Beth, I have never done a trash can compost, and I have never had a fly problem.

Why the trash can?

Ascetics?

I bet, it is to soggy. Do you just let it sit there?, or do you lay it down ever so often and roll it to move the stuff around?

Moni

Moni,
I have stirred it and I even layed it on the side and rolled it about five times... but it's just a big ol' chunk of nastiness! You're probly right on the moisture level, since I have poured in remains of soup a couple of times (yikes). AND, it has been out in rains a couple of times, not during the huge rains, but afterwards. No other place to put it.

I did it for ascetics... but honestly, it'd probly be neater and nicer any other way besides this. This is gross. No other word for it. I've got a big ol' mess on my hands. :(

Beth

I think Moni's right and that you compost pile is too wet and perhaps too cold. When you mix all that stuff together, it starts generating heat and that heat should kill fly eggs before they hatch, or even kill the fly larvae if they manage to hatch. You have to stir that stuff up every now and then to mix it and help it "cook". Since you have it in a trash can, I'd lay it down with the lid firmly attached (use duct tape to hold it on if you think it will come off) and roll it around a bit on the ground. If the stuff inside is really wet and soggy, leave the lid off for a few days.

I've never composted inside a bin....have always just had a pile on the ground or a pile inside a round mesh cylinder. My guess is the pile is too wet. You also can tell by the smell. If the smell is really bad, your compost is too wet. A healthy compost pile has a humusy aroma that is not unpleasant but a wet and slimey pile can really stink.

One way around the flies is to always put your food scraps in first and then layer grass clippings, leaves, etc. on top of them to bury them. Or, wrap the food scraps up inside newspaper which effectively hides them from the flies and then put the wrapped scraps into the pile.

Ahhhh, thank ya Dawn. :) I'm thinking that this experiment in composting is a bust tho. The larvae is too much right now. I'm just gonna quit feeding it and probly bribe the trash guys to haul it off after the wiggling stops.

Yes.

It's that bad.

Lesson learned. :)

The smell is horrible too. I've also realized that I put the can in the corner of the yard RIGHT BY the dumpster of the Mexican restaurant by our house. That might have something to do with it too.

I've been talking to my hubby and we think we have a place now to do an open compost type pile now. I will NOT recommend the trash can method EVER... LOL!

Thanks so much ladies! I appreciate it!

Beth

Beth,

I use to try to compost and found it too much work. I will only pile my clipping, leaves, or what ever till I can find a spot around a plant to mulch.

Most of my gardening was back in the 1980's, I just started gardening again about 6 or 7 years ago when I retired.

I have quite a few gardening books, one titled "Let It Rot" that says you have too much nitrogen and too much moisture. It is the same problem I had when I tried composting years ago.
According to this book you need about 10 to 1 ratio of carbon/nitrogen (Like dry leaves to green grass cliping).

You can not keep anything FROM composting. What we want to do is control the time and smell. When I was composting before, I had too small of a garden and was catching 7 trash bags, or more, of green grass a week that had a lot of nitrogen in it. I had no dry material other than a small amount of soil to add to the pile.

Now I mow my lawn, and if I feel I need mulch, I will let the clippings lay on the lawn a day or two to dry. I then "wind row" them with the rider and catch them with a rear bagger. Sometimes I just rake them into small piles and drag a small tarp to each pile and rake them on, then drag the tarp to where I want the mulch. The next year I till then into the soil.

This system may not work for you, but I find it much less work than the way I use to do it.

Larry

Beth, I goofed the book says 30/1 ratio of carbon/nitrogen

Larry

Beth,
I noticed you said you poured "soup" into the bin? If it was cooked soup with some kind of meat or animal base, or "cooked" anything, ... that might not be a good idea. I think the scraps need to be "raw".

I agree with the others on wetness too.

If you haven't totally given up on the idea yet, it might help to shovel some plain ole garden dirt into the mix. I always did that when making my own compost and I think it helps break down the vegetative material faster by adding natural microrganisms contained in the soil.

I turned what I hope will be my last pile of compost today. I'm graduating over into the Lasagna gardening method thanks to what I've been learning here on the Okie web. It has been a lot of work to get this started in my large garden area, but it's coming along now, and I am very pleased so far!

These things aren't "silly" to us Beth. We all had to start sometime, and as Dawn and others have said, we learn from each other and pass that knowledge on. What I have gained from these more experienced gardeners just this summer has solved a multitude of problems for me, and I still have a long way to go. But thankfully, it's getting easier with fewer problems.

Anyways, my kitchen veggie scraps are now going into the lasagna layers, instead of the pile, which I then cover up with soil, compost and/or grass clippings.

Composting can be done in a lot of different ways, but I think the Lasagna method really makes sense. I've been scavenging huge sofa cardboard sections and the like from a furniture store every trip to town, so it's adding up real fast. I'm having to now cut holes in the wet cardboard for tomatoe plants, peppers, and plants that I started in Dawn's innovation, paper cups, (SO much better than peat pots!).. along with all my companion plants, and then mulch around them as I continue to slowly add more layers of grass clippings, soil, mulch, etc. as I go.

And I read online how to build your own topsoil. It's on a link entitled, "Soil without Toil". I'm lovin this summer after all!

Good luck with your efforts, and have some fun with the learning process :)

Shekanahh

Actually, if I was you, I would turn the can upside down, pull it off, and pile on anything I got to hide/cover the mess.

Just let it lay there, covered with natural stuff, or even soil.

It will decompose, and you will have compost.

Anyone can make compost the lazy way. Just get yourself some hog wire fencing, make a circle with it, and start piling your stuff in there. Let it sit for a year or so, and let it rot/compost.

Plant some purple vine flowers around it, to hide it.

One year I planted cantaloupe there, and wound the vines over it. Had fruit and a hidden pile. :)

Moni

I put soup, chicken bones, anything I clean out of the refrigerator, into my compost pile. However, I will say I live smack dab in the city with no creatures other than cats and maybe a stray dog that might wander into my yard occasionally. I put everything into the center of the pile and then cover it back over with grass clippings.

My compost pile sits right in the middle of my flower beds. I don't have problem with flies or smells. Although, if I've added bagged grass clippings, it can smelled nasty for a little bit, but the smell dissipates.

I would do as Moni suggests. Put it all on the ground and cover it up. Honest, the smell goes away pretty quickly :) I catch my grass clippings a lot in the spring because the grass grows so quickly (so it doesn't mulch well) and it is really nice compost pile cover.

Lisa

Beth,

I've seen Lisa's yard and you hardly even notice her compost pile! If she hadn't pointed it out during the garden tour, I wouldn't have known it was a compost pile....just would have thought it was heavy mulch. No flies, no smell, and no armadillos, possums, raccoons or skunks digging in it like we have out here in the boonies. : )

I wouldn't have the trash guys haul it off either. Just dump it on the ground (if the thought of doing this turns your stomach, ask your sweetie to please do it for you) and let it dry out some. If it looks just too awful, pile some soil, grass clippings, hay or straw on top. The smell will go away fairly quickly in this heat.

I have several compost piles, but don't forget that I'm on rural acreage and have lots of space. I just throw stuff on them and let it decompose. I guess I am a lazy composter as I seldom water or turn them. In fact, I wouldn't turn them if you paid me to do it because my compost piles have been known to have a big snake or two in them and I can't stand snakes. The piles decompose at their own rate, and eventually I do have compost. Most of my soil improvement these days comes from layering on the mulch and letting it decompose. It is SO much simpler. Also, I put grass clippings in my garden pathways all throughout the growing season, as well as any weeds I pull up, spoiled hay, chopped up leaves in the fall, etc. etc. Then, in the spring, I stand there with a shovel and shovel up the compost (because that is what it is by them) from the pathway into the bed right beside it. It is SO easy and I don't have to haul the compost into the garden because it's been there all along decomposing in the pathways AND preventing weeds from growing there.

You also can compost without a pile. When I was a kid in the 1960s-1970s,my granddad did sheet composting, which essentially involved throwing a load of "stuff" into the soil (often in the pathways, but sometimes right in the beds) and then covering it up with a shovelful or two of dirt. Some people dig an actual trench and put the stuff in it and then bury it, but he just tossed it on the ground and covered it up. He always had amazingly productive gardens.

Don't beat yourself up over this rocky start to your composting life. Gardening, like life, is a learning experience that never ends. Even though I have been gardening for a very long time, I still learn something new every day and am constantly trying new plants, new techiniques, etc. I don't think there is ever a point when any of us think we know "it" all, or have "it" all figured out, or whatever. I think we all constantly change and try new things (and sometimes go back to the previous way which really did work better). When you think about it, being a gardener is basically like being a scientist because it involves so much experimentation and learning as you go.

Dawn

You didn't tell us the temp of your pile. I doubt that it is hot because as Dawn says, a good compost pile gets too hot for maggots. But if there are maggots the pile is probably cold and if the pile is cold you probably don't have ENOUGH nitrogen as it is the nitrogen that heats the pile. Our piles often get to 160 F. (One year I stuck a pan of stew in the pile and left it for two days--it cooked.) But like Dawn we don't turn them just pile them and leave them for a year or two.

Concerning mulching with grass clippings. You have to be careful. If there are weeds and annual grasses in the mix you can seed your garden with them. This year our corn bed stayed too wet to hoe and mulch with all the rain and it set solid with annual grasses and weeds. We spent several hours hand weeding last week--just before we got more rain. We have a large fescue "lawn" of sorts. It was formally pasture. I am seriously considering spreading weed killer over it next year to get rid of the annual grasses and weeds so I can mow clean mulch.

I have two compost bins but it is getting too hard for me to turn it, and then when I want to use it I have to shovel it out and into wherever I want it. It's much easier for me to put it where I'm going to want it, in the first place. I mulch with leaves and hay so when I have kitchen scraps, I tuck it under that and let nature take its course. If I have meat scraps, chicken bones, things of an animal nature, I dig a hole and bury them. I don't like these things in my garbage can. Earth to earth, dust to dust.

Larry, that's a good process you have about the grass. We have a rider that has two big bags to catch the grass in, but I find it heats up too much if I put the clippings directly in the garden. Good idea, letting it lay on the grass and then going over it again to collect. I'll give it a try.

I agree with Dawn and Dorothy that it's not hot enough. Next time, keep it in the direct sun with the cover on and it will heat up. For this batch, though, just dig a hole somewhere in the garden and give it a decent "burial". LOL

THANKS GUYS! Everyone's point of view helps me build a better picture about this, ya know?

I told Bryan last night that I was gonna give up on the can of nastiness... and he told me NO! LOL! He thinks we need to add more dry materials (dry grass and weed clippings, hay) and try it some more. He's a good hubby, always pushing me to not give up. :). I'm also going to throw a couple shovels of dirt in there and move it to another place in the yard. Maybe put it up on bricks to help it drain? Keep the lid off for awhile (I'm putting it under some trees so it won't get soppin' wet with rain water anymore.)

The soup was a veggie base soup, I haven't throw any meat or bones in there. Most meat scraps I have go to my dog and cats. (Not much, just a little.)

If this doesn't work, I'll be diggin' that hole... LOL!

The temp of the pile is warm! Not warm enough, obviously...

I did get really mad about this yesterday... LOL! I read, and read, and read some more about doing this... and just forgot most of what I had read! THAT'S FRUSTRATING... but I'm okay.

I LIKE the idea of "sheet composting", Dawn. Whatever I'm doing in my garden has to be simple and cost efficient... and that sounds right up my alley!

I'm not totally discouraged, don't worry about that! I have about fifteen cherry tomatoes (first ones I've grown EVER!) this morning... hard to stay discouraged when that happens! LOL!!

THANKS AGAIN! I sure do appreciate you guys. :)))

Beth

Beth,

You're welcome, and don't forget that all of us "oldies" are rooting (pun intended) for all you "newbies" and hope you have great success with your gardens.

Don't forget that one of the reasons that we can answer your questions is because we've already "been there, done that", so remember that we all went through the same types of things you're going through at one point or another.

How wonderful that you have cherry tomatoes! Raising your own yummy foof is its own reward and once you start doing it, you'll be hooked forever.

Dawn

Beth,

Your husband has the right idea, just the wrong material. I'm kind of new at the composting thing, but I think what you need are not dry, but "browns".

Browns are usually dry, but dried aren't necessarily brown. All those items you mentioned (clippings, weeds & hay) are greens - even if they're brown from drying in the sun. They're high in nitrogen. Too much green makes your CP stinky and slimy, and, in your case, maggoty.

Browns have lots of carbon, little or no nitrogen. Cardboard, newspaper, straw (not hay), and fallen leaves are all good sources of carbon. Fill your can with one, or all, of these and roll it around a bit and I'd bet it'll start to heat up, dry out and de-maggot-fy in short order.

I've been told that ink on newsprint and cardboard is vegetable based so I don't worry too much about it getting into my compost.

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Forum

Thanks for that tip, Randy! The browns you mentioned are a little bit harder for me to come by, but I'll find 'em! :)

Beth

I concur that it's too wet.

Since it's hard to get your hands on dry leaves this time of year, you might look for a bale of spoiled straw or hay. Or you can tear up newspaper or cardboard and toss that in. These are all "browns".

I only turn my compost during the winter and spring. In the summer and fall it always sprouts acorn squash for me. I try to keep a few bags of dry leaves from the fall to toss over the kitchen scraps as I add them. I'm almost out of dry leaves now, but I didn't get very many last fall.

I hope you keep trying! I was really sold on compost after an unintentional experiment one year. I had gone for a couple years with lack-luster growth in my garden as a total newbie. I read up on how to compost and started a pile. The next spring I emptied my pile and spread it around, but I only had enough compost to cover about half the garden. Rather than redistribute I figured that was good enough and planted stuff. WOW! Everywhere I put compost grew like three times as big as where I didn't have compost. The plants with compost were dark green and lush. The others were light green and spindly, just like previous years. It made me get real busy on composting, so that by mid-summer I added some unfinished compost to augment the failing "no-compost" areas and they started putting on new growth right away. Soil amendments are the bomb!

Last night I was out talking to my neighbors. They have a garden about 30' from the edge of my "back garden". The back garden is an area 30x80 I tilled up and have added about 15 tons of horse manure and bedding to, along with about three tons of mulch between plants. After these last rains, I still can't walk in parts of my garden because the ground is so wet. My plants are all hilled up and growing happily though (squash, melons and pumpkins). His garden has stopped growing for the most part - all stalled out. Even corn and okra that should do well in the heat. His ground was hard and totally dry. In spring he worked in a pickup bed full of horse manure and bedding. He's not using any kind of mulch and hasn't added to the soil since it started.

What I'm trying to say is that it makes a big difference to have a lot of organic material in the soil. The soil retains more moisture and the plants have more nutrients to grow with.

For my neighbor I suggested, since he was asking, that he get some of that free horse manure I've been getting. And start using a mulch. As he said, it's a first year garden and we're learning a lot. In retrospect, I think he thought I was talking about things to do before next year's garden and he didn't understand that I meant to get and apply manure **right now**. At least a thin layer to conserve moisture and leach a few nutrients as it aged.

Gamebird,
Well, good morning! :)

Yes, I'm sold on amending my soil. Last year I just had my plants in the regular soil... They actually did well, tho. I DID dose 'em up with MG, I'm attributing the massive growth to that. AND my big ol pecan tree. It always deposits it's leaves onto my garden spot... and they don't get raked up as well as they should... LOL! The soil is beautiful and dark down to a point, THEN THE CLAY. (The ever obligatory clay... :) )

This year I don't want to dose my garden with the MG... I did it once after the huge rains to put some nutrients back in the soil. I have been adding bags of hummus and mulching with pine bark mulch tho! Buying the amendments costs me cash tho (haven't been able to find a place to give me free manure yet). That's why I was trying this method. It's still a work in progress... now I'm emailing my family members and asking them to save their newspapers for me... LOL! Also, I'm gonna raid the dumpster of the local package store for cardboard. I'm sure they won't mind (hope).

Beth

I'm a big fan of pecan tree leaves. When they are dry they crunch up beautifully and are really easy to use. I get all kinds of leaves around my neighborhood, but mostly oak, Bradford pear, cottonwood and walnut. Some of those leaves just don't want to break apart at all. Usually we drive the riding mower over a drift of them but sometimes even that doesn't help much. My neighbors to the north used to give me their leaves but they aren't doing it any more because they think the wind will just blow them back into their yard after I've dumped them out into my garden. I try to keep as many leaves in my garden area as possible but sometimes the wind gets the jump on me.

We've been getting rain almost daily for the past several days. I've been out gathering more cardboard and I'm trying to shade out as much of the Bermuda as I can. So many weeds.... so little time.

Dawn, you have no idea how you just made my day saying you rarely moisten or turn your piles! My poor compost has been setting out all winter with no attention at all, and I was feeling very neglectful. I had added a whole bunch of dead canna stalks and leaves in early spring, but that's been about it.

Beth, I had always thought compost piles normally stink until all these fine folks set me straight. It's really got a lot to do with getting the proper balance of browns and greens. I knew I could come up with lots of green just with summer mowing but was a little concerned about the browns. I found a list of what was green and what was brown, and to my surprise, I've got more brown than I thought I'd have!

Here's a few of the things I found I have regularly I would have never thought of:
The paper cores inside rolls of toilet paper, paper towels, etc.
Brown paper sacks
Corrugated paper shipping cartons (I remove the tape and any shiny labels first)
Coffee filters
Do you shred your bills and junk mail? You can compost almost any paper that isn't coated (coated paper will be slick and shiny). I even tore up the pages from old phone books last year and threw them in.
Newspapers
Cotton rags including your or your family's old cotton underwear, don't throw it out put it in the compost!
Dryer lint
Got pets that need periodic brushing? Put the fur in the compost, also you can use human hair providing it's not been dyed
Used paper towels providing they weren't used on greasy or oily or potentially bacteria-laden surfaces
Cotton swabs (think Q-Tips) so long as the stick is cardboard not plastic
Cotton balls
Paper egg cartons
Nail clippings
If you don't sprinkle chemical carpet cleaners on your carpets then you can compost the stuff from your vacuum

You can search the web for lots more ideas. If some of these things aren't things you personally get much of, like maybe shipping cartons, you can ask around at grocery stores for some. You could ask your local barber for hair clippings. Ask your neighbors for their old newspapers. When you actually start looking into all the things that can be composted, you'll be amazed how much stuff you might have available and just never thought of.

I found a couple of sites online last summer when I started mine. Right now I can only locate the OSU sheet. The other one itemized browns and greens in columns. I'll dig it up at home and see what the URL for it is, but I'll put the OSU link at the bottom of this post.

My "bin" is just chicken wire nailed to some old wood (just to hold it) I had in the backyard arranged in a sort of box shape. My backyard slopes quite a bit so excess water runs out of it. I used a couple layers of corrugated paper boxes for a "floor."

Debra

Here is a link that might be useful: Backyard Composting in Oklahoma

Debra,

Well, you know what....once I mulch the beds I'm not going to add to them anyway, so I'm not in a "hurry" for more compost, and it will decompose just fine by the time I need to add it to beds during the winter months. : )

The first time I uncovered a long, big old ugly chicken snake in a compost pile was the last time I turned a pile. I retired from "turning" after that. LOL

Also, my piles are very large....one is roughly 8' x 10' and about 6'to 8' tall, a second is about 6' x 8' and about 4' tall, and the newest is about 8' x 8' and about 3' tall. So, I ask you, who wants to turn those piles (and how to turn them manually?). They do just fine without all that attention.

I am, at heart, a lazy gardener. Or, I guess you could say I like to focus on the things that really matter to me and the truth is that "compost happens" on its own without a lot of special attention from me.

I use a lot of the browns that you do. Newspaper, cardboard, shredded junk mail and bills, etc. When we first moved here, I worried I wouldn't have enough 'brown' ingredients year-round, but I was wrong. :)

Once, ORGANIC GARDENING magazine had a booklet (sent out as a free gift for renewing a subscription) on how you could "make" compost in 14 days. Of course, it was very labor intensive. Very, very labor intensive. I read it and laughed to myself and thought "THAT will be the day when I go to this much trouble to 'rush' a process that will happen just fine, though slower, on its own.

It is funny how we all evolve as gardeners. In Texas, I did the whole double-digging, rock-removing, adding tons of compost, etc. routine and then built raised beds on top of that improved soil, and filled the beds with a purchased mix that was 50% sandy loam/50%compost. It was SO much work. After we moved here, I dropped the double digging, but did add all the organic material to the beds the year we built them. Then I just mulched heavily and kept adding mulch all year long. Now, I just basically lasagna garden, although it probably is really more like Ruth Stout's mulch gardening because I don't purchase and lay on all the layers of different things that Pat Lanza recommends in her lasagna garden books. Guess what? I get just as good results from Ruth Stout mulch gardening as I got from double-digging, etc., and for only about 25% of the time/labor and far less financial cost. You can make gardening easy, or you can make it hard. I vote for doing it the easy way.!

Dawn

I don't turn my compost either. It does get water when I'm watering the flower beds.

Can I tell you a secret? I rarely harvest my compost. I compost because I can, because I think it is a waste to put food waste in the trash, and just because I think it's cool that it becomes a usable product. When I do harvest it, most of it goes back to the family who donates most of the "greens". I don't generate much in my one person family :)

Lisa

Lisa,

Well, now your secret is out! LOL

I don't think you "have to" harvest your compost. After all, your mulch is continually decomposing and feeding your soil. And, as you point out, you're keeping decomposable food scraps from going to the landfill, and that is important in and of itself.

We are in creek bottomland with higher agricultural land above us, to our north and west, and a creek below us, to our south and east. So, on our land erosion is a huge issue and one we've worked hard to mitigate naturally without bringing in a bulldozer and trying to reshape the land. (One of our neighbors had someone work on his hand for months, contouring and shaping their land, which is much larger than our place, and it seems to me that their land erodes more badly now than it did before all that work was done.)

One way we have "rehabbed" badly eroded areas with steep bluffs on which nothing grows is to build a huge compost pile there. This is a compost pile separate from one of my "usable" piles. I build it the usual way, except the bottom layer is usually cedar tree limbs--with the needles still on--several inches thick on the bottom because they really help hold the soil. After the pile is built several feet deep, I pile smallish tree limbs on top to help break the rainflow/flow of runoff from higher land. It usually takes about 3 years for an area treated this way to "regrow" enough compost/topsoil that it is becomes covered in native plants which sprout and grow up through the compost pile's remains, but sometimes it takes less. Using this unorthodox composting method, we've fixed several gullies and eroded areas and stopped them from eroding. (Well, I am sure they continue to erode a little, but with grass and other plants growing there now to hold the soil, they don't erode heavily like they used to.)

Many of these eroded areas were "cowpaths" back before we bought the land and the previous owner leased it out to a guy who kept several cows on it. The cows followed these paths from higher points of land down to the ponds to drink, and over time, rain and runoff expanded the paths and turned them into gullies. I like that we've been able to fix these gullies in a simple, natural way.

So, you know, I think there are a lot of ways to compost....and not all of them involve hauling the finished compost from its pile area to a bed that needs to be enriched. : )

Dawn

Debra,
THANK YOU FOR THAT LIST! You've opened up a new world of composting to me... LOL! The hair clippings aren't going to be a problem, I do home haircuts and have a beauty shop RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE. Actually, now that I think about it... there's a lady who cuts hair out of her home down the road some too... NEAT! I'm gonna be bugging people more now... LOL!

I've allready got a bunch of browns in my garbage can... worked on it this morning. It's dried out very well and no more squirming! YAY! That's such a relief!

Thanks guys! :)

Beth

This was a GREAT thread! Now I won't be such a "purist" about what I put in my compost pile. It always had to look "neat" and be totally "kosher" or so I thought. Now I can really go wild with all kinds of stuff I would never have thought of before.

Beth, for what it's worth, on the hair clippings....some folks who garden down in Eufaula where they have really BIG snakes, told me that human hair clippings scattered around the garden repel snakes. I don't know for sure whether it works or not, but it's worth a shot.

Dawn, I am building up my bermed area to repel excess water just as you are, with small tree branches, etc. Later, when we have the time, we are going to gather rocks from the county easements and layer some of those in. One thing you mentioned that I hadn't thought of was placing my compost pile in that area where the "floods" come in the worst. Brilliant idea! I'm on that as of today!

Barbara

Dawn, I used to turn compost too. Then I realized, all I had to do was built more piles, and give them time. :)

When your pile is high enough, make a new one. Keep doing that. Eventually the pile shrinks, cause it decomposes, and you can use it. Then magically you have a new area for a pile. :)

Moni