I’ve started my first compost heap, and so far it contains vegetable and fruit waste, and some rotting leaves and grass. I don’t have any farm animal manure readily available, but I do have two cats and a dog. Would their waste be beneficial? What else can/should I put in my compost heap? It’s fairly far away from the house, so it can get good and smelly!
Grass Clippings
All organic waste from the house [lettuce remains, bannana peels, coffee grounds etc…etc…], but nothing that would attract animals, so nothing that bleeds like chicken carcasses, t-bones things like that.
Make sure to turn it every month or so, and once you get some good compost use it immediately on your garden…do you have a garden?
Oh! Coffee grounds! That’s so awesome that I can use those, because I produce a LOT!
I’m also starting my first garden. I began the compost heap on top of my garden site a couple of months ago, and it’s now fairly mulchy, so I turned the soil, and plan to plant at the end of the month. Now that my compost spot has become my garden spot, I’ve started a new one in the back corner. So technically, I suppose it’s my second compost experiment, but you smell what I’m stepping in here. 
I’m not sure what I’ll be growing in my garden; I plan to go pick up some seeds soon.
**Do not ** use pet poop in your compost pile. Herbivore poop is fine; carnivore poop is not fine.
Newspaper is one common thing I hear a lot, particularly when you have more “green” than “brown” stuff in your compost pile. Shred it up and toss it in, although I’d skip the glossy color inserts. And it’s easy to go overboard, so use your head.
So (just to intensify) if your pet is a bunny, a rodent of some kind, or a bird, their poop *can *go in your compost. In fact, depending on what you use for litter, that can go in too: if you use cedar chips (which you shouldn’t for a bunny, but that’s a different thread) or shredded paper, for instance. Especially if you’re using shredded newspaper that was printed with soy ink. If you put in *unshredded *paper, even if your pet got it good and soggy first, it tends to just sit there for a long time.
Other things not to put in your compost:
- weeds with either roots or seeds on them
- big sticks or hunks of wood – they take much longer to decompose, and then cause hassles when you go to put the compost in your garden
- slices or big pieces of moldy bread etc., for the same reason **Phlosphr **said not to put meat or bones in. If you have something like that to get rid of, it can work if you crumble it fine first and mix it in a little, maybe run the hose on it for a few seconds.
Happy dirt!
My wife and I have three trash bins. Lined up in a row. First on closest to the counter is everything going into the composter. Coffee grounds every morning, bannana peels, apple cores, lettuce centers, cucumber skins, carrot skins, etc…etc…it has a rubbermade lid so it does not stink. I take it out every week when I go out back with the trash.
Second bin is recycleables (Sp?), and the third bin is trash. You will be amazed once you start composting how much trash you actually save.
Good Luck!
Posting to subscribe to thread, as this is something I’ve been thinking of doing at some point.
We don’t have a good place to put an on-the-ground heap, but we could probably get away with one of the freestanding barrel-type ones such as
this. . Anyone have any experience with these or similar? I know one disadvantage would be that you have to do it in batches - fill it up, turn it for a month or two, then dump it all, rather than adding / “harvesting” continuously.
Would a compost heap (or barrel) work in a somewhat shaded area? Our backyard is north-facing and parts get relatively little sun.
Interesting to read about herbivore poop. We do have plenty of that thanks to the guinea pigs; I guess I could add a scoop of their cage-cleanings to the bin every week or two.
Probably would work. It depends on how warm it is where you live. Stuff decomposes just fine in total darkness, if it’s also warm and damp. It doesn’t have to be warm all the time, though. We have cold winters here, so while we keep adding to the pile over the winter, it doesn’t compost until spring – we’re just extra careful about putting out anything that raccoons, rats, etc. would come snag.
Along the same lines, if your heap dries out too much, it won’t compost either; it’s helpful to have a hose handy to the heap if you live in a dry area.
We didn’t have money for the freestanding barrel types, so we went to the Home Despot and got a couple of those 5 gallon plastic paint drums with lids and drilled a few holes in it. We just roll them around the yard, and rotate which one we’re adding kitchen scraps to and which one we’re letting do its thing. The best part of our compost setup is that we can get free cow manure from the neighborhood area; there are cows living across the street from our front door and sometimes they jump over the fence and poop in our neighborhood.
As for a place to put kitchen scraps, we’ve got a tray behind the cutting board where we put our kitchen scraps; we empty it 1-2 times per day into the buckets out back so it doesn’t get stinky or attract anything. It works really well for us, especially since the occasional spoiled bit of produce doesn’t really go to waste. We add these, newspaper shreds, and other compost friendly materials and let it go.
Shredded junk mail (and office paper waste) composts quicker than newspapers. It’s another high carbon, low nitrogen feedstock. So if you’ve go a lot of grass clippings and food waste, and not much dried leaves and you don’t want to dry some of the grass clippings - junk mail to the rescue.
You can also throw in any paper towels you use in the kitchen, as long as they don’t have heavy-duty cleaning chemicals on them.
We never compost our coffee grounds. We just use them directly in our garden, or where ever.
Some colored inks are toxic, so you shouldn’t use any paper products printed in color.
Worms!
You can buy some red wigglers used as bait from the sporting section in any megastore for about $2 or so, to help break down everything faster. Worm poop (castings) is very nutrient rich.
Another thing to help break down the pile is crack open a beer or three and pour it on and mix it up. The natural yeast in the beer helps the decomposition improve.
Wow, these all sound like really good ideas. Ixnay on the cat/dog ooppay duly noted. I threw a couple of wads of poo in there today, thinking, “hey, manure, right on”. Is that a bad enough thing that I should try to remove it, or do you think I could just consider it a lesson learned and all that, and not do it again?
I think I’ll use the free newspaper that gets delivered every sunday that I never read. Extra recycling action!
I planted some strawberries today in the garden, and I’ve got some other seeds ready to go for this weekend. I’ll be pretty excited if even one or two things are edible, especially if the strawberries are on that list. I’m trying the square foot gardening, planting chives, basil, zucchini, green bush beans, coriander, eggplant, and collards.
Food waste, consumable liquid waste (leftover beer and pop, etc), food related paper products (napkins, etc).
Yard waste. Leaves, clippings.
Spent soil. Yes really. Crumble up really poor soil that’s been depleted, like when an old houseplant dies, and add to the compost mix.
Do Not Under Any Circumstances Use Dog or Cat Feces.
“T. gondii is a parasite with a two-phase life cycle: intestinal and extraintestinal. In cats, the intestinal phase goes through a process which eventually produces oocysts, which are “shed” in the feces. Human toxoplasmosis can result from exposure to the T. gondii through poor sanitation after handling cat litter; also from working unprotected in a garden which may have T Gondii oocysts in the soil.”
Googling ‘cat feces parasites’ has some interesting results. Apparently sea otters are being killed by toxoplasmosis resulting from run-off and municipal waste containing cat feces.
A friend of mine used one of those for grass clippings. He had rich, dark compost more quickly than usual. I do not recall how quickly, it’s been several years.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet that if the heap is/gets smelly, then it’s not working right. A little smell is okay, but a real pong might mean that it’s not got the composting critters doing what they should.
One note on manures that I learned only today from my new issue of Countryside magazine: If you come across some free horse or cow manure to add to your compost, ask if the critters have been treated with chemical worming agents. Apparently these chemicals are not something that you want in your vegetable garden.
We do compost our coffee grounds (we produce a lot of those, also) as well as the filters.
You can put any spent vegetable plants back into the compost heap as long as they aren’t diseased. Annual weeds can be composted, too, if they haven’t gone to seed.
We don’t compost newspapers because we use them for mulch, thereby gaining much-needed weed control that biodegrades very nicely.
Also, I’m not sure where your compost container is, but if you’ll be putting melon husks and corncobs and that sort of tasty tidbit into it, siting it away from the living quarters might be a good idea.
I’ll be trying the square yard gardening this year also, while Purgatory Man is planting his customary soon-to-be-weed-infested row garden. I can’t wait to start selling him vegetables.