I'm not Dawn, but what ever we CAN do we do. Have you looked at worm towers? The only problem I would have with straight to the garden scraps is they might attract critters. If you don'r have that problem, then what you do is pretty close to natures own process.

My grandfather composted by tossing his stuff right into the pathways in his garden, letting it rot where it fell. It worked for him. It works for you. There's nothing wrong with that.

I have a variety of compost piles. Most are sitting right on the ground. In one area where we have a lot of Johnson grass the comes up along the property line between our place and the place south of us, I put down a blue tarp first and then pile the compost material on top of the tarp. It works really well, and I've never had Johnson grass or bermuda grass grow up through the blue tarp.

I save cardboard boxes and pile them up in a corner of the garage. When I am starting a new compost pile, I like to put down a couple of layers of thick cardboard boxes and then pile the compost ingredients on top. If I start a pile that way in late summer or early fall, by spring that cardboard has decomposed and is gone and the compost is finished or mostly finished and ready to go into the garden.

I don't get too fancy. I don't obsess over the percentage of greens and the percentage of browns or anything else. I almost never turn the pile, and when I do turn it, I only do it in winter when the likelihood of stirring up snakes is nil. I just pile up organic matter and let it rot. I usually like to keep at least 5 piles going, and my piles usually run at least 15-20' long and 4-6' wide. I tend to pile stuff up until it is 4 or 5' high and then I stop adding new stuff and let that pile decompose. Because of that, I have piles in different stages of decomposition all the time.

Because we own acreage, I can gather as much raw material as I want for the compost pile, being limited only by how much time I have and by how hard I am willing to work.

Composting doesn't have to involve a huge effort or fancy bins or complicated formulas. Everything that was once living matter will rot. So, this is my method: 1) Find stuff that once was living matter. 2) Pile it up. 3) Let it rot. 4) When it is finished, shovel it into the wheelbarrow and move it to the raised beds. The End.

We can make composting harder or fancier than it has to be, or we can just pile it up and leave it alone and let it happen.

I have vague memories of another compost pile behind my grandfather's shed in the 1970s but I don't remember what was on it---maybe tree limbs he'd cut off the fruit trees. I have very vivid memories of him throwing banana peels and other similar stuff right into his pathways. He told me it was going to end up there anyway, so why make the process harder than it had to be? He was a wise man, and a terrific farmer, rancher and gardener.

Some years I work really hard all winter (beginning after the first hard freeze has sent the snakes into hibernation), traipsing through the grassland and woodland and gathering material for the piles. Some years all the piles get are the spent plants I've removed from the garden. Obviously, that means that some years the garden beds get lots of compost and other years they don't. It all works out. Any improvement is better than none, so I just do what I can when I can and don't worry about it otherwise.

I have two compost piles, one is really more of a brush pile and the other is sitting on top of a tree stump. I am trying to renew the soil in that area because a silver maple grew there for 50 years.

I hold my scraps for a really long time in a Folger's plastic coffee container. I love those containers, they are really smell proof! I don't produce a lot at one time, so I just keep it until it fills up.

There is a method where you bury the scraps in a small hole directly in the garden. The worms will all come take care of it for you!

Lisa

Thank all of you for the information about composting. I guess I sound like a News Reporter asking all these questions but if I don't ask questions I won't have any idea of how to do anything. Plus I think it might help some of the newcomers to the Oklahoma Garden Forum as well. Okiedawn, I think you have mentioned using cardboard before. My daughter was building a raised garden with boards around it and somebody told her to buy some kind of cloth to smother the grass, she said that it was a little expensive. She had just bought some patio furniture and was going to have to through the cardboard away. I remembered what you had post about the cardboard and stole your idea, I told her to line the bottom of her raised bed with the heavy cardboard, she did and it worked wonderfully.
I don't have any worry with critters getting my scraps that I toss in the garden, though sometimes the wild birds will land and scratch around in them, which I don't mind.

Questions are good. They get us to talk.

Cardboard is great, but it decomposes so it isn't a permanent solution for some kinds of aggressive grasses. Sometimes, though, you get lucky and the grass gets smothered before the cardboard decomposes and the grass doesn't come back.

I love having wild birds around. We have had tons of grasshoppers all spring, summer and fall and I've never had as many wild birds in the garden as we had this year. They have been everywhere. We feed the birds year-round, so we always have birds. The regulars that stick around pretty much year-round, sit by the feeders and birdbaths every morning, waiting for me to come out and feed them and refill the birdbaths. It is cute. If I am late, there's a lot of birds sitting there waiting.

Lately we have a lot of bluebirds, but also tons of doves, cardinals, sparrows and chickadees. The doves hide a bit during dove hunting season (no one hunts on our land) but then they gradually reappear, where they follow me around all winter, continually wanting more, more and more cracked corn.

My favorite bird this year is a wild turkey. We always have wild turkeys around, and they tend to run and hide when they see humans. This particular turkey has become friendly with a doe I call Hey Baby and her two fawns. They come together to a specific place on our property (near the big compost pile out west of the barn) where I toss things on the compost pile, and also sometimes put out deer corn, cucumbers or other things just for them. I usually put out some hen scratch for the wild turkey and deer corn for the deer during extreme or exceptional drought and during the worst of winter. We've always had plentiful deer and occasional wild turkeys, but this is the first time we've had a turkey who is bonded with the deer and 'travels' with them. If I don't come out to the compost pile with something/anything for them, they move closer and closer to the house, getting to within about 15-20' of it, and stare at the door, as if willing me to come out and feed them. This spring and early summer when it was exceptionally dry, I guess they were really hungry and wanted me to bring them food. When I'd walk out the back door, they'd follow me to the barn and then to the compost pile area. They actually got too close to me (within 10-15') at times, which I had to put a stop to (by taking our old deaf, half-blind dog with me). The dog is too old and frail to chase them like he once did, but they don't know that, so when he is with me, they stay further away.

Sometimes when we go to the feed store in the dead of winter, I feel like we spend almost as much money on food for the poultry and all the wild things as we spend on groceries for ourselves. Tim says our wildlife is spoiled. He's probably right. In really bad, snowy, bitterly cold weather, I make blueberry corncakes (kinda like pancakes)....for the deer, the rabbits and the birds. Being surround with wildlife is one of the perks of living out in the sticks.

I have neighbors who deliberately feed coons and coyotes, but I don't. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Dawn, I envy your birds and critters. My sister buys deer corn (which I think is really a bait that hunters use) & puts it out every night in her front yard. Families of deer come after dark to eat it & drink out of her bird bath. She lives in a residential neighborhood!

Regarding compost, since I am deathly afraid of snakes, I made a compost pile by putting shredded leaves & grass clippings in a rather deep garden cart that has holes in the bottom. Then I feed it kitchen scraps all winter from an old Tupperware pitcher with a lid that I keep under my sink for the scraps. I keep a garden fork stuck in it & stir it every time I go by. It works pretty well. I really need to have 2 of them so one can "cook" when it gets full & I can start another. The only downside has been that this year we got so much rain that it got too wet, but other years it has worked just fine. Since it has wheels, when I want to use it in the spring, I just roll it to where I want it & dump it.

Patty, Mostly I love the wildlife, but when I encounter a bobcat stalking my cats or chickens, or any sort of venomous snake (or any snake at all trying to kill and eat my baby chicks) or any skunk anyplace, I temporarily hate the wildlife. I get over it though. While the problem varmints can be troublesome, they are not present as often as the desirable ones are.

A few years ago, I fed the deer throughout a terrible summer drought and still was feeding them in winter. They became rather spoiled. As spring arrived and plants began greening up more, I tried to cut back on how much I was feeding the deer. Well, they weren't having anything to do with that idea. They'd stand on the edge of the woods and stare at the house. When I came outside, they'd make this weird sort of screaming sound. Clearly they were telling me to get busy and feed them. So, I fed them a couple more weeks until everything clearly had greened up enough to support them, and then I cut off the gravy train. We buy the bagged whole corn in the poultry section at the feed store and I am sure it is pretty much the same stuff sold as deer corn for deer feeders. Most of our neighbors that feed deer do it in order to lure them in so they can shoot them. I just feed them because there's times of the years they seem so hungry, and I am a sucker for tiny little fawns.

In 2011, I was worried that the drought hadn't left much for the deer to eat, so I bought one of those bags of 'deer plot' seed mixes and sowed it on a big flat area north of the barn probably around the end of September. It grew really well considering how dry and rock hard the ground remained long after rain began falling again. Did the deer eat any of it? As far as I know, they did not. The rabbits and other critters sure enjoyed it. The plants from that seed plot that were annuals didn't return, but the perennials like clover does return every year, and the rabbits eat it and the deer do not.

I've made compost all sorts of ways, using wooden slat bins, wire cage bins, old garden carts like you described, old wagons and wheelbarrows, etc., but I make it on such a large scale that putting it on the ground works best for me, other than the fact that it means I can only remove compost safely in very cold weather when snakes are inactive. I'm okay with that. Surprisingly, since we still have been having high temperatures in the 80s and 90s, I don't think I've seen a snake in a couple of weeks now. I still am careful though because it isn't cold enough yet that they are hibernating. In fact, yesterday a woman in our county found a snake in one of her cabinets inside her home, and a sheriff's deputy kindly responded to her house and removed the snake for her.

Since it has been so warm, we still have bees and butterflies all over the place, which is slowing down my garden clean-up. I hate to clean out flower beds as long as there is anything blooming that the butterflies, bees and beneficial insects might enjoy.

Some of the leaves on some of our trees are finally turning color and beginning to fall, and I am eager to mow and chop them up and start new compost piles for spring, but I need to be patient and wait a little longer until the snakes are no longer active.

My worst compost experience every involves shoveling compost from the pile to a wheelbarrow (I never saw a snake), wheeling the wheelbarrow load to the garden (I never saw a snake) and then picking up the compost with my compost scoop, while wearing leather gloves (I never saw a snake) and tossing it onto the bed. When it got down to where there was just a couple of inches of compost left in the wheelbarrow, rather than using the scoop, I reached in with both gloved hands and scooped up the compost and one small nonvenomous snake. I didn't see the snake until I was dropping the compost and the snake onto a raised bed. I've been careful to always use the scoop ever since then.

Dawn

It has gotten easier for me to toss the scraps out in the garden and let it rot where it falls. I know this is not the right way, I guess I'm a lazy gardener/composter.

I'm ok with lazy gardeners. :)

You are doing "composting in situ" ... which sounds ever so much more sciency than "toss and rot".

Can you dig enough to do trench composting? A shallow trench along the rows of the veggy garden or behind the perennials, filled with kitchen scraps as you make them, and covered with the soil from the trench. Next year you'll have compost there.

I am glad you mentioned trench composting. I read about that a couple of years ago and forgot it. I cant compost here like I was in a wire cage so whatever I do has to be hidden. I will try that this year.
kim

Lazygardens, digging a trench sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately my digging has been put on hold for the time. All year I have had trouble with my knees and right now I'm on crutches having hurt my left knee stepping down on a porch step. I might try it sometime if things ever get better.
Okiedawn, I really like to see Wild Turkey's around they are the most interesting birds. Occasionally I have a Painted Bunting visit when I'm out in the garden, they are the most beautiful little birds, but I like the Wild Turkey's best. If those folks who feed the coon & coyotes aren't careful they will cause trouble. The coons carry disease and the coyotes will get their dogs & cats, I have lost 5 terriers and 3 mother cats in the past year alone.