Got me some goodwood chips for my compost

Today I was driving down the street and saw Logan working in a neighbor’s yard chipping small logs. Drove quickly back home, got four five-gallon buckets and went back to see Logan.

The wood chips will aerate the compost and will speed up the decomposition process. A compost needs three things: organic matter, moisture, and air. If you remove one of the three elements, the decomposition process comes to a halt, worms don’t stay and it will take a couple of years for it to decompose.

These are 'the boys". I would have packed them better, but I didn't want to appear to be a wood chip hog. 

    

I took one bucked at a time and slowly incorporated it into the compost. 

Folks, believe you me, it's not easy turning the compost, but you gotta do it. The chunks of wood and the turning of the compost will aerate it. This process is called aerobic composting and it's well worth it.

Twenty minutes later I was done. The compost heap was fuller, I was happier and the buckets were empty. 

Happy composting and keep your worms happy!

Getting Lots of High Quality, Free Dirt - My Compost Heap Problem

Two years ago we had to cut down our 100+ year old Pin Oak tree because its roots were compromised after a storm that went through our village. The tree was just magnificent and we really miss it. Every fall it would drop loads of leaves that I would collect and add to my compost heap. The leaves added with other organic matter would provide me with lots of high quality dirt. 

Well, 'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain'. When my neighbors clean up their yards guess who's collecting their bags full of pure gold. Of course I return their bags and help the environment is a tiny way. 

I have set up several bins made of free wood pallets at the end of our yard and I add the leaves there. After you add the leaves and the bins seem full add little water and some mixing with the pitchfork and I get what I want, free dirt. 

You need to have at least TWO bins. You'll add material in bin #1 and then a week or two later you can toss bin #1's contents to the other bin. My local coffee shops, DunkinDonuts and Noble Roasters, help me by providing spent coffee grounds. Worms love coffee grounds. Making high quality dirt is easy and effortless. When I toss the contents of one bin to the next, I sprinkle some coffee grounds. As I do that I can hear the worms say "yum yum, yum".

If you don't mix your compost matter it will take about two years before it decomposes and it's usable. 

I always add my kitchen scraps there. I have a bowl next to the kitchen sink and throughout the day as I clean the vegetables, add the scraps in the bowl. The first two years the method worked like a charm. We consume lots of supermarket purchased fruits and vegetables and the scraps go in the compost heap. So far, so good. Supermarkets, though, add these stickers on everything to identify their goods. As you can see the avocado shell below has one such sticker. Quite the conundrum. YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THEM OTHERWISE YOUR FUTURE DIRT WILL BE FILLED WITH THESE STICKERS! They are made of some sort of material that will be in your garden for many years to come. 

By the way, out squirrels love to eat the material left on the avocado shell. We all have to live...

On my way home today I saw one of my neighbors had chopped down several small trees as he is working on a project. Well, tomorrow morning I will pay him a visit and get a few buckets of those wood chips. It will be such a great addition to my compost heap.

Keep on mulching!

My Four Compost Bins

This year I have built several raised beds and also grew potatoes in 5-gallon plastic buckets. In the process I realized that not only you need lots of dirt, but you also need organically rich dirt. Right away I knew I needed to create a one-dimensional array of compost piles. I figured I needed at least three of them. 

We have a nice house built on about a 1/4 of an acre in Orange County, NY. We had a beautiful 100 year-old pin oak tree in the backyard that we had to cut it down because during a storm the root system was compromised and we were forced to cut it. A separate post will follow on that. We also have two dogwood trees, white and pink. We do have some leaves that we get every fall from each dogwood, but that's not enough for my raised beds. Unfortunately, nowadays the lawn mowers cut the grass very finely and that mulches the grass. Well, that doesn't help me with my predicament, the need for organic matter. 

We decided to build the compost piles at the end of the property that is NE. Composts require organic matter, and air. You can dump leaves and do nothing to them, just leave them there and a year later you will have beautiful dirt waiting for you. Of course you can add eggshells, vegetable clippings and coffee grounds, tea bags and maybe even mix it up a little and you will have even better results. 

Where do you get coffee grounds and tea bags? Really? Do I have to write about this? This is what I do. On the kitchen counter I have a plastic container (from takeout) and I add things that can be mulched. Then, the next morning I add them to the mulch pile. About every three weeks I turn the mulch using a pitch fork. If we have coffee, I add the used coffee grounds in the container. BUT, it really helps if you develop a relationship with a local coffee house, luncheonette in your neighborhood. In our village we have a bagel shop where I drop off a large aluminum pan and two plastic bags and a few days later I go and I pick up several pounds of used coffee grounds. Of course, remember that tipping is necessary and totally appropriate. 

We have a fence (mostly for the deer) and in the from of the fence we have planted several forsythia bushes and the compost areas would go in between the fence and the forsythias.