70% brown stuff (carbon) 30% green stuff (nitrogen) A lot of air Some water Stir gently/rotate occassionally Viola!
Hi Brian. I like it. I like it a lot. In fact I am envious! I guess the leaves & newspaper are the carbon (brown), & the coffee grounds are the greens, right ? I get 4 contractor buckets of coffee grounds a week from a coffee cafe during the summer months. I am not very good at keeping the right brown to green ratio....the grounds decompose but sometimes are a little anerobic. Doesn't sound like you will have this problem though. Good luck. I like that rotating feature. Will be a whiz to turn your pile. And I like the idea of composting the newspapers. Will you shred them first? BTW, fresh grass clippings might be greens. Maybe others will add their thoughts to that.
Thank you I really like it to. I'm not sure what I'm going to do on the newspapers if I go that route. I think he shredded them but can't remember for sure. I will have to go back and find the video again.
If you have a home paper shredder you can add that paper to the compost as long as there are no 'slick' papers, that paper and the ink used on it is not good for composting. If you do not have a shredder, then simply tear it into strips and dump it in. Several years ago news paper was not recommended for composting because of the chemicals in the ink used to print them but most use soy based inks now so they are safe.
oh lucky you. I want one but it needs to be way bigger for me. or maybe I need 10 of them going at once.
I just have a small garden. This should be plenty big. I do have a paper shredder so will give that a try.
You can use newspapers to cover the ground and they will block weeds from growing and will breakdown over time to help revitalize the soil. That is a gardening "win-win"!
I recently got a good tip about sterilizing compost to use in seed starting mixes. I tried sterilizing compost only once & aborted the effort because it stunk up the house! The tip I got was to put the compost in a turkey oven roasting bag in the microwave for 10 minutes. Obviously, be careful when opening the bag that you don't burn yourself. You have to get the compost up to 160 degrees to sterilize it. I am planning on buying the roasting bags today! Rather silly because the compost in my yard is currently in a state of deep freeze. But I will have the bags at the ready when spring begins to stir.
I have a lot of ideas and starting many gardens from the ground up, I will need lots of compost. I bought a Mantis twin composter in 2002 and absolutely loved it for that larger yard. I wasn't going to consider one this large again, but I think I will need it.
