The material behind your house sounds like it should already be finished compost or “humus.” You could use it to improve the soil in your garden beds or lawn or whatever. It doesn’t hurt to add some finished compost into your bin when you are starting a new batch, but it isn’t necessary.

Worm composting is a different type of composting. Regular composting generates heat, and will just kill the worms or make them escape the bin.

A good mix of nitrogen and carbon rich materials that are the dampness of a wrung out sponge is going to be your best method of making compost quickly. As long as it’s a good mix and you keep it aerated and the right dampness, you’re doing good!

Yes, you can compost in a big pot with drainage holes. Although you’d want something that can hold at least 40 gallons’ worth of material for it to be very effective. Really small containers don’t allow enough materials for the compost to heat up much.

Will adding soil (from the garden, with worms etc) help increase decomposition? Thanks to your article, i understand the importance of green and brown materials.

Can big pots/jars (ie pottery) with drainage holes at the bottom also do the same job as the plastic tumblers?

BTW, I live in a tropical climate hot and humid 24-32 celcius all year.

thanks in advance.

Thank you very much.

Here’s an example:
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/recycled-plastic-composter.html

If you don’t have a bin that does that, you could take several approaches.

1. You could stop adding to the bin until everything is finished, and then unload the whole bin.

2. You could tilt the bottom of the composter upwards by grabbing the top and pulling back, so you’re sort of making your own door at the bottom. Then get the stuff out of the bottom with a shovel.

3. You can run the materials through a screen and screen out the non-finished stuff and throw it back in the bin, and take the finished compost and use it.

I’ve been adding kitchen waste, yard clippings, leaves, shredded paper to my compost bin for over a year…The bin is enclosed, open bottom and has a lid that stays on…I have never aerated the pile and it continues to “melt” down…I would like to use the compost but it just has layers of new stuff on top of older layers…how do I go about utilizing the already cooked products at the bottom?…should I stop adding to it and turn it until it becomes useable dark soil?…

thank you very much

I’m also quite happy this this compost bin is serving me well. I live in the tropics (Darwin, Australia) and have had far too many bins not cope with the conditions – though that’s probably my brutishness around the bin and not the weather.

Nonetheless, the compost bin pictured is also doing really well in our Wet Season, where several bins I’ve had in the past have tended to leak all their contents this time of year. So far this Wet, we’ve had more than a few good storms and a wee monsoonal trough (2?) and this bin is keeping its content in as it should.

Again – thanks for using my photo.

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I don’t bother with shredding my leaves when I compost. But yes, shredding them into smaller pieces will make them break down faster.

It also allows you to compress more leaves in the same amount of space.

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A lot of flies and heavy to turn tells me that you might have too many nitrogen rich materials, and not enough carbon rich materials.

I would add as many more leaves as you can fit into the bin, mix it up well, and add water if that dries it out too much. Leaves compress quickly, so you might even be able to add a bunch of leaves one day, and add more a couple of days later.

Let me know if that helps or not!