I keep a regular compost pile. It's in a semi-shaded place where its gets occasional water from my sprinkler. It won't stink if you keep it somewhat balanced (carbon/nitrogen) Carbons are "browns" and you can use straw, shredded paper, cardboard, anything similar. The greens would be your veggie scraps and coffee grounds (filters would be a carbon!) The soil forum has all sorts of ideas... another thing you can use is cotton material (old t-shirts, old stocks, whatever.) I add weeds that haven't gone to seed and plants that I thin out. The purple stuff in my first photo is a frequent guest of my compost pile...as is the lemon balm!

I occasionally bag my grass to add some size to my pile, but not on a weekly basis. Usually I just mulch them.

If you really think you won't have much to compost, you can trench compost, dig a trench, and after you add stuff, cover it back over...or dig a hole, and do the same.

I have used sticks on the bottom of my pile. They do take a long time to break down. I have a separate pile for most of my sticks, but I have pretty much given the idea up and now most go in the landfill :) If you look really close in the last picture you can see Compost Pile number 1 and CP #2.

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Debra,

My dad had an actual compost pile in the farthest corner of the backyard, but my grandfather just threw ingredients like eggshells, potato peels, etc. right into the garden, in the pathways from what I remember (it was the late 60s or early 70s and I was pretty young). Both got compost in the end.

Composting is simple and I think sometimes we make it too hard and too intimidating. There are many ways to compost and they all give you compost when all is said and done. I have several piles in several places, some in full sun, some in part sun, some in full shade. They all break down at their own rate, naturally, with little help from me. I don't water them, I don't stir them. I'd get faster and hotter compost if I did water them and turn them over, but I don't. Every winter or in late spring, I take the finished or semi-finished compost and add it to my beds. As long as we pile up the ingredients, compost happens with no help or intervention from us.

I read an article in Organic Gardening magazine once that described how to "make compost in 30 days". Well, to me it was such a lot of shredding and chopping and layering AND purchasing tons of bagged materials like humus and cottonseed meal and blood meal, etc., etc., that it was more like "how to build a lasagna garden in your compost pile". If that article had been my ONLY exposure to conmposting, I never would have bothered to build a compost pile.

You can compost in piles on the ground, in wooden bins or wire cages, in fancy 3-compartment bins, in expensive purchsed tumbler-type bins, or in worm bins (vermicomposting). You can make it easy or hard. You can devote a lot of time or a little time. Your choice. : )

One of my favorite ways to compost leaves is to gather them in the woods, either by raking or vacuuming them up with the leaf shredded/vac. I fill black heavy-duty lawn and leaf bags with them and water them down good before I tie them closed. I poke a few holes in them to facilitate good air movement, and I line them up in an out-of-the-way location. By spring, the leaves have broken down into a gorgeous, brown, crumbly leaf mold type of compost. I like having them in the bags because it keeps them from blowing away and it keeps snakes from overwintering in big leaf piles.

The only time I've ever had a compost pile smell bad was in Fort Worth when we had a very rainy summer and I had too many greens and not enough browns, and it was only that once.

The only real mistake I see new composters make that can create problems is they throw things with fat (meat, bones, cheese, etc.) on the pile and those things attract rats, mice and roaches, so steer clear of those types of things.

Composting is wonderful but don't let it stress you. It is easy....and you can add any shredded paper you want, but wet it down AND pile stuff on top of it, or it will blow all over creation. (Guess how I know that? LOL)

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Compost

Lisa, those pictures are gorgeous! I can't really tell where your compost is for all the flowers and greenery.

I decided I'm going to try a compost bin. I bought some chicken wire ("poultry netting" LOL never heard it called that before!) and some heavy wire thingies that I think are for connecting chain-link fence. I have some old landscape timbers that have been laying around the yard I'm going to use to abut the bottom edge so it will hopefully not fall over. I used the catcher on the front lawn when I mowed yesterday so I'll have that to start with. I also have several corrugated paper cartons from things I bought and had shipped that I hadn't gotten into the trash yet. I have a little shredded junk mail I can add, plus there are already some dried leaves blowing around the neighborhood. No idea where they're coming from.

One of the "recipes" at the site Dawn linked says to add compost. I don't have any home-made yet (obviously, since I'm just starting), but I do still have a couple of bags or so of the Back To Nature cotton burr compost I bought to amend the flower beds earlier. Can I add that? Also, do I need to get the bin completely filled first, or can I just get started with what I have and add as I go. I read that you need about 3 cubic feet in order for it to get hot enough. If I can't completely fill 3 cubic feet immediately can I still start now with what I have? The "recipe" also called for adding some soil. Can I just use the bagged top soil I bought for that, too? It's just some cheap, black top soil I bought at Ace to add to the flower beds. It comes from around Miami, Ok., according to the bag.

After doing some reading on the 'net, including a couple of pages from OSU, it seems I may have more stuff that can compost than I first thought! They included the paper rolls that toilet paper and paper towels come on, plus, since I still have boxes unpacked from moving, I will have lots of newspaper that was used to wrap breakables.

I'm going to try to create my bin sometime today. I've already taken several cartons and laid them out over an area that I'm not going to plant anything in this year and added a couple inches of grass clippings over that. If nothing else, that should at least get rid of the grass and weeds in there for next year.

I built a 2 compartment compost box. It's at the bottom of the back garden, behind the shed and slightly shaded with trees.

When it comes to turning the compost I just fork it into the other half.

I put the box away from the house as it's not actually "craftsman built" :-)
But I've never had any odour problems in the 3 years I've been using it.

Mick.

Debra,

You can start with practically nothing and just add to it as you go along. If it isn't big enough to get hot early on, don't worry about it. It will get hot when it gets to the right size. Just remember, you can compost ANYTHING that is of natural origin. You really can compost a LOT of stuff! You can throw on the cotton burr compost, or bagged soil, or a shovelful of soil from the corner of the yard. Throw on a few handfuls of sugar or molasses to serve as a "starter" to get microbial activity going. Don't worry and don't overthink. If you just pile up the stuff there, it WILL decompose. If you are building your pile anywhere near bermuda grass, put down a layer of cardboard or a thick layer of newspaper to keep the grass from growing up through the pile.

Mick,

The compost box looks great!

Dawn

I threw a half gallon of dead Japanese Beetles on my compost pile today--and they DID STINK. But our nearest neighbor is a 1/4 mile away, so I don't care. Also put a five gallon bucket of corn cobs on. Grass clippings are the best thing except manure to heat up a compost pile if you put them in green--straight from the bagger. I compost like Dawn. Pile it up all summer, let it rot, take it out the next spring and summer. Easy as can be. In addition to meat scraps we don't throw on weeds that have gone to seed or twigs bigger than a man's finger. Oh and I have used newspaper but not slick colored paper. Our compost container is just a square of woven fence wire held up by metal fence posts. Dorothy

So much helpful information here! Mick, I really like your bin. If I can convince myself I can successfully make my own compost, I think I will try to build one like yours next summer. For now, I have chicken wire in a rough square about 3' on a side. We used Romex staples to affix the wire to some old landscape timbers that were laying around the yard just to help it stay standing. It's in the far back of the yard under the evergreens. The spot gets a little sunlight around midday, but pretty much nothing but weed trees grow back there.

I still had lots of shipping cartons I hadn't gotten around to folding up to stuff in the trash can so I used all of those. I put two layers of carton material under the grass clippings then added some of the cotton burr compost and the contents of my small paper shredder bin. I wet it down as I put each layer in, although this morning the compost was looking pretty dry so I will spray it again this evening. The yard has a significant slope to it, especially in the back, so any excess water just runs right out the back of it.

I had mowed Saturday morning and dumped all the clippings in my spare trash can to hold until I could start putting them out on Sunday. I think it's a 35 gallon can. The very last bunch of clippings wouldn't fit without falling out so I left them in the mower. Sunday morning they had compressed enough to add the last bunch. When I started putting the clippings out Sunday I noticed the stuff in the middle of the trash can was quite hot to the touch.

A few weeks ago I went around the flower beds and back yard cutting down all the weed trees. They are just everywhere! To get the trash men to pick up such stuff it has to be broken down and made to fit in a trash can. I piled them all up in a spot by the side of the house where nothing was growing until I could get them all cut down to fit. In the meantime all those leaves have dried out and turned brown. I'm going to start stripping off the dead leaves and small twigs to add to the compost tonight. Since they are brown now will they count as carbon instead of nitrogen?

If it works to let cut plants dry and brown out in the sun to provide carbon, I can probably do that on a regular basis. Some of these weed trees have been allowed to stay for so long it's going to be a major digging operation to remove the roots, and I don't want to do that until the plants in the beds go dormant so I can hopefully remove them without losing my flowers. In the meantime, they continue to put out stems and leaves, and I continue to cut them down.

I also noticed that dried grass counts as a "brown." Could I, instead of adding green grass clippings, spread them out to dry then add them as a brown? The information I found at OSU says one should mix 3 parts brown to 1 part green. I can come up with grass clippings quite often, but I'm worried about getting too much green and not enough brown, especially since that's the situation that causes bad odors.

Dawn, adding sugar sounds like a great idea! I'll throw some of that in, too. I decided to run my own test of what sugar will do for a lawn. I took about a cup of sugar out and scattered it in a part of the front lawn. I dug a bed that "bulges" in one spot to allow for a lilac so I put the sugar in the grass between that "bulge" in the bed and the sidewalk to the front steps. That will be an easy spot to watch, and one I have to see every day as I walk up to the door. Still looking for the dried molasses.

This is all a lot of work, but it's very exciting to think I can make my own compost and grow a nice lawn and beautiful flowers without having to use chemicals or poisons! It's been 20 years since I lived in a house (rented) where I could grow things in the ground, and this time they're actually mine to keep!

I also started some lasagna in the far end of the area the previous owner used to grow tomatoes. I did buy one tomato plant and started a couple of okra plants I put in the near end. Not counting on any of them doing much this year since I got started with them so late, but come next year the far end at least should not need weeding.

While I had forgotten how much work it is to keep gardens and lawns, I'd also forgotten how much fun it is and how satisfying it is to see things grow! I can't wait for next spring! Next year I will get a much earlier start on things.

I'm so happy I found Gardenweb! You guys are all so very nice, so willing to help and full of so much good information, and, best of all, you garden in Oklahoma so your knowledge and advice applies to our climate and conditions. I just want to say thank you to all of you! You are a great bunch of folks and a lot of help!

Hi, Debra,

I'm a single woman, too. I shred junk mail, save coffee grounds, collect coffee grounds from the office (with filters - yes they can go into the compost, too) and save my kitchen trash. I mix shredded paper with kitchen scraps in the kitchen to cut back on the smell and take them out about once a week. I've stopped keeping a compost pile because I have so many trees and bushes in my yard that no matter where I put it, the tree roots took it over. Now I just dump them straight into the garden and then cover them with shredded paper (which I also bring from the office) and whatever leaves, grass, etc., I have around. Last year I used a wire cage like you describe and had it set in the garden with tomato plants growing around it. The tomato plants loved it, but I got tired of looking at it.

OKPrairie,

I did the same thing you did, growing tomato plants in a circle around the wire cage. In Japan it is known as a tomato ring, but it really is just a compost pile inside a wire cage with tomato plants on the outside. I did get tired of looking at it, so I planted vines on it. The best vines for that purpose were cypress vine or cardinal creeper because they have light, airy foliage that didn't overwhelm the tomatoes.

On wire compost bins without tomatoes growing around them, I like to plant morning glories, moon flowers or black-eyed susan vines.

Dawn