Got Composting Questions?

I purchased a rectangular, black, plastic, compost bin but there were no instructions regarding how often I need to “turn” the compost. I live in Austin, TX, so I’m concerned about the combustibility of the contents during the hot summer months. Any tips?
Thanks!

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Hey there! Thanks so much for your question, it’s an excellent one to ask.

We answered your question with a video and blog post.

Hope this helps, and thanks for reading!

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It would be very nice if you can add information about paper towels that are compostable. You mentionned that brown material is good for adding to your composting, would the commercial brown paper towels used in washrooms can be considered as brown material as well? I was told by an Environmental company that the paper towels are also used to be spread on landfill to prevent the smell.

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Thank you very much for your question, Lynn!

We have explained the answer to your question and clarified a few things in the form of a video and blog post.

Thanks so much for reading, and hope this helps!

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I have a large pile of old grass clippings, the inside of which is a bit moldy and musty. Is the material OK for composting with the mold? Thanks.

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I am a first year composter. I am using a commercial compost bin and have been trying to follow all of the correct steps to produce good dirt. My problem is that my compost bin is full of ants. I assume this is a problem. What is going on? What do I have to do to rid my compost of all the ants?

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Ants are usually a sign of one of three possible things, or a combo. 1) Too many carbon rich materials and not enough nitrogen rich materials, so your compost isn’t hot enough. 2) Your compost is too dried out, so it has cooled off. 3) You have fruit or kitchen scraps on the top of the pile, so the ants find it.

So either add more nitrogen rich stuff, soak the pile with your water hose to get it damp again, or bury kitchen scraps deeper into the bin when you add them, under leaves or grass clippings. Or some combination of those things!

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Can I compost enriched wheat flour?

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Absolutely. And now your next batch of compost will also have more vitamins than ever!

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Hi there,

I just started composting. I bought a black 32 gallon rubber-maid waste can with a lid and I drilled 1/4″ holes in the sides, lid, and bottom for aeration purposes.

I’ve added brown and green materials and now find that I have flies getting inside the barrel. Is this ok?, or should I start over with a new barrel and small holes. It looks as though the flies are getting in through the holes. : o (

Can flies be a problem to composting using a barrel?

Thanks!

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In general, flies or insects are not a problem as far as the making of compost goes. They can be a nuisance, but they won’t hurt anything.

Too many kitchen scraps and not enough carbon materials can attract flies. If you bury the kitchen scraps deeper into the pile, that helps. Or put them under leaves or grass clippings, if you have either of those available.

I’m guessing it’s probably because you have a large amount of green material that might be attracting them, and not the design of the composter itself.

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Is it possible to compost disposable latex gloves?

I use 2-3/day in the treatment of a health problem and feel a bit guilty sending them to a landfill. There isn’t anything toxic on the used gloves that I know of.

Suspect they’d take a while to break down but might do so after 6 months or so if the conditions were right.

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I would try it with just one pair, and see what happens. But I am pretty sure that unless you are making a lot of compost, 2 to 3 pair a day would quickly overload your pile and ruin the composting process. Having too much of one material slows things down, and something unusual like that REALLY has the chance to slow down the process.

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I have a Compact Compostumble comoster. Can I use worms in it?
Many thanks,
Charlene

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No, you can’t use worms in it, unfortunately.

Vermicomposting is an entirely different type of composting than regular composting. With regular composting, the compost heats up as it breaks down, and that heat will cook the worms. So if you add worms, they will almost certainly die.

Worm bins are designed for worms to live in, and you should only use worms if you have a real worm bin to keep them in. You can see what vermicomposting bins look like here:
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/vermicomposting-products.html

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Hi

We have a compost tumbler and have tried composting in it but haven’t had much luck. Too much rain got into it and it turned into a VERY stinky toxic stew that the dogs got into and got poisoned from. One nearly died. Very close call. Micotoxin poisoning, they said. Anyway, we have been putting mainly kitchen scraps in there but not a lot of other lawn clippings, or no cardboard or paper. All organic stuff. I guess we have just about everything wrong, from what I’ve read. The moisture level’s too high, there isn’t enough brown material and the balance is totally wrong. Am I correct in adding sawdust, grass clippings, white paper (envelopes, letters etc.?) Will that save this current batch that has turned much like the bad batch I just mentioned? Thanks.

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It sounds like you definitely need more brown materials. But you want to be careful not to overload it with white paper, or with too much sawdust. Paper and sawdust can both overwhelm your pile very easily.

If you add paper, the smaller you shred it up, the better results you’ll have.

And remember that FRESH grass clippings are a NITROGEN rich material. It’s only if you let them completely dry out that they become a CARBON rich material. So dumping in fresh grass clippings will not help, and will only make things more off balance.

For the dampness issue, if you leave the lid off on sunny days, it will help the materials dry out faster.

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I am just beginning my first composting. I feel i have a good carbon/nitrogen mix and am excited about this venture. You’ve answered many of my questions, so, thanks for this site.
The only question I had is; could you “blend” some of the kitchen scrap “green” material you use; such as watermelon rind or cantelope peel? I do cut these into smaller pieces, but i wondered about running them through my food processor to allow them to break down faster because of the smaller size….

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Yes, you can absolutely blend the kitchen scraps to make them break down a little bit faster. But I don’t know if it’s worth all of the trouble.

You’ll want to find a balance between the speed of composting, and the amount of work that you want to put into it. For me, it’s WAY too much trouble to be bothered with something like that. But if you enjoy it, then it would result in slightly faster compost.

One thing that I do recommend if you have a lot of leaves is a leaf shredder. Or barring that, you can run over a pile of leaves with your lawnmower to break them down into smaller pieces. That work is often worth the trouble.

But kitchen scraps typically break down pretty fast anyway, so I don’t know if I would bother.

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I have a dead rat in my composting bin. I just started composting so the material is only about 10 inches high in an Earth Machine Home Composter. I suppose the compost isn’t hot enough. I wasn’t going to remove him, so I covered him with compost. Was this the wrong thing to do?

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I don’t think I would want to dig out a dead rat either, so I would also probably just leave it there. It should decompose pretty quickly, if you keep adding material to your bin. Theoretically, you don’t want to add dead animals to your compost. But practically, if a rat died in the bin, I’d just leave it alone too.

Alternatively, if you have a shovel, you could always pick up the bin, move it over a few feet, and shovel all of the materials EXCEPT for the rat into the bin again. Then just bury the rat a few inches underground.

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I have started composting this year and things are going pretty well except I always seem to need more brown material, I guess you get seasonal highs and lows. When the leaves fall I’ll be overwhelmed with brown stuff.

Anyway my question is that my wife and I are vegan and often have leftover soups or stews which contain mostly cooked vegetables with some starch rice, pasta etc. When these leftovers are going bad is it OK to add them to our pile? I know they are nitrogen rich and very very wet but if we keep them balanced do they pose a problem?

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Yes, you can add those to your pile. I would just be careful to bury that stuff a few inches into the pile, rather than just pouring it on top. If you leave it on top, it might attract pests. (So you can uncover the pile a little bit, pour it in, and then cover it back up.)

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I have come across 40 lbs of cinnamon power from an auction of a restaurant, can it be put in my compost pile and mixed in. does any body have any comments thanks

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Cinnamon should probably be fine. I would only worry that adding all 40 pounds at once might slow down your composting, because too much of any one material can do that.

Maybe add a few pounds at a time each week or two and mix it in until you see how well the pile is taking it, and then add more or add less, depending on your results.

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1. what benefits does compost have towards plant life?
2. how does compost affect the human race?
3. how many kg’s of compost does newzealand produce every year?
4. how many kg’s of compost did newzealand produce in 1970?
5. what is so important about compost?
6. what is so important about composting?

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Sorry, but I’m not going to write your research paper for you. You should try doing it yourself.

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Hi there! My compost is full of earwigs. They tend to hang out near the bottom of the pile, and I find them when I’m turning the pile. Is this a problem?

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No, it’s not a problem. They help with the decomposition of the materials into finished compost.

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Thank you for your answer to my previous question.

I will be ‘inheriting’ a completely filled compost bin (wood-slatted, open top, approximately 3 feet by 5 feet, 4 feet high) come this end of September when we move to our new place in Southeast France. The top visible layer is dried, overgrown grass clippings. I am planning to prepare a 4 foot wide, 12 foot long unframed raised vegetable bed around end of March. It would be wonderful if I can get the contents of the bin ready for incorporating into and spreading on the bed.

What would be the best approach in discovering what is in that bin? There could be non-biodegradable material and maybe an imbalance between ‘browns’ and ‘greens.’

I am thinking of using the batch approach when aerating and moistening the pile in the coming months (typical winter has only a couple of weeks at most of below freezing temperatures), and possibly adding some store-bought compost and/or commercial activator. Would that approach result in compost ready for use in about six months?

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I wouldn’t even worry about exactly what’s in it. Compost happens eventually, even if you are doing it wrong. Everything rots!

I’d just mix it up well when you get there and keep going with it. As long as you make sure it is wet enough (or dry enough), and you mix it aerate it, you should have finished compost in six months, no problem. The stuff at the bottom is probably already finished compost right now, I’d guess. If there’s any non biodegradable material in there, just use a metal screen and run everything through that before you put it in your beds.

My advice would be to dig as much compost as you can into your raised bed garden BEFORE spring, so that anything that isn’t completely finished composting will have time to break down completely before you plant. Maybe in December or January at the latest, so it has some time. If you bury the half finished stuff, it’s called “trench composting.” It breaks down very quickly once it is buried, and improves your soil quickly.

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Your answer is very helpful, especially regarding screening compost to ensure that there are no big chunks of remaining non-biodegradable stuff and your general don’t-worry-stuff-rots-through-time approach.

After investigating trench composting, I am unclear on how to combine digging out the unframed, raised bed with trench composting. It is my understanding that compost needs to be thoroughly rotted before it can be incorporated into soil (or else it robs nitrogen from the growing plants themselves, is that correct?) Can partially rotten refuse just be incorporated into soil, or does it need to be buried first? And how deeply buried?

Should the focus instead be on burying the partially decomposed refuse and not incorporating at first, but later on, just before spring planting, do the incorporating? I am planning to double spade the unframed, raised bed, so about 10 inches of soil can be put on the side, then I can place the partially rotted refuse which then gets covered up with the displaced soil. Since it is important that the digging is done before a frost, I will heed the weather forecast (typically little frost, but there can always be a surprise change). Since I will be switching from bin composting to trench composting, perhaps I need to do that much earlier than January anyway?

As you can probably tell, though I have researched the topic, I have very little hands on experience with composting! Thank you for your patience and time.

For next year, if luck willing, as I expand the vegetable/fruit plots, I could make the paths, though narrow, about 1.5 feet wide (between the unframed raised beds), to be trenches also, eventually skimming off the excess composted soil for use on other beds before laying down weed cloth and covering with gravel to make nice, clean paths.

The more I read about trench gardening, the more it seems I need to make the creative effort to accommodate it in my garden, using the framed compost bin to be just a stockpile receptacle. I would appreciate your feedback on the soundness of this approach.

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Just bury it deep enough to prevent any pests from digging it back up. So at least several inches deep, but you don’t have to go crazy with it.

In general, you’ll want to give the materials at least three months underground before it completely breaks down. So you can’t bury the material and immediately plant — you’d need to bury it in fall or winter, and then plant in the spring.

If it’s completely finished compost, you can either put it on top of the soil, or work it into the soil. And you don’t have to give it any additional time unless you’re worried that it isn’t actually finished compost yet. I just piled a bunch of finished compost on my own garden that is growing right now, for example, because I was confident that it was completely finished.

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I am assuming I can add corn husks and cobs to my compost pile. What do I need to do to them to assist in the decomposition process? Also I have a myrtle tree in my yard that drops blossons all summer. I have been hesitant to add them to the pile, because I am continuous composting, so the pile doesn’t stay hot. I don’t want the seeds to germinate. This pertains to other kinds of seeds as well (squash seeds, watermelon seeds, etc.). Thanks for any help I can get…

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With corn husks and corn cobs, shredding them before you put them into the compost pile will help them break down faster.

With seeds or weeds, you can throw them into a five gallon bucket for three or four days before adding them to the compost. Weeds and seeds will quickly rot when they are left in water, so they’ll no longer sprout after that.

If your compost is hot enough, it will destroy the seeds on its own. But most people don’t get the temperature of their compost very high, so you are correct about worrying if they’ll sprout later.

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Thanks for the advice!

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My friend has a large garden in our sandy soil (southeast GA on the coast). He also has goats and chickens and ducks and a lot of lawn and oak trees. He also has 2 John Deere tractors. How can I help him get started composting? I thought about planting a green cover crop this winter over his garden, but don’t know what to suggest. He has room to work compost into his garden and to also start a good sized compost pile. He is also growing lots of varieties of fruit and nut trees.

Please make specific suggestions as to how I can help him. Thanks so much.

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You might check out this Organic Gardening magazine article about cover crops:
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s-3-81-789,00.html

If your friend has a lot of space, then a simple large compost pile might be the easiest thing for him to do. Or, since he has power equipment, he could also do his own trench composting where you bury the materials and you’re done.

I’m also intrigued with this concept that I recently read about. I don’t have the equipment to do this myself, but your friend does!

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

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Hey! Thanks for your website, I’ve found it hugely helpful. I’m planning on starting a compost with the cooking classes at my school this year, but I didn’t know a thing about what I was going to have to do. I just have a few questions left. I live in New Jersey, and since it gets pretty cold I was wondering if this would affect the frequency with which I would have to turn the pile. (Do you turn it when it gets too hot? I was confused) I don’t want it to stay too cold. Also, does adding water make the pile hotter or colder? Should I be worried about the pile actually freezing?

Thanks for your help!

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In general with composting in cold areas, the composting process can slow down or even come to a complete stop during an extended freezing period. But it’s really no big deal. You can still keep adding materials, and when the weather warms up again, the composting process will start up all on its own. It’s possible for a really good compost pile to continue to generate its own heat even in really cold weather. But most people won’t have their pile or bin going that well.

Adding water could make the pile hotter or colder, depending on the circumstances. You want to keep your compost pile about the dampness of a wrung out sponge. So if it were too dry, then adding water would probably help it heat up and start going again. But if it were already too wet, then adding water would make it worse.

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Will it be a problem to set up my compost where there are tree roots?

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No, it should be fine. The nutrients from the compost breaking down can wash into the soil, which would benefit the tree.

I once had a compost bin against a fence line near some large shrubs, and you could see where the roots from the shrubs had grown up into the bottom of the bin, seeking out the rich nutrients.

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OK time for another Q: I am short on carbon in the summer months, as the leaves aren’t falling off the trees yet. Plenty of nitrogen with the grass clippings swept off the driveway and sidewalks, and the veggie scraps. My son says I should use shredded newspaper. What would I have to do to the local daily to make it acceptable as composting material?

Also, my wife weeds her garden assiduously but is afraid for me to put what she removes into the compost pile for fear it will show up again the next year when I put the compost into the garden or flower beds. What do I do to be sure that I am not putting future weed headaches into the compost pile?

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Thank you so much. That helps. So, I should get composter starter and can safely add kitchen scraps to it and keep the contents moist. So, I have more of nitrogen content but need cabon more??? Besides few weeds to pull of the vacant lot next door, what else can I add till leaves fall. Is there a way to capture grass clipings without a bagged mower???
Regards

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Since compost can reach 160 degrees. Is there risk of combustion? I live in the woods and fire is always a problem.

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It is unlikely that you as a home composter will achieve temperatures that high. And if you do, it won’t last for long.

Typically, the only compost piles that have spontaneously combusted have been those that are very, very large piles that were built with a front loader or bulldozer and are bigger than 10 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet.

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Will bamboo, having been run through a good quality wood chipper, sprout if put in a compost pile? If so how about if I only put the stalks in after the green leaves have been trimmed off. I get a lot, having to contain neighbor intrusion. I’m in Alamo, California. Thanks

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I’m not a bamboo expert, but I would think that bamboo that has been run through a chipper wouldn’t sprout again.

As you’ve probably seen, bamboo is really hard and tough. It can be very difficult to compost, because it is wood-like. Chipping it is the best way to make it break down the fastest, but I think it will still be very, very slow to break down.

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How do you reduce/eliminate fruit flies in kitchen compost???

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You mean the pail that you keep in the kitchen to collect scraps, right?

Take it out more often, or store it in the refrigerator.

Vegetable scraps don’t attract things as much as fruit does, so you can just make sure you dump it out more often whenever you add fruit.

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Another Q, related to this issue of summer composting with little natural carbon. Are there any downsides to just going ahead with lots of grass clippings and kitchen scraps and composting with that and only a few brown leaves? I think I read somewhere that too much nitrogen can leave the pile with an unpleasant smell. Thanks for your advice.

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my first year composting. when do i stop the process? by Oct. in Mn it starts to freeze. should i stop composting so material can breakdown?

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When there is a hard freeze, the composting process can slow down or come to a complete stop. But when it starts to warm up again, it will start breaking down again.

I’d probably just keep going with it until it freezes. At that point, you can still add materials to your bin, but they will just sit there and stack up inside the bin until it warms up enough for the composting process to start up again. So you can either keep adding, or stop adding until winter is over.

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Can you compost sunflower seed shells? Also, I haven’t been composting long and since I live in an apartment I’ve been dumping my veggie cuttings into a big plastic planter with some old soil. It’s working – the soil has gotten back its rich black color (as opposed to being off-black/almost charcoal grey color) but after reading about compost and keeping a balance between carbon & nitrogen products, now I’m wondering if I’m keeping such a balance and how to know. Like I said, I’ve been using vegetables and more recently coffee grounds – am I correct in assuming those are carbon? Now books and this site has given me the idea of shredding newspaper and using that. Would that be nitrogen? Thanks for your help!

Julie

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You should not compost them if they were salted, because you’ll end up salting your whole compost pile. And salt isn’t any good for gardening!

If they are not salted, they can be composted. But they’ll take a really long time to break down, so I would only add limited amounts.

Vegetable scraps and coffee grounds are both nitrogen rich, and newspaper is carbon rich. (I think you were on the right track and probably just switched the words by mistake.) Leaves make a better carbon rich material than newspaper. But newspaper still works if you don’t have anything else.

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This is probably an incredibly dumb question, but I really don’t know the answer. So we really have no garden to speak of but I am interested in composting, at least composting all the kitchen scraps I accumulate daily. I want to get one of those countertop pail things. However, since I don’t have any need for the compost itself, what can I do with the scraps that I have in the pail? Do I need to get a special “composting” container? If I do so, what do I do with the resulting compost since I really don’t need it? I told you it was a dumb question!!

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That’s actually a very good question. I’m sure a lot of people are asking the same thing.

A compost pail is really just a short term holding device where you capture your food scraps and hold them until you take them someplace to actually MAKE the compost.

There are a few different options for indoor composting. You can see some of them here:
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/indoor-composters.html

You can use one of those NatureMill automatic indoor composters. They work fairly well, but they are expensive.

You can vermicompost. But some people don’t like having a worm bin in the house. If you add too many fruit scraps, you can attract fruit flies and it gets gross.

Or you can compost with bokashi, in a sealed bucket. That works well, as long as you add enough bokashi so that it doesn’t stink.

At the end of the process, you’ll still have to figure out what to do with your finished compost. If there are shrubs or flowerbeds at your condo or apartment complex, you could put the finished compost there. Or you could offer it to any friends that have yards or gardens.

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Hi do you recommend the use of compost produced by the local Council re-cycling center?

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I don’t know the specifics of your situation.

But many cities, counties or municipalities will pick up organic materials like grass clippings and tree branches and other things. They will compost them on an industrial scale. And then they will sell or give away compost by the bag or by the truckload to local citizens.

I have purchased an entire truckload of compost in my own area here in Dallas, Texas. I had it delivered to my house in a dump truck, and then spread it on my lawn. It really made a big difference.

So in general, I recommend the practice.

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Can I add tortoises waste to the compose pile?

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I’m not sure about that one.

I would probably recommend burying it instead of composting.

I believe that Iguanas, for example, can carry E Coli. So I would be worried that other reptiles might carry it too.

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PLEASE I have what looks like and smells like raw sewage spewing out of my tumbler. Is there a number I can call to talk to someone live??

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Compost that stinks, or compost that is liquidy typically indicates too many nitrogen rich materials, and not enough carbon rich materials. Are you composting a lot of fruit and vegetable scraps, and not much else?

Your solution will probably be to add a lot more carbon rich material to your tumbler. Fill it completely full of leaves. They’ll start to pack down in a matter of days. If you don’t have leaves, you can make do with shredded newspaper.

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Two Questions:
1. I put the coconut strands from the planters into my compost bin last year and for some reason they did not decompose??
2. I have a wood burning stove. Can the ash that remains be used for
compost
Thanks in advance
Ernie

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1. Coconut is very tough, and takes a long time to break down. To speed it up, you can shred it and mix it with a lot of nitrogen rich materials. If it’s all bunched up together, it would break down slower.

2. You can add VERY LIMITED amounts of ash from a wood burning stove. Too much will change the pH of your compost and potentially ruin in. But NEVER try to compost charcoal ash, which can contain toxic materials.

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Hi Lars and Jim,
Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog “Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer”.

I find your two blogs to be remarkably clear and helpful, even though I am an experienced composter and organic gardener. They have gone in to my “favourites”.

One thing I have to say now – I have never seen anybody else on composting sites mention what follows. Do not compost whole tea bags! I have a wormery and after several years I discovered that there were layers of a fine net-like substance which the worms could not deal with. It proved to be “ghosts” of teabags. I did some research and found out that most, if not all, tea bags have a percentage of polyester fibres in the paper – this is so the manufacturers can heat seal them during production. The worms eat the cellulose but (obviously!) leave the polyester. After finding that out, I now let the tea bag cool down a little, rip it open then pour the leaves into my compost caddy. I have to dump the bag itself.

The “skeletons” are not very noticeable in ordinary compost heaps because of the turning process, which crumples the “skeletons” up but most organic gardeners I know don’t want any plastic in their black gold!

Perhaps you might like to publicise this problem more widely on your more specialised blogs?

Here is a link to a blogpost I did about this a while back worms tea bags and tissues

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Thanks for the link to your blog post.

I had not run into that issue with tea bags before — or at least not noticed it!

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Since I’m unable to locate a “Contact Us” link, I’ll post my comment with the hope that it gets to the right person — many thanks. I have a book published this Fall entitled:
“Grow Your Own Tree Hugger:
101 Activities to Teach Your Child How to Live Green”
On page 29, I make reference to your helpful website in the “Above and Beyond” section of my “Invite Some Worms to Dinner” activity. I just thought I’d let you know – full information on http://www.wendyrosenoff.com, including reviews. Thanks for your valuable information. — Wendy

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Thanks so much!!!!!

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Can I add old jack o lanterns and pumpkins to my compost bin?

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Yes!

Pumpkins make a great nitrogen rich material to add to your compost bin.

I not only added mine, but also the rotting jack o lanterns of neighbors who wanted to get rid of them. They start out huge, but they break down very quickly so that you can’t even recognize the pieces within just a week or two.

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I will be composting on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica in the Rain forest. As far as I know, composting is like ringing the dinner bell for many species of insects, spiders, and others. Are there steps that can be taken to minimize the attraction of composting to our jungle neighbors.

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I have two possible answers to that. One is that if you are composting well, you’re going to generate a lot of heat that wouldn’t allow bugs to live IN the compost, although they might be nearby or around the edges. I say that without ever having composted near a rain forest though, so I recognize this might not be a very good answer.

If you are concerned, I would recommend only using the Trench Composting method, where you bury all of your materials and forget about them. That would avoid having to go back and spend a lot of time around the compost as it breaks down.

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Why’s it not cookin’? The leaves are falling like crazy in my yard and I have even harvested several bags. my neighbors were going to discard. I have been using my lawnmower to shred them fine. I repeatedly run the mower over the leaves, lowering the setting. So I have a number of heavy bags of shredded leaves. I started a new batch of compost in a plastic bin a few weeks ago. Watered well. I add kitchen scraps and a lot of coffee grounds from the office for nitrogen. I stir it once a week with a pitch fork and add some water. Trouble is, the bin is not heating up at all. The leaf bits are turning black, but it doesn’t look like its going as fast as I remember last year, when I used unshredded leaves and the bin would let off steam in the cold mornings. So, what is going on? Did I do something wrong? What can I do to fix it? Thanks for your help. I live in Arlington so we must be neighbors.

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It sounds like you know what you’re doing and you’re doing everything right for the most part.

Here’s my best guess.

Last year, you used NON-shredded leaves, and this year you used shredded leaves, right?

When you shred leaves, you can fit a LOT more of them into the same amount of space.

Perhaps last year you had a much better carbon / nitrogen ratio than you have this year, because you have much more carbon in the same space?

I’d try adding more nitrogen rich materials and mixing it up again and see if that helps.

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Hello, I am a casual composter because I don’t have a lot of time. My composting is hit and miss! I do spend a lot of the free time I do have gardening and love the cyclical nature of composting and the fact that I am sending less to the landfill. That said, I have a black bin made for composting and I basically add my brown and kitchen scraps in the top, mix when I remember and then pull out compost from the bottom to put in my garden. My question is about the large quantity of insect life in my compost. Is there supposed to be so many bugs (worms, but other stuff too) in there? Will they harm my plants? Thanx for your informative site!

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Bugs are attracted to the materials that are breaking down, because they can consume them.

When you are really going hard core with your composting, your materials can heat up to 140 degrees or more, which reduces the number of creatures that get into it. But when you’re casually composting, and the compost isn’t heating up very much, you’ll see more insects. Bugs don’t hurt anything, and it’s no big deal.

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Can ashes from a fireplace be used in a compost pile? Would it be considered “brown” stuff rather than “green” stuff, The only things in the ashes would be newspaper, pine and other dried natural wood; nothing chemically treated.

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supercomposter Reply:
January 30th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

Thanks for your question!

I answered with a blog post here. http://compostinstructions.com/composting-ashes/

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Hello,
I am a beginner with composting. I learned a lot from reading your answers to various questions. Thank you. However, I did not see anytyhing about composting pineapple peels? WE eat a lot of fresh pineapple and I hate to throw the peels. CAn I compost it?
Thanks,
Zenny

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supercomposter Reply:
February 18th, 2010 at 9:53 am

Thanks for your question!

I answered with a blog post here:
http://compostinstructions.com/can-you-compost-pineapple-peel/

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