I use standard 5 gallon buckets to haul compost, when I dig out the pile, in April. Some years, I get 5 buckets, and some years, I get 6 or 7. That works out to 25-35 gallons per year. We use it mostly in the garden, and also when transplanting shrubs. We always have enough. The garden plot used to get pretty sticky when wet, from the high clay content. I haven't seen that problem in several years.

I would approximate about a half of a cubic yard per year. My pile is 4'x4'x4', a continuous system that is rarely "full". I harvest finished stuff out of the bottom once or twice a year and it shrinks the volume by half when I harvest.

I rarely have enough to cover every growing spot in my yard. I try to apply it in a rotating basis. Areas that got topdressed last year, won't get any this year. Sometimes I topdress the lawn, in spots that seem to be struggling. I like to keep a few gallons stored on hand, to use for potting or transplanting during the year.

One reason people make compost tea, is to spread the benefits of the compost over a larger area.

I have a average yard about 1/4 acre. I have seven compost bins; some 4' diameter, some 4'by8' and 16" high. Due to the neighbors trees; I have to plant my 20 tomatoes in one side of the back yard. So I use all the compost that these seven bins can produce. Some of the compost is dug in over the winter. Some is used as mulch around the tomatoes. Sifted compost is used to cover my spinach and lettuce seeds when I plant them.

Probably just about a cubic yard of finished compost each year. Like Joepye, I rotate it around, but some areas get some every year (vegie garden, for one).

tj

I live in the city and compost in bins made out of trash barrels. Last year I got about 20 gallons of compost. This year I seem to have about 40 gallons, but we also did some serious garden expansion this year, so there was lots of sod to fill up the bins. I don't know if that volume will be sustainable in future years, but more gardens means more garden waste, so I suppose it's possible.

Odd though this may sound, we don't get any leaves in the Fall. Since I recently discovered that I can shred these with the mower, I may try begging some from friends. I may also ask the neighbors, who are extensive gardeners, for their garden waste, since they don't seem to compost. I haven't tried this yet, though, since they're elderly and there's a bit of a language barrier, so I'm not sure how easily I'd be able to explain myself.

I don't have as much compost as I'd like, but I've found a local source for more rabbit manure that I could possibly use, so I use that to amend my beds. In the future, I may also add it to my compost bins if they have the space.

I'd say I've been making 2-3 yards of compost. I have an acre and I use the lawn like a hay field to supply the greens. Then I forage the extra browns that my trees don't provide.

This fall it looks like I'll be making more than average. I now have a chipper/shredder and that opens up more options.

I used the c/s to turn pine straw into mulch for the berries. And I've now been adding wood chips to my compost.

I've been composting for about 7 years but gardening for 3.

I hope to have six 4x4x4' bins going into winter. They will be made from leaves, grass clippings, garden plants, and pumpkins from the local recycling place combined with all the kitchen scraps and manure the local chickens will part with. In addition to the bins, I've started doing something that kind of excites me---I've been bringing tons of bagged leaves---up to 100 bags---and dumping them shoulder to shoulder on some part of my yard. They will be black pulverized stuff by this spring or next depending on the traffic in the spot I choose. I also take at least a dozen bags of leaves into the woods where I ignore them for two or three years. (I opened a bag yesterday and it was black, crumbly, worm-filled and is now surrounding a new apple tree going into its first winter. (Well, it was, but the chickens discovered it today and scratched it out to about seven feet from the trunk---not to mention sucked every worm out of it.)

I have never known a spring, a summer or a fall that I haven't wished that I had tons more compost than I do. This 4" of compost business? Here in Maine, I could apply a foot between the spring and fall and still not be overdoing it. Not that I've ever achieved that overall.

Fall, for me, is all about Power Composting and I dedicate a lot of time and truck gas to gather as much as I possibly can. I'm leaving for the dump tomorrow at 7 am, I will be up and out on Hallo'morn in the increasingly vain hope that teenaged children with gumption will have upheld the Halloween pledge to gather and smash as many pumpkins as they possibly can. I myself never smashed pumpkins on Halloween in the misguided notion that doing so was wrong.

In 2004, I came upon the Mother Lode---what must have been hundreds of pumpkins piled up on the road---bless their hearts---right in front of one of our two cemeteries. It must have almost killed the first driver upon the scene. When I got there with my shovel early the next morning, the pumpkin slush was six inches deep. I was a little ashamed every time a car passed as if I, a 50-year-old, had been out smashing hundreds of pumpkins the night before, and shame after-the-fact had driven me to rise at 7 am, head to the cemetary and start shoveling up pumpkin. What possible other explanation could there be?

Post-Halloween pumpkins make up about 1/8 of my fall compost.

Anyway, choose a season and try to stagger the imagination compost-gathering-wise. It's quite exciting.

Preaching to the Choir, right?

I now have 5 compost bins made from pallets but it's a challenge to find enough stuff to compost. I have easily available fine wood shavings, horse manure, UCG's, and our kitchen scraps and it eventually becomes compost or at least a very good nutritious mulch. Have filled the bins twice this year but when it shrinks I combine bins. I've probably only taken a couple of yards out of it this year that looks close to finished but have quite a bit that's "almost" there. Might leave it til spring or still use it this fall if the snow holds off.

I wouldn't be able to have too much compost unless Lloyd dumped his entire production in my new larger house yard. How much is too much over 1.5 acre? I figure 60,000 square feet of garden - how much can raw forest clay use? A lot.

Thank you Annpat, we're going for a drive to the nearest small town early on the 1st of Nov! Our leaves are slow in falling but they've finally started. Hoping everyone in town is raking their leaves and putting them in the Halloween bags and will get them to the curb after the day. That and the pumpkins would be a great find! The 1st falls on a Sunday so maybe I can beat garbage pick-up.

In my former garden, I used far more compost than I could make - about 10 yards each season. My little compost pile (no room for a larger one) simply couldn't keep up. So I bought in bulk compost prepared from municipal yard waste collection.

New, significantly smaller garden now but just getting started with it. No longer have my bunnies but there are scads of leaves and what appears to be the remains of a previous compost operation so maybe I'll finally be able to generate a sufficient amount.

I have not looked at this website for at least a month due to change in weather and being too busy outside to even be on the internet. It has been 100 degrees or more all summer and now is in the 70s and 80s and we have been renovating our huge lot for the past 2 weeks. Our soil is hard-pack clay and we need to renovate every spring and fall to get a good earth. Previous owners had let it all go and we also planted around 20 trees for shade (and leaves). I say all this because this is the 1st article I found when looked here again. My eyes glazed over, my pulse tripled and I copied all these comments to read and reread throughout the day!!! I never knew compost would do that to me- it is just too scary. I loved all your comments but AnnPat you gave me new purpose in life for Nov. 1! I compost all year long, but like gardengal I have to get bulk compost from the city to compensate. I never have enough compost. I wish to accumulate tons of leaves this fall also. Oh for a 100 bags sitting on my curb! Thanks to everyone for renewed inspiration yet again.

Thanks, earthyworthy, I was trying to inspire. (smile) It just occurred to me a few years ago that I could really dedicate some energy to this thing a few times a year. I'm very lucky in that I have free, unsupervised, constant, even late-at-night, access to a local, loosely managed, recycling center where residents haul their yard waste. I can get all the leaves, grass clippings, hydrangea blossoms, yew clippings, pumpkins and hosta leaves, etc., etc. that I want in Oct. Last year a guy pulled in beside me and he dumped a bag of chipped leaves and grass clippings. I said, "Are all your bags like that?" and he said, "You want them?" He tossed the bags from his truck into mine and I never lifted a finger until I unloaded them at home.

Three weeks ago, I built a grass, leaf and pumpkin pile, which I turned yesterday taking great care not to burn myself in the process!!! Get it? (I'll be using that stuff before Thanksgiving.)

If any of you have this type of resource, and a vehicle, I would recommend inquiring about its availability to the public. Not only can I get all the feedstock I want at the dump, I also get tons of discarded dahlias, glads, and plant pots. The ridiculous thing is that I could fill my truck with finished compost, which actually tested well at the University of Maine's Extension Testing Service, but I mostly go there to gather stuff to make my own compost.

I have quite a bit of compost this year, and have been spoiling a lot of surprised plants. My dogwood was like, "Really?? Moi?? What is it, my birthday?"

I've got a small bin (about 12 cu ft). I make as much as I can and use all of it.

I estimate we have about 100 cubic yards of compost...we do it on a very large scale, and use it copiously in all the gardens, making new raised beds, replenishing older raised beds. We have several giant piles that we turn with a front end loader of our tractor, from most to least finished. They are composed mostly of bedding from a goat farm, old hay, and leaves. I think most people don't realize just how much compost needs to be made for their needs. Most people feel they never have enough. We consider ourselves lucky!

Two hundred cubic feet from my seven mesh bins.

I currently have 6 wire bins, about 4ft diameter and 4 feet high, in various stages of decomposing or with vegetables growing in them. When I was redoing the lawn, I broke them all down and ended up with 6 cubic yards of finished, sifted compost and the leftovers filled 2 bins.

We're about to prune and shred more mesquite trees, so there will be even MORE compost.

I'm about to start giving it away.

I make about 3 yards a year. I buy about 10. Me like compost.

Not enough!!

:)
Dee

On a quarter acre, we never make enough either. One round wire bin about 8ft in diameter and 4 ft high that we use for grass clippings and chopped leaves and two black plastic composters that have a locking lid that I can add table scraps to. We compost passively and wait about 12 months for finished compost. One lucky section of the garden gets a bonanza every year. Of course, the roses have to have a little too. I don't add compost to the veggie beds, but rather I use cover crop and a heavy chopped leaves mulch. We use the grass clippings with newspaper to mulch the beds sometimes. I receive some of my neighbor's leaves and we just run them over with the mower and add them to the large bin.

I just started what I call my first actual bin this year. I used to just pile my grass clippings in a random corner of my yard. I can't find any browns. I have plenty of greens, but I don't have a shredder and I don't come by much cardboard. I guess I could just rip newspapers, but don't they need to be really small pieces?

We measured how many 5 gallon bucket loads of compost we were taking out of one or maybe two piles last year, came up with 220 gallons. We have several piles in progress at all times. Plus we do raised lasagna beds, so most of our garden soil IS compost that is made in situ.

I use compost in pots, and on the top of lasagna beds to hold down leaves and make a nice medium to sow seeds in or to put around plant roots. I put it all over my vegie gardens, and a little on the flower beds.

We bring in old produce, leaves, and horse manure from nearby locations, so we get a lot more compost than most people.

Marcia

"I guess I could just rip newspapers, but don't they need to be really small pieces?"

Smaller pieces decompose faster than larger pieces, but some people have thrown phone books in as-is and they eventually compost.