Anyone do "lazy composting"

[Synchro246]

I built a little bin for compost like three years ago. I never tended to it properly and it's so far from my kitchen that I ended up stopping adding all the good stuff to it. So I got lazy. Then I thought- why not capitalize on my laziness. I now throw the fruit and veggie waste right out my front door onto my potted plants (which look pathetic btw) and my garden bed (which is overrun with weeds and rocks). It looks really trashy, maybe it will keep burglers away. Does anyone think that this will be good for the garden?

[srain]

Depending on where you live, it could attract animals or start to smell. You could minimize that by tossing it in the blender with some water before dumping it; pureed peels look nicer and break down faster. You could also dig holes for it; maybe a new one each week?

[Synchro246]

I'm lazy so the blender idea is out, but I think I could swing a weekly hole. i live in Florida. We regularly get racoons in our trash, maybe they wouldn't get our trash if the food is just out for them.

[Wild Flowers]

Not quite that lazy, but pretty close. Though it wouldn't work for us to just throw it out our back window. Our dog would probably get really sick
So everything sits on my counter until I take it out back, pretty far from our house and dump it. We tried a composter way back in Georgia, southest, and we kept getting opossums stuck in it. And I just never got into making sure it was balanced and all. Mostly we just do it so we don't have as much in our trash. We don't eat much meat, so it really cuts back on any trash ordor we might have.
I do like the blender idea though. I wonder if I could keep up with that. And make sure my kids don't drink it...

[Alkenny]

Any leftover food products (that aren't worth saving) get walked out to the ditch out behind our house. I've seen woodchucks and stray cats out there going to town.

[AmyC]

My grandma tucked all sorts of vegetable peelings, carrot tops, egg shells, coffee grounds, etc. directly into her garden beds. She was a pretty active gardener, so they weren't neglected patches of ground. But she didn't bother with composting in the typical sense. My mom remembers that Grandma had all sorts of funny things coming up in her flower beds--random veggies and such. And her soil (south Florida) was really good, which is unusual for the area. Everything grew well for her, even her kitchen scraps!

[Hippiemommie]

This is me totally. I live on a farm so when I have food waste I just chuck it out the front door. We have quite a few animals, they eat the edible food like potato skins but don't eat peels and such.

[BonMaman]

Originally Posted by AmyC

...My mom remembers that Grandma had all sorts of funny things coming up in her flower beds--random veggies and such.

We have some volunteer green peppers growing in our compost pile!

[liawbh]

How NOT to compost:
Dig hole
Fillwith compost over the course of a year
occasionally toss in yard debris
have kid take out compost bucket and dump "approximately" in the hole
top with huge pile of grass clippings
ignore for a year
finally turn compost -

There was a cranberry in there. Whole. From Thanksgiving. THis was 2 weeks ago.

Gah! DH said it looked (and smelled) like pig slop.

I spent 4 hours digging a new hole, mixing in dirt and mulch and turning everything.


Moral: lazy composting only works for so long, up to a certain amount of compost. At least turn/mix it once a season. THis is what I did at the last house, and it worked fine.

[kewb]

My mom did the eggshell and coffee grounds in the flowers and I find myself doing it now, too.

[Synchro246]

Originally Posted by liawbh

How NOT to compost:
Dig hole
Fillwith compost over the course of a year
occasionally toss in yard debris
have kid take out compost bucket and dump "approximately" in the hole
top with huge pile of grass clippings
ignore for a year
finally turn compost -

There was a cranberry in there. Whole. From Thanksgiving. THis was 2 weeks ago.

Gah! DH said it looked (and smelled) like pig slop.

I spent 4 hours digging a new hole, mixing in dirt and mulch and turning everything.


Moral: lazy composting only works for so long, up to a certain amount of compost. At least turn/mix it once a season. THis is what I did at the last house, and it worked fine.

ok, so no hole

[frogguruami]

I am looking into worm composting right now. I'm wondering if that will require less maintenance.

[PikkuMyy]

Hello. My name is PikkyMyy and i'm a lazy composter.



Seriously. I have a open space between my deck and the bamboo that surrounds our house. I toss my leftover veggie matter out there and sometimes leafs and other brown stuff. Once in a while I turn it with a shovel until that got stolen. I used some of the earth from the bottom last year for planting and it was great!

There are some onions, etc growing out there though :P

And while we have tons of wildlife, we've had no issue with them coming to get it from the pile. In fact, I threw an almost perfect peach out there and I couldn't beleive that none of the raccoons or opossums ate it!