compost

[skinyea]

I have been really trying to learn the best way to compost.

I run a restaurant and 1 year ago started taking home all the veggie scraps. cucumber/carrot peals, tomato scraps broccolli stems onion stems etc. all veggie scraps.
I take my lawn mower and run over the scraps until they are cut extremely small

I take them home daily . have 7 bins set up and basically rotate the veggies. i add grass clippings and dead leaves, coffee grounds(from restaurant and home)
i add water to the bins a few times a week and turn it 4 or 5 times a week

I added this into my raised beds last year and grew a cover crop.
I added more into the beds when turned the cover crop over.

so far this year looks like the best year I will have as a home gardener. everything is so much better and bigger than the previous years.

for those that have been doing this better and longer than me, is their anything else I can add to my routine to make it even better for next year?

 

[Chuck]

I would add a little molasses from time to time. It will do two things. Make it compost faster and give you more soil microbes.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

That sounds really good, my approach is much more basic. I make a couple of enclosures, pallets are good for that, and put all the woody waste and stuff like cabbage stalks that take time to rot in one and all the soft weeds, pulled up plants, and grass cuttings in the other. Stuff like hedge cuttings have enough leaf on them to help the woody one rot. I also have a couple of black compost bins that take all the kitchen waste, I stand them on aviary wire to stop rats getting in. I still see the occasional mouse on top when I take the lid off, but I don't mind them. I usually leave stuff a good long time, like two or three years, which is okay when there is a progression going on, but being in a new garden that really needs stuff adding to the soil I have been sieving it after quite short periods so I have something to use, that gives me a good few weeds, their seeds are tough by nature, but they hoe in as green manure. I try to position the stacks where the ground is rough and uncultivated, then when I move them a couple of years later I have another few square yards of good earth to add to the garden without too much work.