Love this!

Yes I have a 3 pallet system but I have ants in one and winter squash seeds have sprouted should I leave it? and maybe have tons of squash later on in summer.

I've been simply making piles for many yrs, rarely do they get hot and it can take months during cooler time of yr but it's easy and works for ME. One pile actively adding to while mostly just pulling compost from older piles. (or adding to one end of pile while drawing from other end) Does speed really matter? It's X in and Y out regardless so only the very beginning is delayed, after that it's all the same.

@@hardstylzz5024 yes leave it

@@epicgardening cheers, bud!

Try reuse the wood and if you can’t burn it to ash, you need to feed it before it goes to the garden though

Thank you as I've been leery of one until this year and it seems so finicky to do so I appreciate the info and yes I am just going to do it and not worry about the fancy stuff😂

I also add wood ash to my compost. We have a pellet stove, so I hoard those ashes all winter and start layering them in with the green and brown layers in the new spring pile.

This is really useful!

They seem to prefer crawling around my garden 😅

And after adding the extra greens or moisture, stir it up more - every few days if you can, but at least once a week. Ants don't like to hang out too much if they're constantly disturbed.

Every year my compost pile is full of thousands of them

Ants do help with the composting. Same with other bugs and insects.

I'm definitely no expert, but I believe it would be more accurate to say that the microbiology does the most significant portion of the work toward breaking down the bulk of the material, especially in hot composting. The bugs and worms probably do a more passive amount of work breaking down the edge of the pile or in cold composting. I get your point though, bugs are good. 👍🏽

@@nickthorne5872 I agree, that's why I used the word significant, not majority. In my view hot bacterial dominated compost only has a couple advantages; speed, and it kills off most of the weed seeds and pathogens. I believe slow compost yields a better finished product though. If you leave it long enough the pathogenic organisms will be outcompeted anyway. I once composted about 3 yards of pure wood chips, took about 18 months til it was mostly broken down, just gave it a little water here and there and turned it a couple times. The grubs did the majority of the work, and many other small organisms participated. Yielded about a yard. Some of the best compost I've ever made, peppers and tomatoes loved it.

I sometimes just stop and watch all the critters going about their day in my compost heap. I find it fascinating.

@@gemfyre855 I used to pull out the magnifying glass. Some truly strange and cool creatures in there!

Same for fungi/mushrooms and molds.

Be very careful with straw its usually sprayed with an herbicide called Grazon that takes years to breakdown. It can inhibit your garden

Yeah, it's not all bad. But it's kind of a rotten thing to do to your neighbor.

It is always a good idea to use at least five ingredients to get the best variety of nutrients.

I have to do cold compost....much better on my joints....lol I have RA so no hot compost for me 😂

I think this is a valid point. People often forget, that if you don't care about time, a pile of organic matter will break down eventually without doing anything to it. eg. I have a pile of leaf litter and weeds I start in the fall. I continue piling it up in spring throughout summer. By the end of the season, the bottom/middle layer is broken down a lot. I lay the broken down stuff on my garden beds for overwintering (let the bugs/worms break it down into the soil). The stuff that isn't broken down at all, I pile it into an active compost pile that I try to get hot before winter. By the start of the gardening season here (zone 5) the active compost is ready for the garden. The most time I spend on compost is collecting the stuff to be composted and spreading it. The actual compost process, for the most part, should be handled by nature (not me). :)

Plus hot composted compost feeds for up to five years, cold composted compost feeds for five thousand years.

@@breezywilson760 yep. I’ve learned to never be in a hurry in the garden.

@@TheVTRainMan I agree. It's as simple to me as throwing it into a pile and letting it do its thing. Eventually I will use it in my garden or pots.

You got this 🤞🏼

I do something similar in old storage totes converted to composting planters ala Robbie and Gary Gardening Easy. Works great!

Update?? How'd it go?

That's even more work then I do. I guess I'm the laziest person when it comes to this. I throw all on a pile and once a year I take out what I need. When everybody turns their piles, I'm drinking a beer while watching them do it.

@@roelrijkens4061 I guess Im the laziest of you all (I have the advantage, though, of light, well-aerated soil). I just dig a trench (about 45cm/18 inches deep) in a comparatively "depleted" area of the garden and throw all my organic material into it. Every lawn mowing, leaf raking or hedge trimming goes in, along with kitchen scraps. When its nearly full I rake soil over it. Six months later when I plant it, it is the most productive row in the garden. Just repeat the process in different places, every time one row gets filled up.

I’d say it would be to stop digging up coal, oil and gas, converting them to CO2 and dumping it in the atmosphere and oceans, but then we’d all starve and freeze. I have been composting for years because it’s the easiest way of getting rid of garden “waste” and because it’s great for planting things, improving the soil and topping up my raised beds for growing vegetables.

Nothing wrong w that!

At my house, we call those volunteers! Things I didn't plant on purpose, but they showed up anyway. It's always fun to see!

It just takes making a successful one to then feel confident in your abilities and feel like a pro.

Chickens will even eat mice.

@@triciac1019 yes!! As a kid I did once walk into the chicken coop and the rooster caught a mouse right in front of me.... Trust me, within the confines of the chicken coop, nothing but chicken lives!!

That's fine!

@jimbox114. The method with the pvc pipe in the middle, with air holes, is called the Armstrong Wu method of composting! I’m going to try it when I construct my next heap! I watched a video whereby the ‘pipe’ was actually some large squared mesh, bent into a square tube, with fine nylon netting wrapped around it! As crazy as it sounds, I actually love feeding the compost heap, using fresh cut grass, dried leaves, rabbit poo and shavings, hay, kitchen vegetable scraps, etc! I know that the worms love it also!

@@KA-in6sx Alternatively a basic grow light & hydroponics can give a LOT of foods like leafy greens indoors in very little space. Mushrooms are great too

I have done that by keeping them in plastic bags until I am ready to use them, or have them fenced in in an area. I got leaf mold from a few bags as they sat for a few years. The smell reminded me of my grandmother making leaf mold.

@@triciac1019 I do the same thing. Any leaves I save and don't use in compost are left in a pin to become leaf mold.

I have a tumbler too. I also keep a plastic bin beside it and new scraps and chicken poop and bedding are added to that whilst the batch of compost in tumbler is cooking. When I empty the tumbler I use the contents of the plastic bin to start the next batch. If it composts a little in summer whilst it’s waiting that’s not a problem. Although in Ireland summers are cool.

It is messy but really wonderful!

Seriously. Compositing just /happens/, you don't have to follow a recipe or really do a ton of work. Those things just speed up the process (sometimes significantly), but the world has literally been functioning on this principle for millions of years. It doesn't require human intervention.

@@DocFunkenstein Yup. Critters die and poop out there. The cycle is gonna happen. The more complicated you make it, the less people are going to do it

Yes.... oh yes.... need to stop and learn from own experiences...

Compost piles need water too. So each time you water the garden, add some to the pile too...

Also, if you have more than one pile, when you find dry bits, add them to the next pile, for further composting.

It had been watered just fine. We had more than enough rain. Water just did not penetrate it. I fixed it through how I build them. This was close to a decade ago. I also started building my piles on rainy days so every layer starts out wet with my old bamboo fence polls to ad air chambers. Also I will add that a compost pile needs to be on high ground but I suspect most if not all people reading this knows that.

I have always put my compost heaps straight on the soil. This allows earthworms to invade quite readily.

If you push your fruit and veg scraps more towards the center you'll avoid more of the fruit flies

Each time you add food scraps, try burying them underneath rather than throwing them straight on the top. This prevents the flies.

@@epicgardening This is good to know! I tried indoor kitchen composting with a ceramic compost jar and every time It has bred HUNDREDS of fruit fly maggots. I finally gave up after 3 tries. I shall have to try once more using this advice.

​@@cursedcookies I keep mine indoors in a 5 gallon bucket. I have the lid on top with a paint can weighing down the lid. This has done pretty well to keep them out. Otherwise, the moment funky smells or flies develop it gets worked into in the outside pile. That kills all of that. Only gonna be an issue if your compost pile is overwhelmed with food scraps. Mine is mostly yard waste.

@@Nocare89 I might just switch to a setup like that instead :) isn't it bad for compost to have no air exchange though? that was one factor in keeping me from having an inside compost container with a fully sealed lid. Is mixing everything every few days to once a week enough in a small container? I don't have the ability to have an outside compost until I can afford a tumble composter so the kitchen sized one is what I got for now.

Makes sense!

I hadn't thought of using Seaweed. I just read the salt would be such a tiny amount and it would get leached away in the rain so it wouldn't do any harm. I'm always looking for new compost materials so I'm going to make sure I have a bag in the car next time I'm near the beach. ❤

@@gardeninginthedesert that would be a great idea. The food we eat is supposed to provide us with trace minerals essential for our health but other than fertilizer that has nitrogen, potash and phosphate I don't think the trace minerals get replaced back into the soil as much. Back when I had a subscription to Organic Gardening magazine I heard about people putting seaweed in the soil. But a lot of the growers nowadays are connected to large corporations. I just dont trust those, since they are more concerned with profits. Did you hear about the farmers (I think it was in Maine) that can't farm any more because the state sold them sewage sludge to better their soil? Now they can't farm because the sludge had forever chemicals in it. That is what the state says. Back in the 1970's I was taking Horticulture and had to do a report on sewage sludge and one problem that it had (which is why sludge was not recommended) was that the sludge had heavy metals in it. Lead, mercury, cadmium, etc. I don't think they were as concerned about forever chemicals back then. But the heavy metals don't go away. That is something the state stopping the farmers from farming didn't even mentioned. They shouldn't have sold it to the farmers anyway. I don't know if it was ignorance or the temptation of making money from the farmers that made the state sell it. Not only forever chemicals and heavy metals are a problem with sludge, but not too long ago they found that sewage also contains chemicals from prescription drugs that people take that ends up in the sewage. And those have been causing problems with fish exposed to the sludge. Like reproductive problems. ( That makes me wonder if that might be contributing to the lack of population growth in countries all over the world. I heard China has that problem but they don't know what is causing it. Russia too has the problem. It might be that people are not wanting kids but who knows. Both China and Russia are careless with pollution. China specially. While doing that report one thing I ran across was tilapia fish. I researched what uses sludge had and China and other Asian countries use it to feed tilapia. They grow big and fat on it. We didn't even have tilapia in the grocery store when I wrote my report. Now we do have tilapia in the grocery store and every time I see it there or on a restaurant's menu it makes me feel queasy. But I'm not a big fan of fish so I don't eat much of it except for cod, pollock, and tuna.

Burying and trash can is what I am trying now.

Wouldn't this be fixed with an airpot ?

I believe I did mention with the cold compost pile!

@@epicgardening Not the same...I bury a 2 gallon pot leaving 2" showing...fill half full with kitchen scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, dead leaves, toilet paper tubes...then set a matching pot on top, filled with potting soil and any shallow rooted plant. The weight of the top pot deters varmints. The worms go crazy and when I see the level has dropped, I lift the top pot and add more scraps. So simple and very effective :) Makes tidying up the garden easy with little debris pots everywhere.

​@@kelleclark yup, I do this "inground worm bin" all over my garden. So easy to do garden cleanup.

​@@kelleclark hi Kelly! what kind of shallow rooted plants do you use? Thanks!

@@kelleclark I have an in-bed composting setup as well. When I stack up the scraps, they get broken down within just a few weeks. It’s handy.

What issues are you having?

I think he does have a video about that. Do a search on his site.

Not sure if this helps but just want to share my experience. Summers are very hot in my area and my compost is super dry. I used to think there were no worms around to break it down. But as I was digging one day some mole holes to put some mole repellent, I've seen a lot of worms about 4 or 5 inches below the compost where the soil is a bit cooler. So all fine

there are different types of worms. Some are surface to 12 inches below the dirt, never really going deeper. Some never come to the surface so to speak. So just seem to just burrow and aerate clay soil like the Alabama slammers, while the red wigglers are great for composting. I've taught me kids anytime the see a worm toss it in the compost pile or a garden bed. my compost pile has thousands of worms by mid summer. Compost goes in the raised beds and my tomatoes were bright red and my cannabis plants were over 10 feet tall. Not an expert just having a bit of success.

Do at least a 3' x 3' pile. A 4' x 4' would be better. Turn it every few days and keep it moist. It will get smaller as it breaks down. Mix at least five different ingredients. Carbon and nitrogen 3 to 1 ratio.

It's hard to beat one of those, they are a classic!

Space is what stops me, I certainly don't have 3 square foot of space I'm willing to hand over to a compost! That's a HUGE amount of produce that can be grown in that much space! I'd rather just bury garden waste while harvesting root veggies & then plant straight on top of it & let it break down under the soil

When I first started gardening I always buried my kitchen scraps around my raised beds and my plants did awesome. The very first KZfaq channel I had watched was robbie and Gary easy gardening. That's what sparked the interest in easy compost. Then I started watching more videos on compost and was like "oh maybe that'll work better" and honestly it was all just way to complicated that I went right back to put my scraps either right in the soil or in buckets I have put around my garden beds.

@@FeedingMyFloridaSoul whatever works!

Burying food scraps in a perforated container has been my go to.

Yes! Our modern family of five in the suburbs makes one bag of trash a week. Most of that is plastic packaging

We acquired the company late last year!

That is interesting! In Edmonton (Canada) we pay a flat rate for garbage/composting &recycling. I think your system is a great way to go! More people would likely do more composting if it meant saving money.

@@deborahporter1170 Location is probably the key. I live in relatively small town, where many denizens have big enough backyards or gardens to make composting piles. But we also have neighborhoods with densely placed properties where it's not an option. Those folks pay flat fees and little can be done about it.

Thank you I cannot always flip my pile when needed. This will be a big time save and less stress on busy weeks.

I never never understood the hurry to get the compost ready. Unless you work in a really small space and need to take out the mature compost in order to make room for fresh waste material, just let it be. Time and nature will do the work for you. If for your garden needs more compost than you produce you’ll have to buy some anyway, otherwise, as the OP pointed out, it’s just a matter of waiting longer when you start the cycle.