I'm planning on making a couple of those barrel tumblers in a couple of weeks.   I'm also using those square bins with wire but find myself not turning them as often as I should.  How long do you let yours "cook" before adding it to your garden?  Is there any organic material that you would not toss in?

Hopefully this fall I'll finally be able to break ground on mine for next year.  Trying to get the soil ready now.  I got some of that Yazoo clay but my great grandfather and later my grandfather had some great gardens on the hill I'll be using.   It hasn't been worked in over 20+years and I'm still clearing brush and small pines that have grown up since.

I too am interested in this.

My cousin as a 3 tier compost bin. The first bin is where the organic stuff goes and after "X" amount of months he moves the compost to the middle bin and then to the last bin after I think a year.

You going hot or cold?

There are a lot of good resources out there

I started with Rodale composting book.

Yep, I know nothing.  Hot or cold?  I don't even know what that means.  I know ideally the compost gets hot when it degrades and can even burn up the weed seeds in the grass clippings, but that's about it.  I'm looking up resources now.  Thanks for that one!  I was looking for ideas of what I could be doing now to help the soil for the future garden.  I'm going to go ahead and get a soil sample and drop it off at my local extension office to get an idea on the ph.  Wonder if they'll notice if I slip it in with the samples I take at our sod field?  Hmmm, , nah, better not.  It might look odd if they see under crop, Bermuda, Centipede, Corn, Potatoes, etc, etc.

Read this thread.  It's long, but worth it.  It, with the Rodale book, should answer all your questions.  Also, you need to start a worm bin.

Thanks!!

That is an AWESOME thread!!!

I would recommend you watch this set of videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0m5RxUhfxQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXaOyYT0ORA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lCVcv04K5Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVYtpY1VfK8&feature=related


They found that the tumble style compost bins actually don't work as well as other designs.  The best one was the relatively cheap Geobin.

Hi, I have a Earth Machine I bought through Berkeley Co, Wv as part of there recycling plan. I think I paid $35 . Added all the great compost to My raised garden for the first time this spring and it really improved My soil. I add my coffee grounds, kitchen waste ( no meat or dairy ), neighbor's grass clippings from the lawn guy she has mowing Her yard ( I mulch mow My lawn ) Plus My neighbors all have 50+y/o maples surrounding My treeless ( except for My Harold Lauder Walking Stick tree  and 4 types of dwarf Japanese Maples ) that provides plenty of leaf and leaf mold for the bin ( I even save a couple bags of leaves by themselves in a black 30gal. trash bag to add more brown in summer, but most already have broken down in the black trash bag. I do turn the compost in the bin every couple of days when taking the dogs out. For a quick start on Your compost bin add rabbit crap and in a pinch cheap ( dirt cheap ) dog kibble .  When I first started My compost bin I added a couple containers of worms into the mix. I would bet Your County Waste Authority will be selling the Earth Machine and it might be worth a look. Breaks down for me pretty quickly say 3 months ......WVleo

The tumble idea went out the window after seeing those huge piles of compost.  I have the room and the means to get something like that started.  Thanks for those links!

Started my pile this past weekend.  I dumped several pick up loads of old straw/hay.  Going to make runs after sawdust and the local stockyards this week.  Dumping some other bits and pieces of pure nastiness this afternoon.   Construction company I work for has a side poultry related venture and I'm getting the scraps from that and hopefully get it buried fast.  I scratched up some of the old pine straw that was on the ground where I'm dumping this and it's already loaded with worms.   Now if only I could get all my dogs and cats to confine their "business" to this pile........

From what I understand, you do not want domestic animal waste in your compost.  Really, you do not want the manure of any meat-eating animal in your compost.  Might be an organic mantra, not sure, but I was always told you did not compost dog/cat manure.



 

I was half way joking about that last part.  I've been doing some reading, least of which is that thread previously mentioned in here by Corporal_Chaos and it blew my mind what the author  was putting in his piles.   Honestly, I don't think I could ever knowingly dump dog or cat waste in my pile.  But I also don't know how you could stop my many barn cats from using it.  Any pile of dirt or soft material is fair game to them.  I just have to try and keep the layers just right in order to maintain the carbon/nitrogen balance.

In a properly constructed and aged pile, you can get away with putting in a lot of stuff that many "experts" tell you not to.  Read The Humanure Handbook to learn about another readily available source of nitrogen rich compost material.

I've got a few compost set ups going on right now. One is straight up chicken manure. Way too strong to go on the garden until it gets aged .Don't know the exact time for aging. Did a test with it on some test plants (tomatoes) and they didn't suffer any problems until the hornworm came. I let it age in the open for about 6 months over fall/winter. Also have a garbage can set up where all scrap vegetation and some rabbit manure go, another pile is an open heap  that's mostly rabbit manure. I stay away from anything meat related. Stuff like that attracts rodents and such. Also in some cases it creates those unlovely smells often associated with mismanaged piles. Over all I usually wait until everything is broken down and crumbly before use it. Good luck with your garden efforts!

+1

It took a while to get through. But, it was faster than the epic thread on converting to rotational grazing...