I would buy a bale of hay or straw and add some of it to the tumbler.

I am afraid that that will add a lot of seeds to the compost.

I don't 'bin-compost', so dynamics different from a pile, but these might help:

Cardboard ... most stores have free boxes.
My sister uses pessed sawdust she uses for bedding for her horse. You might snoop around a feed store to see what they have that looks useful.
Tree trimming companies will often give you free chippings. I use mostly for mulch and garden pathways, but have used in compost pile. Would probably work in a bin to balance out for the kitchen scraps.
You didn't mention news paper .. I use all of daily papers from 4 families in my city-lot-sized garden. Either in compost or other uses.

Can you get some wood shavings and sawdust from anywhere. Even if I had to buy (gasp) a bag of shavings from Walmart I'd do it. Shavings would be better but a mix is okay too.

Lloyd

you need to add LARGE quantities of shredded newspapers and junk mail - a few scraps and napkins aren't enough. Add a few large handfuls, tumble the bin, add more, tumble more.

When you collect for compost, add equal quantities of shredded paper and food scraps. I collect in a small wast basket, and fill the borttom 1/3 with packed-down shredded newspaper. It absorbs the wet stuff pretty well.

I stopped adding vegetable scraps to the compost for this reason. All kitchen waste now goes in the worm bin. Worms don't seem to care if their pile is a slimy mess (although it's good to toss in a bit of cardboard or mulch occasionally).

Compost piles seem to be easier to manage if you restrict them to garden waste, coffee grinds, cardboard, etc.

> I would buy a bale of hay or straw and add some of it to the tumbler

>>I am afraid that that will add a lot of seeds to the compost.

Most straw contains contains very few seeds but it does contain some. IMO it's nothing to worry about. I've been using hay for 3 years to make compost. Also it doesn't seem to be a problem. The seeds rot just like everything else.

The amount of moisture in vegetable (kitchen) scraps will make a composting mix that is just too wet. It needs almost twice as much dry organic (shredded leaves if available, straw) to balance the moisture, or a very large volume of paper.

Just to clarify, straw and hay are different. Straw is the stalks of wheat, the wheat seeds having been removed. Hay is grass and other pasture plants (ie weeds) with seeds and all.

lazygardens, when you say you use equal 'amounts' of food waste and paper do you mean by volume or weight? Shredded paper (and most other browns) are a LOT less dense than food waste or fresh grass clippings. I think we need to be more descriptive on this.

Crusader ... packed volume. I start my kitchen compost collection bucket with it half full of packed shredded paper. By the time I dump it, the paper is wet and packed even further.

Or if you have a layer of grass clippings, add 2x the depth of dry stuff, and keep the wet layers thin enough so they don't go anaerobic.

So I feed newspapers into a shredder and then add, say 3 grocery bags full, to the compost bin? That seems like less work than cutting up cardboard boxes.

Don't newspapers have toxic inks on them?

No, the black ink is mostly soy-based these days and non-toxic. There are some questions about the colored inks on glossy ads that may still have some metals in them. I'd stick to the black ink.

Microbes! You said you'd used "partially fermented" table scraps and dried leaves at first--both of those are good microbe sources. Fresh table scraps may not have sufficient varieties or quantities of microbes for a successful compost reaction, and paper tends not to have any worth mentioning. So add a bunch of dry matter to balance your wet scraps, plus some microbes.

If you have access to good garden soil, a cup of that per gallon should do just fine. Otherwise, dried leaves, particularly ones that have fallen and been rained on, or finished compost.

Also, there are cultured microbial inoculants ("indigenous micro-organisms" or "Effective Microbes"). But if you have good soil or finished compost, you may as well go the simple route.

Best of luck,

DSF

Here is a link that might be useful: bokashislope

All of the food we eat has the microbes necessary to convert it from the form we use it to a form more useable in the soil without further intevention by us. Put a lettuce leaf, or any piece of fruit someplace protected from the larger digesters of that material and watch what happens to it. It will, eventually, be digested.

The pile is back on track. The bulk of the compost is now black and crumbly, no smell or greyish color.

I did three things:

1. Left the top off some days to help dry out the mix.

2. Added 4 grocery bags full of napkins, paper towels, kleenex, paper towels and egg cartons. Also shredded some newsprint and added that, maybe 2 grocery bags full.

3. Added about 3 grocery bags full of sun dried corn husks (we eat a lot of corn on the cob)

Hope to have a nice compost in 3 weeks.

Way to go Tom, glad you got it sorted out.