The reason why many people say you cant compost has nothing to do with composting itself. Good point. I do the same. The only living matter that i dont add to my compost pile is my neighbor.
I lived in a large apartment and bought a SoilSaver compost bin. I had a small space between mine and another first floor apartment. We put our veg food scraps, egg shells, egg cartons, card board, coffee grounds, leaves and whatever grass clipping and pine needles we could get from the yard into it. We kept putting things in over winter, never turned it and in spring pulled out 3, 5 gallon buckets of the most beautiful compost. We both grow stuff on our decks. Its amazing how the bin digests all of our scraps. The SoilSavers are pricey but I have used them for at least 30 years. They are durable and WELL worth the money.
Wow! You've challenged composting "rules" that I've been wondering about for a long time. Lately, I've started "sneaking" stale bread into my composter along with shrimp shells which has made me feel a quite adventurous! Now I can't wait to clean out my fridge and freezer. Although the thought of attracting visiting vermin does creep me out waaaaaaaaaay too much! But I could bury some of the more attractive tidbits directly into my garden though, right? Leaving the less alluring tidbits for the bin. I will feel less wasteful about food as it will benefit my gatden. Thank you for raising this issue, and for promoting Dave the Good. I can't wait to brew my own fetid swamp water. You have earned a new subscriber!
I learned that with composting it is not an exact science but rather an art and there is not a right or wrong way of doing it but rather what works best for you with whatever material you have available and wherever you are.
Mix a cup of cooked rice including its water, cooled, into the pile. Then can water the pile with 1/2 cup molasses in 5 gal water. This starts up lactobacillus which run branches of spores throughout the pile. They can be very effective on totally brown piles in cold composting in enclosures such as bovesbprbpkastic bags which would normally run anaerobic.
Does it have to be white rice, or any is fine? I'm trying the totally brown pile cold composting enclosure since I am located in Pennsylvania and are cold days are already here and winter soon approaching. Had a great harvest this year but I am expanding my gardening knowledge since I am fairly knew still to it.
That amazing kid running around and helping you gather bagged leaves. I assumed that’s Samuel? An exact mini-me copy of yourself. I’ve learned so much and still learning today. I could have easily learned composting the wrong way if I had not found your channel. Thank you
In the winter I leave dried-up "brown" plants & dead morning glory vines alone because birds like to eat the seeds. When spring comes, the seeds are gone, and I can use the debris for my new compost.
I'm 66. Have big back problems. Soooo I just dig holes and dump my kitchen scraps in it and put the dirt on top. Soooo my leaf pile takes longer to compose. Oh well.... I look forward to SOME kind of compost.
I put weeds with seeds in a bucket of water for about a week, stinky but it kills it and then I add it to my compost pile. I didn’t know it was compost tea.🤓
One problem people have in composting is that there is an abundance of green materials in some seasons and brown in others. You can try storing brown materials for the times of the year when green is abundant but in small yards finding a space to store can be a problem. I rely on kitchen scraps as my green during hot, dry weather. I also trim hedges during these periods when little else is around.
Great video. Composting with chickens is super easy. Just like David the Good says, “Throw it on the ground.“ It won’t get hot, but it will break down pretty quick. I put all my kitchen scraps in the chicken run, as well as grass clippings, bags of leaves, bags of pulp from a juice bar, and shredded paper. They add their manure, and it turns into some good stuff. The chickens eat a lot of the seeds but definitely some weed and tomato seeds survive and end up sprouting where I use the compost.
Great video We take our kitchen scraps and blend it in an old blender with a little water then pour it in the compost tumblers we have. We have a very short growing season (90 days if we are lucky) so we have to think outside the box to get any compost. We also have raised beds that we fill with a lot of carbon, grass clippings, leaves, Leonardite, molasse and anything else we can find like you. Then we put about four inches of good soil on top. We do this is the fall and cover it up for the winter then plant in the Spring/summer. Seems to work okay Still perfecting our strategies.
Home gardeners need to use both aerobic and anaerobic composting. Anaerobic composting can be much faster, and a good way to process plant wastes when they’re abundant. The bacteria that thrive under anaerobic conditions tend to consume less nitrogen, leaving you with a compost tea that has higher value as a fertilizer.
I compost everything except pumpkin seeds and avacado seeds because they grow, and bones because they don't break down. I always compost left over meat scraps and dairy, it's nature's way. I have never had a problem and I thank God for a very productive garden. Up til now I have sealed my perennial weeds and seeds in black rubbish bags and left them to decompose, which takes a couple of years. I'll be trying the anaerobic compost tea, it sounds great and a lot faster!
Good one. Thanks. I like the swamp bucket the best. I use the juice within 2 weeks and the rest goes into the compost pile. I have great muck within weeks for my sandy soil in Florida.
Scott, I composted a few of those same items this summer because I was able to keep the temperature on the pile high enough that it all decomposed quite nicely. However, being one of your followers up north, I will have to wait until next year to get the nice finished compost mixture like you get. Encouraging to see that someone else is able to get all kinds of things to turn into compost like I do.
It's funny, I've commented on David's videos so many times but I don't think I've ever seen a comment by David on somebody elses video. Even though this is Scott head who joins all his goodstreams.
Thanks! learning lots here, gaining confidence in my plans. I have a greenhouse, 3 in fact. The biggest one is going to get a compost heater added to the north side this year as well as a hydrothermal solar panel that will serve the veggie beds with winter heat thru buried lines. From what ive seen here, my job just got easier and more possible as a property manager with a low budget and a need for self sustainability
For newbies to hot composting... hot composting is both an art and a science and, IMO, is best learned through trial and error. It's NOT difficult, but, like most new skills, some initial persistence is required. You MUST have a compost thermometer to hot compost well, as the thermometer tells you what's happening inside the pile. Without one you'll struggle to become good at it. You need fuel (a mixture of greens and browns, err on the side of greens, and the finer the better, as it breaks down more quickly; if it's 'lived before', it CAN be composted), water (the pile must be damp, but not overly wet/soggy) and air (the pile needs to be aerated). If the pile doesn't heat up, it's most likely due to it either being too dry or too wet. If it's too dry, spray some water into it and turn it over with a garden fork until it's uniformally damp (like a wrung out sponge) but not overly wet. If it's too wet, then you can either turn it over with a fork each day to aerate and dry it out, or add some additional dry material and mix it in thoroughly until uniformally damp. Your compost pile will heat up over a period of a few days to its peak and will then cool down. Once it's cooled down, you need to turn it over to aerate it and, potentially, to spray in some more water if it's too dry, and the process will repeat itself. Each iteration takes about one week. After a few iterations, the pile won't heat up into 'the zone' anymore, and then it's time to let your compost 'cure' for a few weeks or months, before using it on your garden. For my compost piles to be 'in the zone', I'm typically shooting for temperatures inside the pile (in the middle) to be in the 50 - 70 deg C range (120 - 160 deg F). If your compost pile smells bad, then it's gone anaerobic (it's too wet and/or has insufficient oxygen) either throughout the pile or in pockets, and you'll need to, at the very least, thoroughly turn it over with a fork to aerate it and correct the problem. It's as simple as that 🤓 Once you get it working right, hot composting is a joy and your garden (and, in my case, my wife) will love you for it 😊
I glad he showed that because I have had many discussion with “relatives & neighbors” about how you CANNOT add these to compost, but I always have anyway.
I agree with you Making Compost with all help from Nature is the Best Compost Microorganisms do work hard / eat the organic matter for us ... i like the idea to all allow Rodents etc to Eat their share ..... Love Nature Love LIFE #Gratitude
Made myself a 55 gal blue plastic barrel composter up on a 2x4 frame so I can rotate it and it's tall enough to put a wheelbarrow under the door for emptying. Made a 2x2 foot shaker box out of 2x4s and hardware cloth. Dump the stuff out the composter into the shaker box, dirt falls through to the barrow, bigger chunks stay in, and get dumped back into the composter for another go around. Best composter I have ever seen! Transferred some dead dry stuff from an old box type composter into it, and at the same time I added a wheelbarrow full of dandelion stalks as tall as me (before they bloomed). Watered it in, added about a 1/4 cup of starter bacteria. 10 days later I turned it again and there was absolutely no sign of anything you could identify as a dandelion stalk or leaf!!! Totally gone! I'm still amazed....
Thanks for the sugar information. I hate sticks, it makes the pile hard to turn. I save tons of leaves, which I shred, and add some wood chippings that are a year plus old. Thank you for your video.
Whenever I cut limbs or pull weeds they all go in the shadiest part of my yard. and then I forget about them. By the time I get around to messing with it all the green is gone. I pull the leftover sticks out, turn anything brown under, break the sticks into smaller pieces and put them back. Rinse and repeat. I've been doing that for 5 yrs now and the dirt under that limb pile is some of the best in my yard. I sift and screen it and mix into last year's raised beds. The process takes a LONG time and there's a pile of limbs in the corner of my yard, but it's zero effort dirt full of earthworms and springtails.
Great vid! Just wanted to mention that Morning Glory can burn and have it's ashes delivered to the sea! It's the only weed I pull that goes straight to the burn pile. Not delivering the ashes to the sea at these gas prices ;)
Excellent message to break the so-called rules to composting. I will look into some of the methods you spoke about for meat since that is the one items I do not currently compost into my rabbit pen. I would love to utilize all our kitchen leavings 100%.
This is the first one of your videos I've watched and I'm so pleased for such an easy-to-understand presentation. Really enjoyed that. The one thing that I often cringe about though, is to make compost tea in plastic containers. When that heats up (ex. Summer heat), that will leach out all the chemicals in the plastics that we generally try to avoid in cooking or storing food in plastic, so why do folks not catch on to that? May I suggest galvanized steel buckets with lids, or small barrels (same holds true for rain barrels for those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest, etc.). I love how you explained about the weed seeds and using mature weeds in the tea. I did that this Summer, wondering if I was going overboard with that idea (I don't like the idea of using weeds in the grass clippings into the compost piles from mowing even, but that seems to become unavoidable. And so far, I haven't really had big dandelion weeds or buttercups, etc. growing in my compost piles, thankfully. I'm only in this for the past 2 Summers so far, mind you. But I do keep out the Morning Glory and similar plants that might be too prolific in the compost piles. And I burn the really invasive stuff, ex. Blackberry vines and Mint, just in case. Well we recently have the city picking up any compostable material, so some if may end up exiting our property that way. Anyway, great presentation and look forward to more.
I set up some DFSW at the beginning of this summer and forgot about it until about a couple of weeks ago... whew! smelled like propane but there was a lot of life... added the solids to my compost and added the liquid to a bucket of charcoal to inoculate, let's go!
were did you get that pitchfork around 3:30 on the vid the one with the t handle....looks like a good quality stainless steel ....what brand it is ......! Thank's a lot Scott
Its a Sneeboer 4t, got it online from Garden Tool Company online. Its not cheap, but it is awesome indeed. But I failed to keep the handle oiled and it was lost outdoors for a year... which isn't a good recipe for a wooden handle. I literally broke the handle just two days ago. Looking for a replacement, thinking I'll make my own from steel pipe and weld it.
This is really useful and what I am working on this weekend. I would only compost meats, dairy and processed foods that aren't likely to have a lot of pharmaceuticals or toxins, though.
I am just about to start making our own compost. We have a bin for greens and browns for normal composting and two Bokashi bins that break down all the dairy, meat and other naughty stuffs and also makes a nice liquid fertilizer from the fermentation. Am really excited to start now, just hope I grow a green finger or two! Finding your videos very helpful and informative. Best wishes from the UK
My husband is in the process of cutting down an out of hand bamboo jungle at the end of our pond. He lets it dry for a while, and then burns them. I add all my dried weeds, and the larger pruned sucker limbs from my trees in the pile to burn. I then use the ash in the compost, among other things.
@16:50 they make a composting chicken coops .. They're basically bottomless chicken coops on wheels that u can place directly over the compost pile or directly over the garden and moved to a different area to compost the next day. And the chickens will not ruin compost pile, if anything they will add too it and help turn and aerate the compost.. Its a Natural life cycle just given a hand or boost.
I've wanted to start a digester using a 40-gallon plastic drum and a motor-driven agitator. That would digest my noxious weeds and convert everything into an anaerobic soup that I can use as liquid fertilizer.
Nice vid Scott. Geoff Lawton demonstrates a good method using chickens at his greening the desert site in Jordan, but I would recommend Edible Acres yt channel for anyone with chickens. They have a playlist that incorporates all sorts of ideas.
I can remember my father taking the daily kitchens scraps and simply burying then at the base of the corn stalks and tomatoes. That was in the 1970s. Today I take kitchen scraps and whatever and pile it into the tumbler. When I want soil I fill a large pot or bucket with the compost and let it sit out in the sun to cook the seeds. I turn it with a shovel a few times a week. Amazingly after a week or two I have something like black gold soil.
Thank you for this video. Its very informative. I like that you use everything at your disposal, no pun intended. Right now I practice some of the 'chop and drop' method, but also I 'dig and drop' under the soil surface(but I have to mark the locations), and since I have a fenced in the back yard, I will uncover my mulch layer sometimes, and put kitchen wastes on the top of the soil, and recover with mulch, so far so good on this last one, no major vermin problem yet, but I'm sure one day they'll find the surface food, before the worms do. All the spoiled(out of date) food scraps thrown away from grocery stores, and restaurants, I wonder if they can be used too, since they can't be eaten by humans, might be tasty to an Opossum.
re: weed seeds- depends on if you are using as top dressing or in holes to pant trees. I usually use for shrubs in hole to amend clay soil - buried really deep so I don't worry about seeds.
I throw about everything you mentioned in my compost, I even buried fish carcass. I throw my cardboard boxes and misc paper, and buckets and buckets of coffee ground from my wife’s work. Along with kitchen and grass clippings. I have 2 compost areas so I work one until fall and quit adding to it and turn and let sit until spring. I start filling the second one at this time and rotate back and forth each fall time. I’ve never seen the bucket of water method. So you add weeds and misc let rot and then use the liquid on your plants?
Fermented grass weeds fruits or vegies can be simply soaked and stored in standing water. The juices saps and nutrients are released into the water and it makes fantastic fertilizer. Preloading same stuff and added to compost piles accelerates decomposition and adds liquid nitrogen to the pile helping to fire and feed it.
very good information thanks I love David swamp water really good stuff i just learned about EM1 making it and all its very good i even put some in davids swamp water , thanks again YAH BLESSINGS!
Scott - I think there are two ways of really accelerating the composting process aside from employing black soldier fly larvae. The first is an anaerobic digester with mechanical or compressed air agitation and the second is a large bin that is turned mechanically. I have seen the first done with compressed air or a stirrer. That may be the best way to quickly process large quantities of organic matter. I never considered accelerating the process with sugar. I am extremely intrigued about the digestion process using air and sugar.
I have an area outside that is clear. I throw all scraps from the garden and some from the kitchen. I bury it and turn it over every few weeks sometimes. No stress y’all just let it go and let nature do the rest.
The reason why many people say you cant compost has nothing to do with composting itself. Good point. I do the same. The only living matter that i dont add to my compost pile is my neighbor.
The compost pile means no more guilt if you have leftover salad greens and veggies going bad.
I lived in a large apartment and bought a SoilSaver compost bin. I had a small space between mine and another first floor apartment. We put our veg food scraps, egg shells, egg cartons, card board, coffee grounds, leaves and whatever grass clipping and pine needles we could get from the yard into it. We kept putting things in over winter, never turned it and in spring pulled out 3, 5 gallon buckets of the most beautiful compost. We both grow stuff on our decks. Its amazing how the bin digests all of our scraps. The SoilSavers are pricey but I have used them for at least 30 years. They are durable and WELL worth the money.
Glad to hear that you can compost pine needles!
Pine needles just take little more time. They also are not acidic when composted
Wow! You've challenged composting "rules" that I've been wondering about for a long time. Lately, I've started "sneaking" stale bread into my composter along with shrimp shells which has made me feel a quite adventurous! Now I can't wait to clean out my fridge and freezer. Although the thought of attracting visiting vermin does creep me out waaaaaaaaaay too much! But I could bury some of the more attractive tidbits directly into my garden though, right? Leaving the less alluring tidbits for the bin. I will feel less wasteful about food as it will benefit my gatden. Thank you for raising this issue, and for promoting Dave the Good. I can't wait to brew my own fetid swamp water. You have earned a new subscriber!
I learned that with composting it is not an exact science but rather an art and there is not a right or wrong way of doing it but rather what works best for you with whatever material you have available and wherever you are.
"If it used to be alive it can live again". I compost everything, and use various methods to do so depending on what the resource is. Even dead sheep.
Lol , I half expected you to pull out a kitchen sink . Kitchen sink ? Throw it in there , lol
Mix a cup of cooked rice including its water, cooled, into the pile. Then can water the pile with 1/2 cup molasses in 5 gal water. This starts up lactobacillus which run branches of spores throughout the pile. They can be very effective on totally brown piles in cold composting in enclosures such as bovesbprbpkastic bags which would normally run anaerobic.
Thank you! I do cold composting in bins. I’m going to try this!
Does it have to be white rice, or any is fine? I'm trying the totally brown pile cold composting enclosure since I am located in Pennsylvania and are cold days are already here and winter soon approaching. Had a great harvest this year but I am expanding my gardening knowledge since I am fairly knew still to it.
Thank you for that tip! I want mine aerobic as hell, so I'm going to buy some molasses.
I even add citrus peels. It does fine, no pH problems.
That amazing kid running around and helping you gather bagged leaves. I assumed that’s Samuel? An exact mini-me copy of yourself. I’ve learned so much and still learning today. I could have easily learned composting the wrong way if I had not found your channel. Thank you
In the winter I leave dried-up "brown" plants & dead morning glory vines alone because birds like to eat the seeds. When spring comes, the seeds are gone, and I can use the debris for my new compost.
I'm 66. Have big back problems.
Soooo
I just dig holes and dump my kitchen scraps in it and put the dirt on top.
Soooo my leaf pile takes longer to compose. Oh well.... I look forward to SOME kind of compost.
This works very well.
I put weeds with seeds in a bucket of water for about a week, stinky but it kills it and then I add it to my compost pile. I didn’t know it was compost tea.🤓
I’ve got two buckets many months old from David the Good videos and my Spring and Fall veggies love this liquid fertilizer! Thanks for sharing!!
I love what you do with your compost box, I do the same, everything goes in. All my grass cutting go in as well plus all our kitchen scraps.
One problem people have in composting is that there is an abundance of green materials in some seasons and brown in others. You can try storing brown materials for the times of the year when green is abundant but in small yards finding a space to store can be a problem. I rely on kitchen scraps as my green during hot, dry weather. I also trim hedges during these periods when little else is around.
Great video. Composting with chickens is super easy. Just like David the Good says, “Throw it on the ground.“ It won’t get hot, but it will break down pretty quick. I put all my kitchen scraps in the chicken run, as well as grass clippings, bags of leaves, bags of pulp from a juice bar, and shredded paper. They add their manure, and it turns into some good stuff. The chickens eat a lot of the seeds but definitely some weed and tomato seeds survive and end up sprouting where I use the compost.
That’s fantastic!!!😲👍 Now I can compost anything...and everything. Thanks for sharing.🥰
yes, this helped me. the other type of composting wasn't enough for me to use in my garden. thanks
Great video We take our kitchen scraps and blend it in an old blender with a little water then pour it in the compost tumblers we have. We have a very short growing season (90 days if we are lucky) so we have to think outside the box to get any compost. We also have raised beds that we fill with a lot of carbon, grass clippings, leaves, Leonardite, molasse and anything else we can find like you. Then we put about four inches of good soil on top. We do this is the fall and cover it up for the winter then plant in the Spring/summer. Seems to work okay Still perfecting our strategies.
If everyone explained things as clearly as you do, there wouldn't be so much confusion in the world. Thanks!
Well done 😎👍👍
Better to have the opposums eating compost than anything else around. Plus having them around will keep the ticks down 🤷♂️
Home gardeners need to use both aerobic and anaerobic composting. Anaerobic composting can be much faster, and a good way to process plant wastes when they’re abundant. The bacteria that thrive under anaerobic conditions tend to consume less nitrogen, leaving you with a compost tea that has higher value as a fertilizer.
I compost everything except pumpkin seeds and avacado seeds because they grow, and bones because they don't break down. I always compost left over meat scraps and dairy, it's nature's way. I have never had a problem and I thank God for a very productive garden. Up til now I have sealed my perennial weeds and seeds in black rubbish bags and left them to decompose, which takes a couple of years. I'll be trying the anaerobic compost tea, it sounds great and a lot faster!
Great idea to put the seedy weeds into.David the good is great too!
Love David the Good. We have tons of weeds with crazy seeds. Love the swamp bucket for these prolific weeds.
Good one. Thanks. I like the swamp bucket the best. I use the juice within 2 weeks and the rest goes into the compost pile. I have great muck within weeks for my sandy soil in Florida.
There’s lot I learn from your videos and I enjoy watching them. Thanks for sharing.
Scott, I composted a few of those same items this summer because I was able to keep the temperature on the pile high enough that it all decomposed quite nicely. However, being one of your followers up north, I will have to wait until next year to get the nice finished compost mixture like you get. Encouraging to see that someone else is able to get all kinds of things to turn into compost like I do.
I like your attitude. I thought you had a good grasp of the intrinsic values that growing things have for each other.
Oh yeah. #composteverything.
It's funny, I've commented on David's videos so many times but I don't think I've ever seen a comment by David on somebody elses video. Even though this is Scott head who joins all his goodstreams.
Me to
I thought u don’t use processed food to compost cuz it will smell. Thanks for the info. 🙏🏻👍👍
I saw the HEB label. Cheers Texas!
I throw most foods in the compost...excepts bones...but read everywhere you shouldn’t...it’s nice to hear you do the same. Really enjoyed your video.
Thank you so much for your time. Have learned a lot about composting
Thanks! learning lots here, gaining confidence in my plans. I have a greenhouse, 3 in fact. The biggest one is going to get a compost heater added to the north side this year as well as a hydrothermal solar panel that will serve the veggie beds with winter heat thru buried lines. From what ive seen here, my job just got easier and more possible as a property manager with a low budget and a need for self sustainability
Love it! We compost meat, dairy, everything in our Speedibin composter. And it is metal so keeps out vermin too.
For newbies to hot composting... hot composting is both an art and a science and, IMO, is best learned through trial and error. It's NOT difficult, but, like most new skills, some initial persistence is required. You MUST have a compost thermometer to hot compost well, as the thermometer tells you what's happening inside the pile. Without one you'll struggle to become good at it. You need fuel (a mixture of greens and browns, err on the side of greens, and the finer the better, as it breaks down more quickly; if it's 'lived before', it CAN be composted), water (the pile must be damp, but not overly wet/soggy) and air (the pile needs to be aerated). If the pile doesn't heat up, it's most likely due to it either being too dry or too wet. If it's too dry, spray some water into it and turn it over with a garden fork until it's uniformally damp (like a wrung out sponge) but not overly wet. If it's too wet, then you can either turn it over with a fork each day to aerate and dry it out, or add some additional dry material and mix it in thoroughly until uniformally damp. Your compost pile will heat up over a period of a few days to its peak and will then cool down. Once it's cooled down, you need to turn it over to aerate it and, potentially, to spray in some more water if it's too dry, and the process will repeat itself. Each iteration takes about one week. After a few iterations, the pile won't heat up into 'the zone' anymore, and then it's time to let your compost 'cure' for a few weeks or months, before using it on your garden. For my compost piles to be 'in the zone', I'm typically shooting for temperatures inside the pile (in the middle) to be in the 50 - 70 deg C range (120 - 160 deg F). If your compost pile smells bad, then it's gone anaerobic (it's too wet and/or has insufficient oxygen) either throughout the pile or in pockets, and you'll need to, at the very least, thoroughly turn it over with a fork to aerate it and correct the problem. It's as simple as that 🤓 Once you get it working right, hot composting is a joy and your garden (and, in my case, my wife) will love you for it 😊
You are awesome. Keep on recycling and composting. We need everyone doing this ASAP!
That's right if you can heat up your mass u can compost anything.
Rebel 😉 loved this!
Hi. I came over from David the Good. Love your take on composting.
I did the anaerobic compost tea with an old Igloo with a push button faucet I found on the side of the road
Cool idea! I love it.
Omg the compost police fainted at buttermilk section and called the real police.
I glad he showed that because I have had many discussion with “relatives & neighbors” about how you CANNOT add these to compost, but I always have anyway.
🤣🤣🤣
Boosters Comfrey and urine
@@GodGunsGutsandNRA there are some relatives and neighbors that I’d love to compost 😂
🤣
I agree with you
Making Compost with all help from Nature is the Best Compost
Microorganisms do work hard / eat the organic matter for us
... i like the idea to all allow Rodents etc to Eat their share ..... Love Nature Love LIFE
#Gratitude
Made myself a 55 gal blue plastic barrel composter up on a 2x4 frame so I can rotate it and it's tall enough to put a wheelbarrow under the door for emptying. Made a 2x2 foot shaker box out of 2x4s and hardware cloth. Dump the stuff out the composter into the shaker box, dirt falls through to the barrow, bigger chunks stay in, and get dumped back into the composter for another go around. Best composter I have ever seen! Transferred some dead dry stuff from an old box type composter into it, and at the same time I added a wheelbarrow full of dandelion stalks as tall as me (before they bloomed). Watered it in, added about a 1/4 cup of starter bacteria. 10 days later I turned it again and there was absolutely no sign of anything you could identify as a dandelion stalk or leaf!!! Totally gone! I'm still amazed....
Man! I love your Understanding of all this stuff! This is so incredibly helpful! Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
those possums are SO cute
This was very helpful. Thank you. I have had difficulty keeping my compost hot enough. I will definitely try your suggestions.
Thanks for sharing informative tips in composting! Keep it up! God bless!
I never heard of that sugar. Thanks.
Thanks for the sugar information.
I hate sticks, it makes the pile hard to turn. I save tons of leaves, which I shred, and add some wood chippings that are a year plus old.
Thank you for your video.
thanks so much for sharing! i will try adding sugar to kick start my compost bin 🤞
Whenever I cut limbs or pull weeds they all go in the shadiest part of my yard. and then I forget about them. By the time I get around to messing with it all the green is gone. I pull the leftover sticks out, turn anything brown under, break the sticks into smaller pieces and put them back. Rinse and repeat. I've been doing that for 5 yrs now and the dirt under that limb pile is some of the best in my yard. I sift and screen it and mix into last year's raised beds. The process takes a LONG time and there's a pile of limbs in the corner of my yard, but it's zero effort dirt full of earthworms and springtails.
Great vid!
Just wanted to mention that Morning Glory can burn and have it's ashes delivered to the sea!
It's the only weed I pull that goes straight to the burn pile. Not delivering the ashes to the sea at these gas prices ;)
Hello Scott. Lots of good advice, thanks.
Looks like you’re enjoying the cooler weather. I sure am.
Excellent message to break the so-called rules to composting. I will look into some of the methods you spoke about for meat since that is the one items I do not currently compost into my rabbit pen. I would love to utilize all our kitchen leavings 100%.
Enjoyed your presentation. Thank you!
Thanks for all your advice and for recommending David. It’s good of you to give credit to someone else who influenced you.
You are my hero.
This is the first one of your videos I've watched and I'm so pleased for such an easy-to-understand presentation. Really enjoyed that. The one thing that I often cringe about though, is to make compost tea in plastic containers. When that heats up (ex. Summer heat), that will leach out all the chemicals in the plastics that we generally try to avoid in cooking or storing food in plastic, so why do folks not catch on to that? May I suggest galvanized steel buckets with lids, or small barrels (same holds true for rain barrels for those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest, etc.). I love how you explained about the weed seeds and using mature weeds in the tea. I did that this Summer, wondering if I was going overboard with that idea (I don't like the idea of using weeds in the grass clippings into the compost piles from mowing even, but that seems to become unavoidable. And so far, I haven't really had big dandelion weeds or buttercups, etc. growing in my compost piles, thankfully. I'm only in this for the past 2 Summers so far, mind you. But I do keep out the Morning Glory and similar plants that might be too prolific in the compost piles. And I burn the really invasive stuff, ex. Blackberry vines and Mint, just in case. Well we recently have the city picking up any compostable material, so some if may end up exiting our property that way. Anyway, great presentation and look forward to more.
I set up some DFSW at the beginning of this summer and forgot about it until about a couple of weeks ago... whew! smelled like propane but there was a lot of life... added the solids to my compost and added the liquid to a bucket of charcoal to inoculate, let's go!
really nice composting tips sir..
Totally agree with everything said! I even throw in few worms in my urban co.post barrels. Great video thanks
The soda pop tip is cool thanks. I cant drink it but cheap for compost.
When I buy a 2 liter of soda it usually goes flat before we are finished with it. Now I know where to dump it and not feel guilty about "wasting".
I started composting before gardening purely out of reducing trash volume !
Great video
Excellent presentation, Thank Yo
Interesting!!I compost similar to this..works for me..
Very helpful vid, thanks!
were did you get that pitchfork around 3:30 on the vid the one with the t handle....looks like a good quality stainless steel ....what brand it is ......! Thank's a lot Scott
Its a Sneeboer 4t, got it online from Garden Tool Company online. Its not cheap, but it is awesome indeed. But I failed to keep the handle oiled and it was lost outdoors for a year... which isn't a good recipe for a wooden handle. I literally broke the handle just two days ago. Looking for a replacement, thinking I'll make my own from steel pipe and weld it.
@@ScottHead Thank's a lot Scott.....! Greetings from Long Branch ,NJ ....!
Very interesting & informative, thanks 👏🏼
I have an aerobin 400 & dump in there browns & greens. Didn’t know I could put sugar & water.
This is really useful and what I am working on this weekend. I would only compost meats, dairy and processed foods that aren't likely to have a lot of pharmaceuticals or toxins, though.
30:1 ratio is for the actual carbon and nitrogen, not the materials we add that will decompose. Usually 2:1 or 1:1 in terms of volume is ok
I am just about to start making our own compost. We have a bin for greens and browns for normal composting and two Bokashi bins that break down all the dairy, meat and other naughty stuffs and also makes a nice liquid fertilizer from the fermentation. Am really excited to start now, just hope I grow a green finger or two! Finding your videos very helpful and informative. Best wishes from the UK
My husband is in the process of cutting down an out of hand bamboo jungle at the end of our pond. He lets it dry for a while, and then burns them. I add all my dried weeds, and the larger pruned sucker limbs from my trees in the pile to burn. I then use the ash in the compost, among other things.
@16:50 they make a composting chicken coops .. They're basically bottomless chicken coops on wheels that u can place directly over the compost pile or directly over the garden and moved to a different area to compost the next day. And the chickens will not ruin compost pile, if anything they will add too it and help turn and aerate the compost.. Its a Natural life cycle just given a hand or boost.
The rats and mice are loving you and your composte, salsa and all🐀
They do love it, and leave their deposits behind while doing some minor turning of the compost. Win-win.
Suggestions on starting small for patio ?
The largest bucket with a lid that you can find would be perfect.
I've wanted to start a digester using a 40-gallon plastic drum and a motor-driven agitator. That would digest my noxious weeds and convert everything into an anaerobic soup that I can use as liquid fertilizer.
Nice vid Scott.
Geoff Lawton demonstrates a good method using chickens at his greening the desert site in Jordan, but I would recommend Edible Acres yt channel for anyone with chickens. They have a playlist that incorporates all sorts of ideas.
Hi, Black Gumbo. Morning Glory leaves are nutritious and easily flavored. Much milder than spinach.
Thanks Scott early today I had some chicken stock that i forgot about and got rid of it,Now i know better Thank you for your tips on my compost pile
I have horse manure I put in a large bucket along with nettles and catnip. Cover with spring water and let brew.
Thank you for sharing
I can remember my father taking the daily kitchens scraps and simply burying then at the base of the corn stalks and tomatoes. That was in the 1970s.
Today I take kitchen scraps and whatever and pile it into the tumbler.
When I want soil I fill a large pot or bucket with the compost and let it sit out in the sun to cook the seeds. I turn it with a shovel a few times a week. Amazingly after a week or two I have something like black gold soil.
...i am composting too - the bokashi way... thanks heaps for the inspiration about composting...
Compot all method. Thanks.
great video.. thanks
Lol love the trademark on the DFSW. You'll be happy to know that because of peer pressure from you and DTG, I just put leftover tacos in my compost.
What is DFSW??
@@harthous Dave's fetid swamp water
Scott, your yard is still looking nice brother.
Thanks 👍
Thank you for this video. Its very informative. I like that you use everything at your disposal, no pun intended. Right now I practice some of the 'chop and drop' method, but also I 'dig and drop' under the soil surface(but I have to mark the locations), and since I have a fenced in the back yard, I will uncover my mulch layer sometimes, and put kitchen wastes on the top of the soil, and recover with mulch, so far so good on this last one, no major vermin problem yet, but I'm sure one day they'll find the surface food, before the worms do. All the spoiled(out of date) food scraps thrown away from grocery stores, and restaurants, I wonder if they can be used too, since they can't be eaten by humans, might be tasty to an Opossum.
I do the same thing. It seems to work well. 😁
re: weed seeds- depends on if you are using as top dressing or in holes to pant trees. I usually use for shrubs in hole to amend clay soil - buried really deep so I don't worry about seeds.
I throw about everything you mentioned in my compost, I even buried fish carcass. I throw my cardboard boxes and misc paper, and buckets and buckets of coffee ground from my wife’s work. Along with kitchen and grass clippings. I have 2 compost areas so I work one until fall and quit adding to it and turn and let sit until spring. I start filling the second one at this time and rotate back and forth each fall time. I’ve never seen the bucket of water method. So you add weeds and misc let rot and then use the liquid on your plants?
Yes, weeds go into the aerobic barrel, dilute 10:1 or 8:1 and water plants. :-)
Fermented grass weeds fruits or vegies can be simply soaked and stored in standing water. The juices saps and nutrients are released into the water and it makes fantastic fertilizer. Preloading same stuff and added to compost piles accelerates decomposition and adds liquid nitrogen to the pile helping to fire and feed it.
very good information thanks I love David swamp water really good stuff i just learned about EM1 making it and all its very good i even put some in davids swamp water , thanks again YAH BLESSINGS!
Scott - I think there are two ways of really accelerating the composting process aside from employing black soldier fly larvae.
The first is an anaerobic digester with mechanical or compressed air agitation and the second is a large bin that is turned mechanically. I have seen the first done with compressed air or a stirrer. That may be the best way to quickly process large quantities of organic matter. I never considered accelerating the process with sugar. I am extremely intrigued about the digestion process using air and sugar.
Amen to DTG!
Out in the countryside you can burn anything you don't want to compost and add the ashes to your potting soil.
Yes, but the ashes can make your soil very alkaline. So you gotta be careful.
depends on the pH. ashes are highly alkaline. If your soil is already alkaline, you don't want to add it
I have an area outside that is clear. I throw all scraps from the garden and some from the kitchen. I bury it and turn it over every few weeks sometimes. No stress y’all just let it go and let nature do the rest.
Love this video, thanks for the tips