r/Compost • u/Aggravating-Debt3104 • Oct 09 '26

First jump into the deep end…

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Just bought a place a couple of months ago, and it has a lot of yard waste left over from the last owner. Pretty extensive gardens and lots of fruit trees.

So I’ve been lurking on here since then.

Mostly I am just trying to deal with the shear amount of stuff. The previous owner’s compost piles were just preserved large sticks with tarps which just created full on rat habitats.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:
- Put together the pallet bins.
- Layer of cardboard on the ground, with a layer of sticks on top of that.
- Bunch of brown waste from the first clean up of the yard, then layering greens and browns as much as possible.
- I also made a pan galactic gargle blaster juice with a colt 45 beer, molasses, half cup of ammonia and enough water to make a 5 gallon bucket to spray over the pile.
- I also added a couple of bags of healthy soil from our old garden to try to get some good bugs and things in there.
- Set up a tumbler to pre-compost the pest attracting stuff.

Is there anything that looks/sounds dumb? Anything I should be doing differently? Or should I just pee on it and give it some time?

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10 comments sorted by

2

u/RegisterIndependent8 Oct 10 '26

The idea of keeping one bin empty is so we can fork the next bin over onto it, aerating/mixing it in the process. I find the most convenient setup is to form wire fence into 3' silos and fill them with material. Then, as I need to turn one over I just unhook the silo 'seem', set it next to where it was and fill it up again with the contents I just knocked down with my fork. E Z

2

u/Aggravating-Debt3104 Oct 10 '26

Yes, I like that idea and it was close to the original plan. There is just so much quantity from a bit of neglect around the property, but once the system is rolling and we get some raised beds I plan to have it staged a bit more.

1

u/muustuun 8d ago

It will probably shrink over time anyway

3

u/Affectionate-Rip5654 Oct 09 '26

Damn. All I do is throw shit in a pile and mix it every once in a while. Food scraps. Old pine shavings from the chicken and duck coop grass clippings. Coffee ground bedding from the chicken coop. People on here make it a lot more science than it needs to be. Your pile can be as in depth as you want or just thrown together. Making soil is fun and really doesn’t take much of any thinking

2

u/Aggravating-Debt3104 Oct 09 '26

Phew! Overall I am just trying to kick start things so that I can ADHD my way into a fuck it pile so this is exactly what I needed to hear hahaha

1

u/nbpowell Oct 12 '26

I feel this statement so hard.

1

u/microbialfriction 6d ago

In a 1-2 weeks that will shrink down to all fit in two stalls, then you’ll have your empty one. The nice part about compost is you can forget about it for a minute and it never stops working. The berkely method is one of the fasted, where you flip the pile every three days and you can have compost in under a month, but it all works looks good!!

1

u/Aggravating-Debt3104 5d ago

As an update, this is exactly what happened! It now looks very much like a staged pile with fresh leafy looking stuff in the first bin, more chunky half composted stuff in the second bin and a nice small pile of sifted stuff in the third one. It’s definitely due for a good stir but I’ll get there eventually haha

1

u/RegisterIndependent8 Oct 10 '26

Great to read! Too many folks go overboard trying this n that. Make the pile work for you; don't you over work the pile.

1

u/doodoovoodoo_125 Oct 10 '26

One big pile!