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Vegetables, peelings, cores, cobs, crumbs, leaves, lawn waste, + pretty much anything that came from a plant. I even throw in occasional paper products, if they're too nasty for recycling.
no meat, blood, fat, fish, nor dairy.
I was told that it was OK to put egg shells in there, so I've been doing that too.
I have been feeding the beast for 2 years now with no overflow. Isn't it amazing that such a huge volume of stuff gets so efficiently reduced! This spring, I was looking forward to nourishing my garden with some of that black gold, but... I opened the bottom and looked at the crud that I shoveled out, and it's all full of chunks! Not little worm-food chunks, but huge pieces of stuff that have not rotted at all, among the rich black humus. Mostly egg shells and corn cobs. All those egg shells are still egg shells, and corn cobs as intact as the day I threw them in there (and considering they're at the bottom, those are probably 2 year old cobs)
Makes me think I need to choose from one of three truths:
a) it's normal to spread corn cobs in your garden
b) I shouldn't be composting those
c) I'm doing it wrong
My compost "pile" is low maintenance. When I add large plants or fallen limbs or things like corncobs, I try to cut them up before tossing onto the heap.
I've heard of composting purists.. erm, I mean puréeists... putting all their nasty food garbage through a blender/grinder before composting. That seems like it would involve more cleanup than I'm prepared for. I own a blender, but it's kept clean for mixing drinks; I don't want to process my egg shells corn cobs and apple cores in it.
I've heard of people adding red wiggler worms to their pile - vermicomposting. Usually this is done in a special worm farm enclosure, but would they accelerate the action in my "barrel-type" composter? hmm
The cobs, and larger branches, compost slowly because they are low in nitrogen. They probably weren't sufficiently moist over the course of the composting; once they dry it is hard to get them waterlogged again.
When you re-use them, or when adding similar things in the future, make sure they are wet through and through, and co-mingle them with fresh high-nitrogen additives like green leaves and grass clippings. Turn the compost regularly, so things like this don't get isolated in the bottom, away from the action.
When a large amount of fresh material is added, it will, and should, heat up. A 3-foot pile of lawn clippings will burn your arm, and large piles can spontaneously combust! This won't happen in your small composter, but it will help to get your cobs in the middle of a hot fresh batch. When making a large pile with hot compostables like grass clippings and horse manure, the corncobs and wood chips, being low in nitrogen, help act as "control rods" and moderate the heat and stink.
Add any earthworms you can to the pile. They multiply the available nitrogen.
You should sift your compost every few months in the summer, taking out the black gold and mingling the slower parts with fresh material. Leaving it for years may result in some of the nutrients being leached away.
Meat can rot, stink, and attract scavenging animals, but blood is an excellent natural source of nitrogen and micronutrients. You can buy blood meal at the nursery- good stuff.
Try to find a cheap, unwanted leaf chipper to process your cobs abnd small branches and speed up the compost. A cheap blender would probably die young, doing this with it.
As for the eggshells, break them up small when adding, and expect the specks to still be visible when finished.
-Automan
[edited by: Automan_Empire at 8:07 pm (utc) on June 18, 2008]
Automan, thanks so much for your reply - some great advice there. Sifting! Why didn't I think of that? too obvious?
When I was a kid we used to rob compost heaps of these for fishing bait. They help to rot down the compost - as well as catching fish.
Try googling it, [google.com...]
Added: Engine, I don't know if brandling worms specifically will find their way there. I doubt it because they generally live in composting situations.
"To each his own"
[edited by: BeeDeeDubbleU at 3:54 pm (utc) on June 19, 2008]
