Composting Simplified: Everyone Can Grow a Garden (2022) #23 

Everyone should make compost. I love knowing what I'm putting back into the soil.

Thank you, Susan! You’re such a great teacher. The easiest compost video I’ve seen, I can do this 🤗!

I keep many bags of chopped leaves in paper bags from fall and use the leaves to mix with the kitchen scraps. I always cover newly added material with leaves to keep flies away. Composting started on the ground is much more efficient than in the drum. However, I put my almost finished or finished compost in the drum, to get it up from the ground. If you leave compost on the ground too long, roots go into it and take out the nutrients. The drum allows me to mix some coco choir and vermiculite in with the compostif I want to. After a while all the worms and bugs leave the drum as there is no more food left for them in the finished compost. I think it is good to have a cover over the composter, or pile, even if it is only a torn paper bag, to keep excess rain off. The smaller potato fork is the best tool to turn the pile, the larger fork is good for moving it over. I no longer use dividers, they just make it harder for me to turn or move the pile. I don't keep my compost too close to the house or my garden, because critters will be attracted and that's ok as long as it is not so close. I collect my scraps in a tidy cat platic bin that I keep under the sink and take out once a week along with a gallon jug of warm water to rinse the tidy cat bin and add the water to the pile if needed. This way you don't need to have a hose near, and it works in the winter as well. You can keep adding to your pile throughout the winter, don't worry if it doesn't decompose much, it will do that in the spring. As you can tell, I love composting. Everybody should do it even if they don't want to use the compost. It is important to experience how we get fertile soil just by mixing different organic materials and leaving it on the ground. How all the bugs are so beneficial in this essential process of renewal. A huge pile becomes hardly anything in volume but will nourish new plant life.

Susan, my parents always composted materials from our garden and lawn... since they didn't use pesticides. Sadly, my mom died in the early spring, when I was 15 years old. Before that I didn't pay much attention to what materials they used, or how they did it. Thanks for the wonderful explanation. I hope you and Bill had a very Happy Father's Day. ~Margie🌞💚

I love how you simplify things. Thanks for sharing.

Very interesting, I need to start a compost pile

This was sooo instrumental ~ made simple! I had issues with raccoons two years ago so I'm afraid to try composting again with an open bin. I have a very small space to work with. I appreciate all the tips as well as warnings. Thanks again ~ stephanie

Hello Susan. Love watching you work in the garden. . My favorite method of maintaining a sustainable pantry and stockpiling items long term for the whole family and the family dog and the family cat is what I consider to be the most practical, utilizing every type of food storage methods and technology available, both old and new. . Except for the fruits and vegetables that get canned, I keep perishable items like meat, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables and dairy products in the refrigerator on a short term basis until I'm ready to use them for a big family meal - and for even longer term sustainable storage, a large separate freezer, which can store a half side of beef with plenty of room left over for homemade ice cream etc. . I'm considering upgrading to a walk-in freezer at some point.in the near future, if my plans to open a bed and breakfast come to fruition. Sometimes, however a nice round of cheese can do well for quite awhile on a pantry shelf at room temperature - and doesn't mind even if it has to stand there alone.😁 Store bought canned goods get shelves.in the large pantry closet - several for canned meat like corned beef hash, spam and sandwich spread and another for canned vegetables Bread, rolls, grains, homemade pasta, cereals and the like are stored in special humidity controlled bins I order from Amazon Prime - which usually get delivered to my doorstep about an hour after I order them. . Stuff from the family garden and orchard, like onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, cucumber, pumpkins, carrots, corn celery,, potatoes and yams, cherries, blueberries and strawberries get canned in Mason Jars and stored in the cool, root cellar of this wonderful rambling former farmhouse (circa 1867) I share with my extended blended family and several rambunctious dogs raised on table scraps from the some of the finest food from a plethora of sources both commercial and home based. . There's even a special separate "summer kitchen" which I converted to store butter and ice cream churns, pots, pans, utensils, extra storage containers, foil, bags, cutlery, and other meal related accoutrement. Out back in the woods, just beyond the big pile of wood I maintain all year, (for use in an antique woodstove I keep on hand, in case the power goes out) there's even an old rusting vintage still where my great grandfather made some of the finest corn whiskey for miles. Next to it is the rusting hulk of the Ford Model A he used to transport that powerful hootch by the light of the moon on soft summer nights to his eager customers in a tri-county area. Further into this verdant forest of mostly sycamore, oak, pine and scrub, runs a cool stream into which I occasionally cast a rod or net to catch some Brook Trout, Bluntnose Shiners, or whatever takes the bait (just earthworms for the most part). And yes, hunting season means wild turkey, deer, and even an occasional wild boar. Next week, I'm planning on filing for a permit to 3-D print a smokehouse in order to be able to create gourmet artisan handcrafted, beef, bacon, turkey, and beef stick jerky, which interested local merchants can private label for other people to share with their families and their family dogs. Unfortunately, i had to break the bad news to my free range hens today that due to expected egg shortages regretfully numbered are their days of laying a couple of eggs and then basically taking the rest of the day off with ranging privileges' within the parameters of a few very nice rural acres - parts of which are rich with fat grubworms. There's even a short dirt road between the main barn and the farmhouse which they're free to cross to get to the other side as often as they'd like. My rooster Ben overheard me and he ain't too happy either, knowing full well that due to oncoming egg shortages, he'll be "workin' overtime to make sure there's plenty of eggs for me an the family.

I have a hard time getting enough greens in the winter and enough browns in the summer. I find, though, that if I turn the compost at least once a week, it breaks down anyway in a few months. I use grass clippings as mulch. When it's time to change out the bed to plant again, I gather up the dried grass and add it to the compost as a brown. I found that if I work the dried grass back into the soil every time it can make the soil too fluffy.

I like to leave clippings on my lawn, but now I bag every once in awhile to add to the compost bin, which I just built a couple of weeks ago. The nice thing about needing more carbon than nitrogen is that I can still leave the clippings on the lawn more often than not. I also add my dog's fur when I shave her for the summer. Years ago I bought a compost tumbler that looked exactly like the one in your video - I turned it regularly, added moisture, put in lawn clippings & garden debris & newspaper & leaves - it still took more than a year to get compost. I won't be wasting money on one of those again.

I couldn't help but notice your beautiful healthy-looking cedars. What is the secret to keeping cedars happy and healthy?

Dear Susan, thank u for your helpful tips. If you wet the cardboard or egg cartons, they are much easier to tear.

Thanks a lot Susan you answerd most of my questions happy gardening.

I started composting in some larger grow bags. But animals keep getting in it from the woods. I plan on getting a tumbler soon. I am excited about it :)

Great video! I do add dried cow manure to my compost from our pasture because we don’t spray it. Last year I took hay and manure from our cow lot and layered it over my garden beds to decompose thru fall and winter. The plants this year have thanked me!

Good morning from Coastal Georgia Zone 8B!

I live on the Olympic peninsula where our winter and springs are extremely wet. Would a shed roof like structure be beneficial over the piles? I feel like it would be a sopping wet pile for most of the year. Thank you! Also, I had emailed you a couple years ago about the infestation of wire worms we had in our raised beds (they came up from the turf below). The potato traps you recommended worked fantastic. We were catching close to 50 a day. Two years out, their cycle has finished and we had our first year of a great potato harvest with not one hole in the spuds 😊 thanks for your help

Wonderful and helpful information. Thank you for sharing.

Always enjoy your videos Susan, thankyou. About the walnut leaves (juglone). I live next to two fifty year old black Walnut trees, it is a chore every fall managing the leaves and nuts but I have found that shredding the leaves first with the lawnmower and spreading them around my gardens beds is a viable solution for me. I am in zone 5 Ontario, Canada and my thinking is that the shredding process and our five months of freezing cold winter is enough time to dissipate the toxins. I have been doing this for several years and so far so good! I also spread my grass clippings early spring and fall into the beds, in mid summer: July/August/September I leave the bag off the mower and let the clippings fall into the grass, so far so good! I also have a very relaxed attitude to making compost and that seems to work for me too. I think mother nature is very forgiving except when it comes to rabbits and those darling little critters can do so much damage😢

I'm in my 4th year of gardening. I started making compost the first year. But I dont get the breakdown I would like. I dont turn it often, but it takes a year and a half to finish. On the other hand 2 years ago I started making leaf mold because our streets are lined with maple trees. I turn it once, just to get the material mixed as the outside material is slow to breakdown. The leaf mold is done in about a year.

If you made your own hay and know it's free of pesticides and herbicides, then it's good to add the manure of your horses, cows, goats produced.

Hi Susan, thanks for the great composting video. I currently have a two bin pallet system, but it is not that attractive and can be seen from my patio. I really like the look of yours. Can you tell me how you secured your pallets and the fencing material? Your bin looks really nice and secure. I was trying to figure out if you used 2x6’s to secure the fencing slats?

Thanks Susan! When you say two browns for one green, is it by weight or by volume? Fresh mowed grass is much heavier than brown leaves.

LOVE your compost area! Where did you get that larger size pitchfork?

we have cottonwood trees, so we have cottonwood leaves. Can these be used in compost? They seem to be so waxy and have a strange odor. Also, can you keep adding to an existing compost pile or just build your layers once and then start a new pile?

I try to garden organically. For the brown part of the compost, is there a worry about the inks used in newspaper or the glues used in the cardboard?

Would it benefit the compost to add worms or would it be to hot for the worms? Good video.

Making my own compost has been a huge game changer in my garden. It’s so important and has such wonderful benefits. 🪴