I need some advice on what to do with composting. My dad has a backyard vegetable garden that has been his labour of love. However, his failing health makes it impossible for him to do any physical work this year and I decided to help him out. I have no gardening experience whatsoever and just started reading up on it. My dad has a few compost bins. But it seems like he does not know how to do it properly, he added kitchen scraps and yard waste to them but stopped doing that about a year ago after he got the idea of burying the scraps directly in the garden. Two bins were obtained from the city of Vancouver, they are place in a shaded area without the lids on. When I looked into them, the piles only reached about 1/4, the top has scraps added from about a year ago and I can still identify the corn, the orange peel etc. I poked with a pitchfork and the middle is more decomposed and muddy-like. Also in shade beside the bins, there is a pile with a wooden enclosure, one side panel of the enclosure is secured with wires and can be taken out easily to access the pile. My dad bought the enclosure over 20 years ago, and the wood is starting to rot. In fact, the top has fallen off, and a few pieces crumbled on touch. The side panel is likely to fall apart if I try to take it out. The content has been exposed for I don't know how long. However, when I looked in, the top is covered with some branches and twigs (see attached photo), beneath them are some fruit peels in more or less the original form, not composted. Only the very bottom has material that looks like finished compost. My dad also has a wired enclosure where he dumped all the autumn leaves (see attached photos). There is no mechanism to open a side of the enclosure. My dad used to just dump leaves there and let them decompose without ever doing anything. The top layer of leaves are dry (due to lack of precipitation recently), the next layer of leaves are quite wet. It is impossible for me to turn and mix the pile as I have to stand on a stool to reach over and it gets very heavy. I want to seek advice on what I should do with these four piles. My thought is to move the city compost bins to a sunnier area and use these bins only. The best location seems to be 90 degrees on the other side of the wooden enclosure (on concrete). I am thinking of taking the wooden enclosure apart. But will there be any use of this wooden enclosure that makes it worthwhile for me to keep it? Also, what should I do with the wired enclosure? Coming fall, I would rather store the leaves in garbage cans than to have to throw the leaves over the wiring. It is also very hard for me to reach inside to retrieve the leaves. Should I just take this structure apart too? As for composting in the bins, I think I can combine the contents of the current three piles (in various stages of composting) into one bin, layered with some leaves in between, and let it compost. New kitchen scraps can then be placed in the second bin. Is this the best way to go? Thanks for any advice!
I actually think that the wooden bin is actually the most useful, mainly because of it's size. The city provided ones are really too small to be very useful. You will probably find some nice compost at the bottom of each of those bins that you could add to the garden. You can see that there is some nice dark stuff at the bottom of the leaf pile. The easiest thing is to make a new compost bin out of wooden pallets (cheap) This site shows you how: http://www.resourceconservation.mb.ca/cap/cap_pdfs/Recycled Pallet Bin.pdf Then move all the partly done compost into it, though it would be a good idea to sieve it first so that you can remove all the stuff that is ready to go into the garden. How elaborate you make the compost bin depends how nice you want it to look. I just have a three bin system made out of pallets and the allets are just tied together and the compost is covered with a tarp. Moving them all into the sun would be a good idea and they should also be covered, especially in rainy Vancouver. :)
Congrats on the great composting effort. I would definitely blend all mediums, but first break down further the twiggy mass, then fold into one bin. Start a new compost bin so as to allow for the decomposition of the former bin. I wish I didn't have to worry about the bears, racoons and vermin that frequent in my garden....
Thanks JanR and K Baron! Oh, and that reminded me to watch out for raccoon and rats. I have seen a pack of raccoons rummaging through a neighbour's garbage bin, and another neighbour has had caught rats before! But they don't seem to be a problem at my dad's place, at least I have never seen them yet.
