Green Living
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
lurker with a question
Hi everyone,
I was just wondering if there was a composting 101 post somewhere that you can direct me to because I just started composing and thought I knew what I was doing from the bits and pieces of info I have read here and on elsewhere on the web. It went totally wrong and I dont know if I should start over or how to do it differently
TIA
Re: lurker with a question
What went wrong?
I don't think there was a recent post on this... but here are a couple guides. I haven't read each of them, but in skimming they look good:
http://www.howtocompost.org/
http://www.composting101.com/
http://compostguide.com/
Best sound ever: baby's heartbeat! (Heard @ 10w1d)
I didnt know not to put animal scraps in the bin so it started to get a bunch of maggots. seems super obvious now that I think about it but everything I had read said kitchen scraps so I just tossed it in...
::facepalm::
I actually found that website, composting101 after I posted this that said no animal product so yea, I started over ... That one is really helpful so I saved it
Another good link "All about composting"
http://www.gardeners.com/All-About-Composting/5061,default,pg.html
We bought a $25 composting bin from Craiglist. If you look at the backyard photo in my bio (really outdated, sorry), it's the doghouse-looking green thing. We scraped the grass off a segment of our yard, and placed the composter there. The rhyme is "equal parts green and brown help to break the compost down." So we add all our kitchen scraps (those are greens), and shredded leaves or newspaper (brown). You can Google for other kinds of greens and browns. We stir after every addition using our garden shovel, and add water about once a week or so. I have a tub sitting under our patio furniture to catch rainwater, I normally empty that in the compost. It should be moist, like a damp sponge . We got finished compost after about 6 months, and now that it's really going (we're in year 4) I regularly take a tub of compost out of it to add to our raised beds or front decorative plants. Everything is growing like gangbusters, and we've reduced our landfill impact by a significant amount.
We bought this compost crock for holding scraps, I wanted something pretty. But any sealed container will work. Composting is easier than you think!
I wouldn't worry at all about "screwing up" your compost pile, that's not really possible unless you put something that reaallly shouldn't be in there, like meat scraps. They smell when they decompose, and attract animals. Really, you're just making a place for organic material to rot. You can't really mess up letting something rot.
We add kitchen scraps pretty much every day, and a big pile of browns every once and awhile when we rake or have brown paper. We have awesome compost. Try not to think about it too much, it's just rotting organic matter