On Death and Dying: Composting Series 3: Bargaining

By now I'm hoping that you have sited and built your first compost bin!  If not, I'll be patient.  Speaking of patience, you'll need some of this while you start trying to fill your bin with goodies.  You might be having small bursts of desperation as you try to fill your new bin (especially if you have already raked and disposed of your leaves).  This is okay, you'll be fine.  Some typical thoughts/google searches you might have/do are:

1. How many bananas can a person eat before potassium poisoning sets in?
2. Rifling through the garbage for compostables at work with no one noticing
3. Should I cut down that perfectly good shrub to put in my bin?
4. I'm going to buy that cauliflower b/c even if I don't eat it, I can compost it

A common and useful way to deal with these types of thoughts is bargaining.  You will find yourself looking at apple cores, peels, coffee grounds and wilted lettuce leaves in a whole new way.  At first, you might bargain or scheme in easy and socially acceptable ways.  Maybe you ask a close friend if you have have the shell she just peeled off her hard boiled egg in return for a cookie.  Maybe you slip the coffee grounds from work into a plastic bag and cart it out in your lunch pail.  No one needs to know about this.  Maybe you approach the produce guy at the grocery store and casually ask how you can get your hands on the boxes and boxes of "culling" aka. semi-rotted stuff they pick off the shelves.

You'll find all sorts of creative ways to fill your bin.  You'll probably start eating more fruits and veggies just to have the cores, peels, stumps, etc. for your pile.  You might hit up local coffee shops for their used grounds.  You'll have stiff competition from other composters for these so make nice with the baristas for first dibs.  Coffee grounds aren't called Black Gold for nothing.

The most advanced form of bargaining will be when you plead with your higher power to put in more microbes to kick start your pile.  It will sound something like this, "higher power, please let the microbes thrive in my pile and I promise that I'll volunteer at that soup kitchen/clean out the bottom of the fridge/be nice to my nasty coworker, etc."  You can avoid these types of unhealthy conversations by just buying a little bag of 'compost starter' at Ace Hardware.  This is easy to use and makes you feel in control of the process.

You'll find a lot of info on the ratio of greens (nitrates) to browns (carbon).  Try not to stress over this.  Just do your best to have more browns (leaves, shredded papers, and dead, brown things) than greens (produce waste, coffee grounds/things that are still moist/juicy/any other color).
As you begin to get a substantial amount of stuffs in your pile, do the following every 3rd day to create "gourmet compost."

Turn and mix up your ingredients.  Microbes need air so by stirring/flipping, you'll introduce the needed O2.

Check the moisture level.  It should be damp, like a wrung out sponge.  Not dripping and not dusty.  If it's too try, sprinkle water over it, turn, repeat.  If it's too wet, turn it daily until it get's drier.  If it's extra rainy for more than 2 days, cover it up with a sheet of plastic until it stops raining.

It might steam/smoke/smell like a barn.  These are all signs that things are going well!

Next week, we'll learn how you know if your pile is working and dealing with Depression if it is not.  How's your pile coming?

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