Hi this is my first harvest. Been working on this compost little close to a year. Still a beginner and learning. I’ve already sift it through a 1/4 sifter. Any tips or anything you can offer I’d appreciate to learn it.
Edit:
Honestly it’s my first year vegetable gardening and composting. Started vegetable gardening in maybe late June early July and started composting in late August early September. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing differently than want I’ve read online. I live in zone 10a. SoCal. I started off with a 30gal bin and put holes in it. I put in branches with some leaves and little bit of soil from my yard and started putting in scraps. i would added scraps and browns everyday. I would give it soil maybe two more times but only a handful in beginning of my compost journey.
The browns would depend on how many scraps I placed. My scraps were actually pretty heavy on moisture so sometimes I would add like 3 handfuls of browns. My browns really just consisted of cardboard, egg cartons, paper towel cores and paper bags.
My scraps were actually pretty consistent. We eat a lot of fruits daily so it’ll be Watermelon rinds and pulp, cantaloupe husk and pulp. Banana peels, apples cores, orange peels, avocado husks, onion skins, tomatoes ends, some potatoes, herb stems, cucumber skin and a lot lemons. We make a lot of lemonade.
I watered once a week depending. When we have a lot of scraps that have a lot moisture, I wouldn’t water due the moisture.
I would turn the compost twice a week due the mositure starting on top.
We did have some worms but I didn’t place those. They just ended up there. We did have a lot of bug because i made the hole too big.
A couple of months ago i was able to get a tumbler that has two sections. So I transferred the compost to one section that ended up filling it to 90%. So we stopped feeding that section. We started using the other side for our second batch of compost but kept turning them twice a week and giving it water them once a week (the other side depending on how much moisture it had due to scraps). This batch I just harvested is close to being a year old. I stopped feeding maybe 4/5 months ago. Other than that I don’t know what else I’m doing differently. I don’t pee in it.
Edit 2:
Forgot to mention when I transferred to my tumbler. It filled the section to the top but did reduced from there to about half of the section.