Composting 1

Well Spring is here in Mississippi. Ha ha, it's just February. However the temperatures in the 60's and 70's have given me the opportunity to take care of the yard work I put off in the fall. For avid readers of my blog (I think there are sometimes two of you) it is important to notice how my life has changed. Without going into details, I have completely relocated to Jackson Mississippi, and have some extra time on my hands.

Now that I live in Jackson nothing keeps me from doing my girlfriends yard work. Some of you might be thinking, “Wow, that sucks.” but if you have read about my vermicomposting or looked at pictures of the patio outside of my old apartment in Southaven Mississippi, you will probably not be surprised when I tell you that I look forward to the space to work more closely with nature. I feel blessed with a Girlfriend who supports my eco-habits.

I found the opportunity to try my hand at something exciting that I have always wanted to try, composting. Not just with the worms or something small like I had done but real live composting. As “The Boyfriend,” I figured it was my duty to rake and bag the leaves from the four gigantic Oak Trees, and the many many little trees in her backyard.

So at the halfway mark I ended up with 20 full garbage bags of leaves.

While I was bagging I couldn't help but think about the wonderful process God has set forward to take care of this issue naturally, and I couldn't help but consider how avidly I was trying to ignore that process. So I did a little research. I found this webpage from the University of Missouri: http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/displaypub.aspx?p=g6957 and since I believe that Eco-friendly should also be fiscal-friendly I went for the cheapest enclosed bin (Enclosed because of how close the property is to woods and the family dog Gizmo that would probably enjoy the pile as it heated up)

I started with four posts and some hard plastic construction netting, stuff.

The plastic, is also from recycled materials.

Some little helpers and I fashioned the net into a circle. And if I was thinking in advance I would have taken a picture of the bin empty, but I was not, so all I have is bin, two layers within.

Then I found this webpage from the University of Illinois: http://web.extension.illinois.edu/homecompost/building.html This page taught me the basic idea of green, brown, green, brown.

Everything on the internet has mentioned that chopping leaves make them compost better, in later pics you will see that I didn't always follow this, however as a general rule I thought it was a good idea. I chopped the leaves with my Girlfriend's mulching mower. I collected them in the bag and dumped them into the bin. This made up most of my brown sections. For green I went to a small tree that had to be removed and at first by hand removed the leaves, I realized later that I could just run it over with the mulching mower and it would actually chop the leaves up, and save me a lot of time.

Each layer of organic material was separated by composted manure (I bought it cheap because that's how I roll) and old potting soil, from last years container garden. I am sure there are many nay sayers that will tell me it was wrong to use the leftovers from the container garden and then tell my I chose the wrong fertilizer as a starter, to them I say, “Hey, I am new at this, so back and and lets see how it goes.”

Regardless I am sure most of you are wonderfully happy readers to give me credit so lets move on.

I completed the pile to about 2 inches from the top, with about 4 organic layers, as I said each separated by a layer of composted manure and garden soil. I tried to follow a 4:1 brown to green ratio. I have read it exactly opposite too, however, in the opposite version I notice they weren't using a nitrogen starter.

Oh yeah for people who don't know what I mean by brown and green. Brown represents things like dead leaves that are full of carbon, and green represents things, in this case like green leaves, that represent nitrogen. I also have some kitchen scraps in there. This might work and it might not, but if it does not I will just start over, the plastic netting was 12 dollars, the posts were $2.20 a piece, and 3 bags of composted manure were $1.30 each, and if it doesn't work I will empty it and start over or add what I need to get it to work.

My goal as always is to help facilitate the natural process, in this case it is a process of decomposition.

And this is a Lizard I saw later that day.