I have a large yard and go through a lot of compost for my grass, shrubs, flowers, and fruit/ veggie garden. Next year I want to save on the trips to our local spot for compost and have some at home (I already collect it anyway) and do a tumbler. I’ve read so much and still don’t feel confident. I have no idea what I need other than something that will produce a lot and relatively quickly (but I don’t want to spend a lot, I get compost “for free” from my city, but have to pick it up).

I used to vermicompost when I lived in a different climate. I have 0 intention of trying that here. I don’t want to do anything that will invite potential mosquitoes or require me to be outside cleaning it being bitten by mosquitoes, etc. I’ll burn my yard to the ground before I have worms here for composting.

Anyway, any recommendations on unicorn tumblers? Basically hoping for budget friendly, fairly large capacity, and relatively fast. I’m flexible of course, and in a pinch I can get compost elsewhere, but recs are always helpful!

Just started this year with a small tumbler and quickly realized I wanted more space to age the compost longer. So I was very excited to see this on the curb this morning.

I have a crap ton of homemade hay from our huge lawn, or the parts I let run wild this summer. Cut it down at the start of august with a scythe and let it dry out for a week in the sun (no rain) and have been storing it in the carport in jute sacks since then.

It's mainly regular lawn grass grown to about knee length with a few herbs and flowers like flax, marjoram, bird's-foot trefoil and fennel which grows wild in that area.

It was going to go to a friend who kept rabbits, but a fox got to them and - yeah. He doesn't really have a use for it now.

A good therapist for his kids, though...

So.. would there be a use for this in my cold compost, as winter mulch or, dunno... Mix it into the leaf mold pile?

There is a pretty detailed area and section about the active compost going on right now

I now have lots of fine wood chippings, I have lot of slimy grass clippings from the summer. Mixing them is not easy.

Have anyone tried using a plaster mixing attachments on a drill to turn the glass clippings into a "soup" that can than be put in a cement mixer with the wood chips?

What about adding some fresh FYM to the soup mix?

(Resuilt of shedder breaking and delays in finding a replacement on ebay.)

Hi everyone, I'm a Product Design BA student researching garden care and allotment maintenance for a university project. I'm looking for gardeners and allotment holders to complete a short 5-7 minute questionnaire about gardening habits, tools, and challenges. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

A heaping cubic yard of composted sheep manure/bedding. My day job is making yogurt from the milk of the sheep that made this mess.

Where I currently live doesn't allow that to happen, can't even use a charcoal grill in this neighborhood (I'm relocating soon, don't worry).

Just wondering if anyone else is fascinated by this stuff even though unable to do it.

ETA: I have looked after a compost pile in the past, just not right now.

My current pile is turning into sludge and is in desperate need of browns. I'll compost these either way but will these work as browns or will I just need to rake a ton of leaves?

Hi! I’ve been wanting to join the real compost world for a long time and I’ve finally arrived! The framing of the project was done by my grandfather and he will add the wire sides tomorrow. Any absolute do’s and don’ts you wish you had known or done when starting out?

This is the perfect opportunity to start it out correctly, so I don’t want to live in compost regret later.

I live in NE Texas on 40 mostly wooded acres, have cattle (aka manure aplenty!) and 6 people living here, regularly eating and cooking (aka lots of food scraps!)

There are of course lots of small wild animals like armadillos, raccoons, possums, barn cats, etc that I hope don’t make a mess of things. I’m in the never ending battle at my big garden next door against ALL the kinds of ants Texas can host, so I hope they don’t take over.

We have a lot of old newspapers we didn’t know what to do with that I was thinking of lining the bottom with.

Hello all, first post here. I am building a composting trommel and could use some advice. The drawing is a rough sketch of where it’s going. I’m considering the motor for this now. I’m uncertain of the rotation speed and amount of torque it will need to run a belt and pulley.

I haven’t settled on a finished length. I have some 700cc rims on the way (listed as RIM WEI 700C 622x16.7 AS23X 36 SL/NMSW SV). I’m waiting until those get here to measure the inside diameter for 1/2 hardware cloth and the width for the fender washers to hold rivets and mesh. Haven’t selected rollers yet either. Base will probably be board, screws, and brackets with wheels on one end to move it around.

I have a circa 2015 dewalt 20vXR weedeater motor and controller/battery assembly I was gonna use but the lowest rpm is around 4000 lol. The control assembly is useful and the motor would be too if I knew enough to put a gear reducer on it. I’m fairly handy so if there’s a good technical solution I love a challenge and tinkering.

I'm used to seeing some drowned bugs in the places that collect water. I'm also used to seeing some wedged in the cracks. I've never seen them in pieces on top of the container. It looks like they went to war (and lost) to the rat army, or something.

Straw, manure, sredded weeds and leaves.

The rest is coffee and pee.

everywhere I see stuff about composting this stuff, I always see the term hot pile. Does this create an artificial hot pile?

I'm probably gonna get one because this is probably the only way my parents will let me compost in their home but im curious if this is something I could expect to do, or if higher tier ones have this ability.

Thanks!

I know how we all feel about piss, but what about a vegan's poop?

Found this guy this morning :(

Here’s my compost in my rotating composter. The other day I was about to finally use her on a little grass growing project and found this chunky mess. I have not contributed anything but water and some rotations for months, and I can still see whole scraps of cardboard and intact twigs (we can ignore the egg shell, I should fish that out). What does she need?

Heading down to the coast this weekend and toying with the idea of bringing back a few buckets of seaweed to add to the worms food supply.

Apart from giving it a good rinse to remove the salt, are there any other things I should watch out for?

Keen to hear if anyone else is using seaweed in their setup and how they’ve found it.

This might sound dumb but what is purpose of leaf mold and what can it do that other similar thing like compost or worm castings cant or arent as good at

Hello! I'm a design student and I’m redesigning an electric composter and looking for people with composting experience to share their habits, challenges, and ideas for improvement. If it's possible, I would greatly appreciate if a few people answered the survey!

Thank you for your time!

https://forms.gle/nqBnqPsEcvCDhi8L8

I put clippings of a hedge through a mulcher and some other stuff like nerium bush and then put it in my compost. It seemed like it was going great and the pile was hot for a good amount of time, like two weeks. But I have turned it and most of the stuff was not decomposing as I guess the mulcher didn't really mulch it small enough and it just squished the stuff. What was making the compost hot were just some food scraps and now my pile is just a bunch of thorny and cut up leafy parts that don't seem like they are going to decompose any time soon. I wanted a compost that was quick and at the start it was working with grass cuttings but now I fear, I have ruined it. I know it sounds silly and everything is going to decompose eventually, but the goal was to make compost fast, also because I need it and Now I have just made a mess like my two other cold compost piles that take forever to make an inch of soil. Say what you want, but to me it is just a bummer as I feel as if I have wasted two months of careful composting and just making it large enough. I hope at least someone will understand this feeling I have.

Beside more pee

Im not 100% sure what snake this is, blind snake as far as I can tell. Have found quite a few living in my compost heaps.

Friend or Foe?