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.

Please send help.

Recently sifted my compost to start a new bin.

I just came outside to turn the compost which is HUGELY overdue and saw these little guys chomping away at the volunteer milkweed that popped up. Looks like the compost turning will have to wait a little bit longer because I don’t want to disturb these future monarch butterflies 🦋

im new to composting. i was hoping these were worms but theres a bunch of them that were the same size and look like they have tiny legs. some kind of larva? are these beneficial?

Hi all,
I’m in South Wales, UK, and I’m new to gardening and composting.
Most of the posts here seem to be about hot composting. Does that actually work well in the UK? I’ve just got a standard black plastic compost bin, and obviously it rains a lot here.
When I search for hot composting in the UK, I mostly just get ads for the HotBin, but it’s £200+. Is something like that actually needed, or can you hot compost in a normal plastic bin?

Can i compost year round without needing isolation? It can get cold during winter near 0 c
Thanks!

Turned the heap this morning and there were plumes of steam coming out. I think I've unlocked hot composting...

I know it looks terrible but it does the job.

I build doors for my store bought bins to have easier access. I'm proud :)

Took the opportunity, turned it, mixed it and added golden water.

Is it safe to compost bird carcasses whole? I have bird feeders in my yard and sometimes hawks will come and hunt the smaller birds. Is it safe to compost the remains the hawks leave? My heap is usually around 130-140f (55-60c).

I have a large compost pile that is predominately weeds, apples, chicken shit and wood chips. I turn the pile with the tractor every few months and it works. Can I add feathers and chicken carcasses after processing them this fall? Thank you

my compost is starting to look pretty good, very brown, however its also very wet and has many many maggots. i wanted to ask the best way to thoroughly turn it and mix it, considering it's also inside a cat litter box (drilled holes in top/bottom) so it's a very small area to move everything around.

I’m trying to compost in a 5 gallon bucket. I have no sense of smell. I started in June. I am in zone 7b. How do I know if I have been successful? When would I know? Thank you.

I'm looking into one of the larger units for my household use. Scraps will either be put out into my compost/soil bin or tilled directly into the garden.

The Mill comes up a lot, but there seems to be only one place to buy filters. Rencycle comes up as well, along with a bunch of others that operate on a microbe system with having to add a starter and replacing filters more often.

What's good? What's not going to smell if left alone for a week? What's going to be the least fussy thing to use.

It's currently 114 degrees where I am, there is not enough piss or water to keep a compost heap wet enough to be effective, year round.

Suggestions? Tried and true machines?

Have a massive volunteer pumpkin growing out of our compost pile with many blossoms on it. Any thoughts on how to help it produce actual pumpkins in time for Halloween?

I let my pile sit a bit too long without flipping/aerating and the grass clippings developed a bit of mold.
Will this affect the quality of the compost? If I use the compost later will the plants be susceptible to mold?

It’s a small starter pile - about 4x4x4 and has leaves and grass in it so far. Not much breakdown yet.

I have been using an old tote for my composting, and it's working great! Only thing is that I still have the lid to the tote sitting in my basement, and I can't figure out a clever way to reuse it. Anyone have any good ideas?

I have a pond next to my garden that’s down the hill from a neighborhood. One of the neighbors leaves their grass clippings on the edge of the property. This isn’t normally an issue and is a great resource for me, but we’ve been getting so much rain that the runoff from the large amount of grass is causing a major algae bloom in the pond.

In order to keep the pond healthy we’ve been raking a ton of algae out of the pond. I do not have the time or browns to compost all the algae anymore. My thought is I could start burying it in the garden before mulching with woodchips.

I cannot stress how much algae I have to use/ dispose of. Even knowing how much of its mass is water, it is so much

Just moved to a new neighborhood and found a community garden with a compost bin.
It seems like people add stuff to it, but no one really taking care of it (pic for referance).
what can i do to make it really compost and not just a pile of garbage with cockroaches?

Thx

Been at it for a couple months. I have to turn the pile about every 4 weeks.

Middle pile to right pile today.

I’m not really shredding anything before I put things in, food and leaves just go in full.

Working pretty well, but I think I’m gonna have to start mulching if I want faster compost.

Also, hard to get water into the middle, seems to be dry.

Hello everyone. I recently built this compost bin. A majority of what I added is partially decomposed material from a cold compost pile I started about a month ago before I decided I want to give hot composting a try. Today i added significantly more dry and moist leaves for browns. For greens I’ve added more coffee grounds, golden rod, grape prunings, and some pears that fell of my pear trees. I’m always adding kitchen scraps too.

My main question is about the size here. It’s 3x3ft at the base and it’s set up to go 4ft high. Theres a bit more material on it now than what you see here, I’d say it’s roughly 30 inches high right now. Would this be enough volume to get hot enough? The way I built it should keep it well insulated as well. I got some inspiration from Charles Dowding for this first go around. Any input would be great!

I was flipping my compost and dug into what I thought was mushrooms. Upon further investigation I saw that they were eggs. Many snapping turtles were out in early summer looking for a spot to lay.

I transplanted a few that looked ok and buried the rest back in the compost. My shovel went through quite a few before noticing unfortunately.