The Gentle Art of Composting Part 2: Passive and Easy.

Here is our second post on composting and the most important one.Part one is here: Composting Part 1: Active & Hot

Just do it. So, keeping it simple. we use a three bin system, built of pallets, which we picked up for free.  Many people worry about the content in the wood. If so, do some research into the differences. I usually just screw and wire them together, not using painted ones. It's a compost bin. It's going to rot and degrade. I fix it when it does.

My Happy Place

This is our main compost area. It consists of three pallet bins on each side. On the left is storage for the leaves we racked up and litter material (mixed leaves, straw, and pine needles) from the chickens. The last bin we use for weeds with roots attached. We just pile that up and when it breaks down we use it for leveling and yard fill, not in the garden beds.

On the right is a three bin system for main compost.
Each bin with a sign on a nail. Feed Me. Cookin. Use Me.

The sign on the posts above. Latin motto. Omnia Mors Aequat. It means, "Death Makes Us Equal". Sums up our feelings about compost perfectly. We would love to be composted upon death.

So, the bins are made of pallets. Here is some more detail.

Starting a new pile on a thick layer of leaves.

Some of what was left of a Cookin Pile from over the winter.

Compost Shed Area.

The shed on the end is for tools. I keep a plywood cutting board for chopping, a box for any trash,and an old coffee can to collect broken glass in, which is a constant issue on our property. I also store some tubs for sifting into and the sifter, built of wire screen and wood. The main tool used is a big pitch fork for turning, tossing, etc. Also, to build, we stand the pallets up, then use long screws to mount together the backs. I might throw some scrap lumber across the back to stabilize it as well. Then,  wire the fronts on, and make "hinges" by using scrap electrical wire. We use the big white wire with copper inside called Romex. I raid demo piles and if I see any I grab it. It's got three wires inside, all copper, which doesn't rust out. So I split the Romex with a utility knife and use those. Works great.

Sifting screen. Made it of to small of wire grid the first time. Want to make a new one with bigger grid.

A favorite activity. The compost bucket next to the bins ready to be emptied. To a gardener, that's a beautiful picture.

The Use Me bin. Broke down all winter. Used for potting soil at the first of the season.

Tie wires cut from old electrical cable.

Bins in action. In the middle is Cookin. On the right is the start of Use Me. I rotated piles between bins and move the signs as needed. If I decide to turn them, I just flip from one to the other, or pull out to the front, and pitch back in.

 So, the hows and the doings of.

Building a Fresh Pile. Lay a layer of branches to promote drainage. Then a thick layer of leaves and straw. Use an indoor bucket. Five gallons. Green. Big sign on it that says "Compost". Collect kitchen waste. Please note. We compost everything. Everything. Even the bread and meat that many guides say not to. Everything. All goes in the bucket. Now, before chickens, more went in. Now, not so much. We don't feed the birds meats for the most part, and some left overs, if we have them, so it takes longer for the bucket to fill now. Still, all of it gets composted. This includes household paper products. Tissues, paper towels. We can do this for several reasons. One is the passive method means a LONG composting time. So lots of break down time for the pathogens that meat might supposedly grow. However, it may be that the fears of composting meat are over done. We do it right. If I have meats of any kind, I bury them deep in the pile. I have, in fact, even buried a ground hog in there. Two is that in a rural area, if the raccoons get into my compost, it's not a problem. They are just turning it for me. So, we compost....everything.

So, layer of brown matter, and we dump a bucket of scraps in the middle. Over that goes two or three big fork fulls of leaves collected each Autumn. Now we have the leaf litter from the chickens, so adding that, which has some manure and additives to it. Over a 3-4 months, a cake of carbon (brown & crunchy) and nitrogen (green & squishy) is built up. I might periodically throw a pile of seed and root free weeds in during the summer, or a basket of grass cuttings. We get huge stands of jewelweed, and I pull some of that and throw it. Once the bin is full, I might turn it into the adjacent bin, and mix more thoroughly. Keep your ratios right. See my previous post on the subject, Composting: Part 1, or even better, go searching for many of the detailed guides out there, if you're worried. I have read them. I'm not worried. More brown than green. Check. Keep air in it. Check.

Then, we let nature do what it does. Passive. Fill it up and leave it. The cycle of it it is right in time with our gardens. Start filling one in Autumn, do so all Winter. By Spring, the big clean out from the chickens gets mixed in. However, the pile that I started over the Summer, is now broke down totally, and we have a cubic yard of compost to start with, in the Spring. The one I start building in the Spring, will be ready in Summer, and I will start another one then.

Now, there is one more secret ingredient.

Human Pee. Yep. Just piss in the pile. As a male gardener, I do so directly, when outdoors working, or even just to keep from running my septic system during the day. Periodically walking outside, to go pee on the pile is a brief break of time in my day. All seasons, all weather. The black capped chickadees are usually there. I like birds. We rarely, but occasionally, collect night urine in a bucket, like a chamber pot. Did so over the cold winter to keep the nitrogen levels very high in it. We are installing another pallet bin area, with possibly a floor, and a roof and a bucket seat system for female gardeners. Maybe a nice flower box and a dry space for paper goods. We won't collect fecal matter for now, but that is possible as well. Composting that is done in a passive manner as safe for that, but you might want to know who is going in it, and it's best used not on rooted crops. If we ever do, I will put it around my fruit trees.

So, there you go. When done, black gold.

The sedimentary layers of the piles with the imprint of the pallet front.

Black Gold.

The point is composting is simple. Nature can do most of the work. If it stinks, add brown carbon (leaves). If it's to dry and isn't breaking down well, add less. Turn it over if you want, or use the worm turned stuff at the bottom and throw the rest back in. It's not alchemy and if your situation allows a toss and let it rot process, do so. If you use enough brown and crunchy materials and you're in a more rural area where you don't get rats, etc, then fancy bins and complicated formula are not  necessary. Once you understand that, and go for it, it gets easier. If you understand the concept, you start looking for additives and get excited to throw them in. We bring home maple leaves to sweeten it up, because our oaks are acidic. We add hardwood ash from the fire pit, and long for cases of rotten veggies from local stores. However, mostly, we pile it up and let it do it's thing. The sifted material in the hand picture above is going to be made as side dressing, planting hole additives, potting soil, or compost tea for the plants. We aren't making a lot, but we make what we can, and it's all ours. Like baking. Like Sourdough. Your compost is alive and loves you...well, maybe not that last bit, but feed it and it will feed you back! If you make your own potting soil from it, it gets you kinda giddy even! 

Leah the Garden Gnome giddy for her homemade potting soil!

Keep Composting!

The Gentle Art of Composting, Part 1: Active and Hot.

Finished compost, sifted and a bit wet. Gardeners call it "black gold" for a reason.

Composting methods and instructions are found easily online. There are plenty of definitive guides. This isn't one. This is how we do it.

(Part 2, which is how we mostly do it, is now done and here: Composting Part 2: Passive & Easy

Like all our entries here, our goals are not to show you the all inclusive method or technique, but to share our successful methods. They may not be the best, and they may not work for you at all, but they did for us.

Many composting guides explain two methods. Hot and Passive are common names. Our method is primarily the much easier and basic Passive Method. It is the one we use almost exclusively and it is the most straight forward technique for the average gardener and homesteader to learn and implement. However, I will cover that in Part 2.

The most important thing to remember is that composting is easy. Nature does it all the time, and will do it without any help from you.

Compost is the action of organic matter breaking down into humus. The rich fertile loam of the forest floor is nature's compost. It renders the nutrients and minerals in the organic matter into a more available form for the plants to use. It alone, can be used for potting soil or garden amendment. This isn't entirely practical for several reasons. One is that to gather it from the forest floor would strip it from around root areas there, disturbing the ecology. The second one is that the forest humus is often composed of single tree leaf species. This can cause an imbalance, such as Oak leaves are acidic, the ratio would be too high in carbon, etc.

So all this might seem like a bit too much chemistry for some, which puts many off composting. Don't let it. Just assume that if you took a bunch of humus from the forest floor and put it on your garden, your plants won't do so well. That doesn't mean humus isn't useful in you compost, and I will explain that more as we go on.

The basic ratio of compost is 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen. 30:1. I often explain this as 30 parts brown and crunchy to 1 part green and squishy. However, most of the vegetable and green matter you use already has a lot carbon in it. For example, grass clippings tend to be 20:1, so add a bit of leaves and you're good. The simple way is to remember to add lots of carbon. That will become clear as you read along.

So, about Hot Composting. I explain by laying out my most successful attempt I have had so far. This was many years ago and our goal was to create finished usable compost, for side dressing plants, very quickly. This method of hot composting is entirely akin to cooking. That is, we assembled all our ingredients, mixed them correctly and maintained it until it was done.

Here are the ingredients.

• Llama manure. About a cubic yard. This is the manure, mixed with rotted bedding, a mix of sawdust and straw. Any pelleted manure, little round droppings, are heaviest in nitrogen and very useful for compost. We used this because we had access to it via a local farm. 
• Several buckets of forest humus. This was my "inoculate". Like a sourdough bread starter or the yeast for brewing. I knew it would be packed with the micro-organisms useful to breaking down the compost. It would have worked without it, but perhaps not so well. 
• Rotted vegetables. A dozen cases of tomatoes, watermelon, lettuces and other greens, etc. A local grocery store gave them to us. 
• Rotted corn stalks. A base layer of 3-4 bushels, plus interspersed layers. 
• Pond scum and duck weed. Yep. We threw buckets on ropes out into a pond covered in algae and duck weed and hauled them in. This was, in fact, like a secret ingredient. VERY hot with nitrogen.

We created a base layer of corn stalks, approximately 5x5 ft and about 8 inches thick. Next we layered it with 10-12 inches of manure followed by a thinner layer of rotted vegetables, wetting it down with a bucket of pond scum, then a thin layer of corn stalks, and repeated. Then shook a healthy portion of the forest humus over each layer. We reached a level of about five foot. Then kept it wet the whole way with the nitrogen rich pond scum. Used corn stalks vertically as well, building up around them. These let air down into the cooking pile. We set up a piece of scrap ply and old chopping knife to dice corn stalks and veggies as we went along.

Once our pile was built, we waited for the cooking to start. We measured the heat with a compost thermometer. Like a big meat style one with a 1 foot spike on it. The heat started the morning of the first day after building it. By the third day it was well over a 130F! That was exciting. The pile was built in an open stack, just behind a barn, so I turned it with a pitch fork by simply tossing the pile over a few feet. This cools it initially, but it quickly reheats. I took the piles temp every day, just because I was getting such a kick out of the experience. Every three days or so I turned it. By the 7-8 day it was cooling some. By the 14 day, it was mostly finished compost. Black, earthy, broken down to components and full of earth worms. After a sifting out, we had over a cubic yard of compost.

So this was great, exciting, and a massive bit of work, but the experience was well worth it. If you have access to the ingredients all at once, and have the time and inclination, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think anyone who is seriously interested in the composting process should try it once. It was very educational. By doing it that way first, I came to understand the whole process better, and it means that I have continued to have composting success.

In my next entry, I will detail how we passive compost, our pallet wood bins, and the joys of growing good dirt with little work.