ThatÂs great Vanessa. Congratulations. I clearly remember my first experience of steam rising from my bin on a cold November morning. Now you have a great place to recycle your paper, kitchen, and garden wastes. Everyone should have a compost heap.
Bill Hill

Vanessa, it has been a joy to read your posts and try to answer your questions.

Happy holidays,

Paul

LOL Thanks Paul and Bill. Hope you have a great Holiday!

Vanessa

Congratulations, Vanessa. That first hot pile is exciting. It's satisfying to take "garbage" and make "dirt". Feels like you have created something from nothing. Once you start harvesting that compost your garden will thank you many times over.

Don't forget, at some point you have to stop adding to that pile and start another batch to get finished compost.

You're still cutting grass in Virginia? Wow, my husband sure wouldn't want to live in Va.!

Karen

The weather here is nuts in December. I wasn't out in shorts yesterday but it was nice and today it's cold. It can be 78 one day at 43 the next. Due to that lots of folks "wait" until that last minute to cut the grass for the winter :)

Lucky me considering I have a newly starting to heat up pile :)

Vanessa

As I sit in my house, hibernating because its 10 degrees outside with -10 degree windchill, and I read about grass clippings steaming, I must confess to be a little bit jealous.

I'm also in Northern Virginia, and the weather has definitely been unpredictable. Last week we were expecting the snow that hit the North East, and instead of "a wintery mix" we got light rain, and then sunshine.

I mowed yesterday as well, but it was really to pick up the remaining leaves. It has been cold, and the grass hasn't been growing, so if you mowed in the late fall, it's still cut.

But yes, two days before Christmas, and I was doing yardwork (at 50 degrees out). And if I didn't have a compost pile, I wouldn't have been even doing that. It's an obsession -- one more hit... just want to get those leaves...

I remember the first time that I made compost.

I had to do it in a perforated plastic garbage can. I knew this wasn't optimum, but it was the best I could do, as I knew that I wasn't going to have enough 'stuff' for anything close to the more desirable cubic yard of volume.

Every day (and I mean EVERY DAY) I went out the can and looked in, then tossed in my donation for the day, and kind of stirred it into the top few inches with a stick.

Every day.

And it just sat there, kind of damp, like a messy lump of potato peels, tomato cores, weeds, wilted lettuce, furry green beans, mixed with thin flakes of my (single) bale of straw.

Nothing was happening, it was just sitting there. So I would get my 4-prong claw tool, tip the can on it's side, and claw everything out, then shovel it all back in.

It wasn't working. My housemate asked when it would be compost. I must have done something wrong. Maybe it was too wet. Maybe I put too much straw in. Maybe I fluffed it up too much... or not often enough?

And it seemed to keep shrinking, no matter how much stuff I put in.

Discouraged, I stopped staring at it every day. I would take the bowl of vegetable waste out, lift the lid just enough to dump it in, then quickly close it to cover up my failure.

Then it was time to take our trash to the dump. I guess I should bag up my rotting stuff and toss it. The can was only 2/3 full, but still quite heavy.

So I pulled off the lid and started to dig with the shovel. I took off the top dry layer, and underneath was........

COMPOST!

REAL COMPOST! Brown, mealy, earthy-smelling COMPOST!

YAHOO!

Congratulations, Vanessa!

Sue

That's such a great story Sue and so true to form. I didn't want to keep asking stupid questions so I just took my failure with the usual amount of grace I normally do.

I went out to that pile with my new grass in a rage breaking it down and trying to build it up again the "right" way as if I know what that is. Finally to find that I had been ok all along.

My pile kept going down and I knew it couldn't be decomposing so quickly. I honestly thought someone was taking my leaves =/

I just really want the newbies to know that and not give up as I almost certainly did.

Thank you for your story it's so great to hear I wasn't the only one.

Vanessa

Vanessa,
I'm with Joepyeweed. A little bit jealous, but then again, I welcome the break of the winter since I'm not composting during the cold months this year. Congratulations on your pile and wish you many more!

You made my day. It's a great feeling and thank you for sharing your excitement with us!

This made me laugh so much. I just started a compost bin and I am not sure if it'll work - I'm just going to count on success like Vanessa. I, too, can screw up anything! Hopefully, i can't screw up rotting vegetation.

:)

It is interesting how addictive composting can be, especially if you happen to get hot compost right off (that is probably the accident that causes the extreme compost whacko trait.)

I love the story about thinking the compost had failed and then going to throw it away only to find finished compost. That is a great one!

And the original post about getting the steaming compost and disturbing the neighbor, classic!

I think I have just about all forms of compost going right now. (I suppose I'm an extreme whacko.) I've got the super hot Humanure compost bins running for all the "no-nos" since with the urine, they get really hot and handle all the tough stuff. I've also got a worm bin going that gets it's fair share of scraps and provides wonderful worm castings. The yard is quickly being covered with cardboard, leaves and mushroom compost for lasagna gardening or sheet composting as many say.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Bins

Congratulations. I remember the first time I composted and my neighbor back then ran out of his house after seeing me from his 1st floor window, turning the pile and seeing steam come streaming out. That was about 6 years ago. He wanted to see it up close too and asked how I did that with just adding grass clippings, leaves, and water.

Now I also have vermicomposting in the house and lasagna gardening in my gardens as well. You got to try that lasagna gardening technique as well. The plant stems were solid and thick in the lasagna garden, and we got clay soil up here in Northern virginia.