Gardening & Landscaping
jallen76
member
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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.
Composters come in...
Tell me about composting. Any tricks or hints?
We are going to have an open compost, I think?? We live on 2 acres out in the country.
We live in Michigan...so it's cold now. I can't compost in the winter because things won't break down, right?
I want it for the soil...we have big gardens and I hate to buy soil from a nursery or landscaper. I also realize that it will take a while to make said soil. 
TIA
Anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice!
Re: Composters come in...
We live on a couple of acres in farm country. Reconsider the open composting. We have racoons, stray dogs, neighbors dogs and cats, and possum that like to forage. Make sure you put some kind of fencing, such as chicken wire around it.
I'm in MI too. We live in the city, and have a closed heap, for the reasons mentioned by the other poster. Even though you're in the county, I'd box it up. You don't want all of your goodies to be taken away by critters, or become the feeding space for them.
I'd wait until March to get started. You do need some kind of warmth for the microbes to do their job.
Happy composting.
to be clear, you can add things to your compost at any time, winter or summer. it's just in the winter things break down more slowly (or not at all).
although, i'd be inclined like pp to wait until spring for your comfort on building an enclosement (a pile would definitely be a food source during the lean months of winter)
I bought something kind of like this from Lowe's for about $50. It's easy to fill, but the squirrels(?) always attack the bottom doors, and they can get them off quite often. It doesn't work very fast either, though I realized I hadn't been putting a good ratio in, and getting it wet enough.
Next time I want a rolling composter like my dad has. They live a little further our and have many more animals roaming around, and theirs is fine. Plus, it seems to work faster.
At our old house (middle of the suburbs) the previous owners had a compost pile enclosed by chicken wire. We hadn't added anything new to it, and it was still a creature magnet.
Too many layers of awesome, just like me.