what do you put in the compost that other may not of thought of?

how about saw dust and wood shavings from a wood planner. 

tomthebuilder wrote:how about saw dust and wood shavings from a wood planner. 

I would save those for mulching, but a little bit won't hurt. Add too much and it will sap some of the nitrogen out of the pile.

I was given a couple of pounds of old shredded coconut.

Kelejan wrote:I was given a couple of pounds of old shredded coconut.

That would be a good addition to a compost pile, for sure! Nice gift!  

tomthebuilder wrote:how about saw dust and wood shavings from a wood planner. 

I got some great compost that was sawdust and crab and shrimp shells. The heap was allowed to sit for a year before being sold. I added it to my regular compost pile at the end of the summer so all would be ready in spring. I saw a garden that was made from an earlier heap and it was lush.

Kay

walshevak wrote:

tomthebuilder wrote:how about saw dust and wood shavings from a wood planner. 

I got some great compost that was sawdust and crab and shrimp shells.  The heap was allowed to sit for a year before being sold.  I added it to my regular compost pile at the end of the summer so all would be ready in spring.  I saw a garden that was made from an earlier heap and it was lush.

Kay

nice! I love the lobster compost from my region, which includes forest products. Tom, can you get any shrimp hull waste?

camprn wrote:

Kelejan wrote:I was given a couple of pounds of old shredded coconut.

That would be a good addition to a compost pile, for sure! Nice gift!  

That was from my neighbour friend Persis who lives just down the road.  She faithfully saves for me every scrap of compostable stuff; egg shells, tea leaves and coffee grounds, orange peels banana skins, greens, just about everything one can think of.  She has an excellent varied diet with plenty of vegetables and her health is great. Does not have a car but walks  everywhere she can or else takes the bus and often walks back home; nearly every day. She was visiting her family this Christmas and brought back even more stuff. She takes a huge interest in the products of my compost piles and my Worm Hilton.  During the summer I have the grass cuttings from her lawn no pesticides). She is my treasure.
Becasue of her I have cleared a pathway to my current compost pile so the I can pile the stuff on as she gives it to me. Last year I put the stuff in the old freezer I have in my utility room, but I thought it would be a better idea to put it straight on the heap so the by the time spring arrives some of it will be composting away.

One year, my wife's workplace decorated for Halloween with pumpkins, straw bales, and a scarecrow stuffed with straw. When they took them down, the pumpkins weren't really usable because they'd sat outside for a month. The boss was wondering how to recycle them, so when my wife said I could compost them, she was thrilled. I threw all the pumpkins and straw into my compost bin. The next year, I had pumpkin vines in my compost bin. They were very productive, and even escaped into the lawn. I kept cutting them back to keep them in the compost pile, but once when I was mowing the lawn, I ran over two pumpkins.

Only a composter would have pumpkins to accidentally run over with a lawn mower!

Heh, that suggests a pretty comical image -- I can see how you could accidentally run over a grape with a lawn mower, but accidentally running over a pumpkin?

Musta been babies, I guess?

Had the same event with trailing marrow vines last year the things grew five feet across the lawn in the 14 days we were away .
So I cut the baby marrows ( courgettes ) off and showed them what an 1800 watt 240 volt rotary mower with grass box feels like .

 I tend to weekly  harvest our comfrey in a similar manner , if it's over the garden it's theirs , if it's over the lawn it's mine .

Marc Iverson wrote:Heh, that suggests a pretty comical image -- I can see how you could accidentally run over a grape with a lawn mower, but accidentally running over a pumpkin?  

Musta been babies, I guess?

The grass (and weeds) grow faster around my compost bin, so they were deep enough to hide 4 inch pumpkins!

I had to stop adding kitchen scraps to the compost pile because of wood rats. They chewed their way in and invited their friends join them. I now save the scraps for my worm bin, and add seaweed that I bring home with me after fishing. I try to break it up with my grungy old food processor to help get it broken down faster.

Whenever I have herbal supplements expire, or if I no longer have a need for their services (yay! not working in an old moldy building anymore!) I throw them into the compost. Just a powdered form of dried herbs!

GG

Insurance salesmen, girl scouts, Avon ladies, Herbalife touts, census takers, Jehovah's witnesses, curious neighbors, children ignoring the "Enter Not" sign while coming to retrieve a lost frisbee or ball ... the usual, I guess. Private detectives, court summons, sheaves of cryptic ramblings about the coming apocalypse and the advent of Cthulhu's rise from the sunken city of R'lyeh in the ocean depths to begin his billion year reign with earth as his foothold back into our dimension and across the cosmos. I guess the same as everybody else.

You forgot solar panel salesman. If they only looked up they might notice something on our roof!

Marc Iverson wrote: . . . . sheaves of cryptic ramblings about the coming apocalypse and the advent of Cthulhu's rise from the sunken city of R'lyeh in the ocean depths to begin his billion year reign with earth as his foothold back into our dimension and across the cosmos.  I guess the same as everybody else.

I would be a bit wary of chucking messages from Cthulhu as I believe he can be quite nasty. I doubt you can hide for a billion years. Please be careful.

I'm brand new on this forum, and this thread is way to long for me to get all the way through it, so this might be old hat.

Anyway, here is my super-sophisticated composting method. I line a paper grocery bag with newspaper and set it on the floor next to my kitchen counter, with more newspaper underneath it "just in case". As I prep meals, clean up, make coffee, etc. all the kitchen wastes (including wet paper towels) go into the paper bag. When it either get's filled up, starts to get too wet, company is coming, or the mood strikes me, I carry it out to the current pile I'm building and toss it on, bag, newspaper, and all. I try to keep some straw or leaves, etc. and a pitch fork near the pile so I can cover up the new addition. All that fresh, wet, green material in the bag is more than enough to enable the digestion of the paper as well as a good portion of the leaves and straw by the next time I turn the pile (with the front-loader on my tractor).

I love that idea! But I'm afraid we'd be infested with fruit flies. Do you get fruit flies? Then what?

CC

Great thread, particularly the link to 163 things you can compost. I will be composting for the first time in years. When I did it before, I added small amounts of wood stove ash (mostly from ash trees, so ash ash), selected sawdust  (mostly pine and spruce, never walnut, pressure treated, plywood or cedar), and every spring I would sacrifice a beer to the composter to get it going.

I remember reading somewhere to avoid citrus peel (like cedar, the oil contains a natural preservative).

Did I see something on here about limiting coffee grounds?

We put lots of smashed or partially roten citrus in our compost pile every year far more than what any one else would have if ya aint got a bunch of citrus trees around.  It breaks down nicely.  We bury it and in 6 months its soil.  I am talking about a big wheel barow or half a doxen 5 gallon buckets full at a time.

Fungi break down the toxic component in citrus oil, so tossing them in compost works, but it is not good to dump the peels in worm composters. The oil is toxic and fresh peels will kill the worms, springtails, mites, and pill bugs in the worm bin; however, over time, fungi break those peels down and the bin bugs and worms will be alright eating that, if they survive the initial exposure.

So, citrus is ok then?

I make my own yogurt and strain it to give it the thick texture, so I end up with LOTS of the liquid 'whey' left.  What I don't use in cooking (making bread or waffles) gets poured on my compost pile.  From what I have read, it is supposed to be a decent accelerator.

Goosegirl wrote:I make my own yogurt and strain it to give it the thick texture, so I end up with LOTS of the liquid 'whey' left.  What I don't use in cooking (making bread or waffles) gets poured on my compost pile.  From what I have read, it is supposed to be a decent accelerator.

OMG!  We should be roommates. I often put the whey in my smoothies. I love it, and will sometimes drink it plain. I  usually end up giving the yogurt cheese to my mom or tossing it in the compost if it´s not organic. Not a big fan of todays dairy.