Isn't it amazing what nature can do, given just some materials & some time?

The composting bug is a happy bug to have.

On the Soil Compost & Mulch Forum, you would have been deemed to have taken your first step toward becoming a Compost Wacko.

Just check one of the threads over there titled something like "You Might Be a Compost Wacko (sometimes spelled Whacko) If..."

People tell about gathering up their napkins & tray liners from fast-food places, about fussing at their children, or even their guests, for tossing discarded food into the trash, & about having their little boys (of all ages) "add nitrogen to the pile".

Your next move might be to start curb-shopping for OPBL (Other People's Bagged Leaves), OPOM (Other People's Organic Material), discarded Halloween pumpkins & straw bales, shredded office paper, etc.

Then you develop a route that you travel to pick up "your" coffee grounds at Starbucks,
you ask the grocery store for their truly icky produce,
you find out when the dollar store stocks so you can get a carload of cardboard at a time.

When you find yourself begging the guys in a big orange truck to unload their shredded tree trimmings at your house, honey, you have arrived at your Wacko destination!

It's a happy journey to Compost Wacko-hood, enjoy the trip!

Hooray for your pretty dirt! I was also out moving stuff around in one of our little heaps yesterday and it was so yummy smelling and full of huge fat worms. We're never buying bait again ha ha ha. I can't wait for the pecan trees across the street to dump on our yard!

That is a way to compost w/o the bin. I tried the bin and I didn't like it. I now "compost" the area I want and bury things animals might get into. PJ

Compost really is the best fertilizer! I also love to put cardboard under all my mulch! Funny story; the other day my non-gardening husband and I were talking about our landscape to a neighbor and DH says, "Well, she just puts that Magic Compost on the plants and all of a sudden they have flowers."
Magic Compost! LOL! :D

Compost is marvelous, and composting where you want to plant later (6 to 12 months) is sheer genius! One word of warning--when picking up other people's bagged leaves or grass clippings, be sure you know the people. We have seen beer cans, rocks, dog poo and other undesirables bagged with the leaves and clippings. You might want to ask your neighbors if you could rake/mulch their leaves for them, so you would be sure that the material is clean. Good stuff in the compost pile equals good stuff in your soil.

forgot to say:

I always wear gloves when I empty bagged leaves.

Cans & bottles & such can be tossed in the trash, well worth it to get that wonderful organic material.

Sometimes I think you can bring plants back from the dead if you add a little compost! hee-hee! It really is the key to having a great garden here in Texas - and so is mulch. ;-)

I feel so much better about my compost after reading this thread, thank you people. I had to start mine in a big plastic tub with a cover because my dogs would roll in it if I left it out. I didn't do much research about it but put in clippings, all spoiled produce from the house, egg shells and garden clippings. Then I roll the bin ever other day. My dh went out today with an old apple and said there were so many big fat worms in there that you could hear them. Um, ew. I was hoping they were supposed to be there cause I can't imagine having to go out there and doing something with that mass of fatties.

I pick a bed each fall and bury my composting 'goodies' in that bed. Just start at one end and dig a hole, fill it and pile the dirt back on top of it. Next time the bucket is full I dig another hole just beside the last one and do the same thing. By the time I start planting in the spring most of it has broken down and the bed is ready for plants. I don't worry about what hasn't broken down, it will soon enough.

No need to empty a compost bin or haul the compost to bed.

If you do this for a few years you'll transform all your beds.
This will work for areas you don't want a compost pile sitting in for a year. (like the front yard)

They sell worm casings as compost. Worms stir it up and break compost down. PJ

I do the compost "plugs" as well. Hail took out my petunias early in the year, so I got out my clippers and clipped them into salad sized chunks and buried them where they had been planted. It seemed a shame not to, since they had gotten so big and taken so much out of the soil that it only seemed fair to put it back since they weren't doing much of anything else after being punched through with hail holes.

We're in townhomes, so putting a compost bed or bin anywhere would freak out my non garden friendly neighbors.

I'm so glad I read this thread. I am planning my first organic garden, and I thought I would start this fall. Because someone in the past piled dirt on the small front lawn raising the level of the soil about four inches over the level of soil under our pier and beam circa 1916 house, I had thought it would be ok to first pull off dirt from the front yard to partly fill the two new 4' x 8' raised beds I'm constructing of landscape timbers in the back thus killing two yard problems with one wheelbarrow, so to speak.

I thought I would compost by adding layers of manure, leaves, lawn clippings, and other "green" stuff, then top with the last bit of soil from the front. I thought I might also add in a little bit of dry molasses with the compost layers, and then in the late fall / early winter finish up by tilling in some Texas green sand. The added soil out front seems to be topsoil, with potting soil and peat in the flowerbed areas.

Reading this thread it seems like it might just be doable idea, but if someone knows of reasons this is bad, let me know.

We had tree branches, limbs, random too-big-for-the-compost-pile stuff piled behind our garage for over a year. When we went to drag it all out to the street for a large brush collection, I had the same thing! Just a nice big ready to go bed of earthy dirt. I couldn't believe how much some of the branches had composted ...just staying wet and moist under all that weight. Unfortunately, this and other fertile areas where leaves have been unraked for years are fodder for chinaberry seedlings. That's all I do right now, whack out chinaberries. argh!
Yes I love the smell too, that sweet earthy smell. I actually like sifting compost... setting aside a whole day to get in the dirt.
Amy

Gertie,

I see nothing wrong with your plan. I'd add as much stuff as I could to those raised beds. Build that baby as high as you can by adding shredded newspapers, grass clippings, leaves, coffee grounds, kitchen scraps. Really cheap big old bags of dog food. What ever you can get your hands on. Its all going to shrink down. You could add a temporary 'cage' out of chicken wire to help hold it all together and remove it once the pile shrinks down.

Wet it down...soak it... flood it, then top it off with some dirt and stand back!

Over the winter its going to break down, you'll lose some height but that's ok, you're going to need to mulch anyway once you start planting.

Keep an eye out for signs of ant piles. Ants really really like raised beds. :(