a DIY indoor composting bin, which is just a lidded bucket with holes drilled into it. It has some dirt from my backyard, and I add food scraps and cardboard about every week. I also mix it at least once a week to aerate. Then I sift out the “done” compost and sprinkle it on my lawn.

Lately, I’ve noticed some tiny little friends in my compost (see the video). I’m not really sure what they are, but they probably got in my bin when I added some dirt from my backyard a few weeks ago. At first I didn’t mind because I figured they were just helping break down my food scraps, and that’s what I want. But then I realized that I’m essentially just breeding these guys in my bin and then releasing them into the wild when I sprinkle the compost on my lawn. And I’m concerned this might be bad for the other little critters living in the soil in my lawn, who now have to compete with this horde of little wiggly dudes.

So does anyone know what these things are? And is it okay for me to continue releasing them on my lawn?