Composting: Day 5

I want to start off by saying how excited I am to be starting a compost pile!  Ever since we started College Hunks Hauling Junk here in Phoenix I’ve felt the need to live a ‘greener’ lifestyle.  One of the aspects of College Hunks I like best is that it is a green company and recycles or donates at least 60% of everything we take.  While out networking or just talking about our business the fact that it is green is one of the first things that comes out of my mouth.  So, all this talking about being green has inspired me to live a much greener lifestyle.  Don’t get me wrong, we have been recycling for many years.  I would say we’ve recycled just like most families by doing the ‘easy’ stuff (recycling boxes, empty food/beverage containers, paper ,etc.) but we can do better which is why we’ve made a few changes in our activities, which leads me back to the topic at hand: Composting!

Today is the day I am going to beef up our compost pile.  So far it only has a potato in it : (  I spent quite a bit of time today trying to figure out how this whole composting stuff works, it can be quite simple and complicated all at the same time!  It is simple if you just try to think of everything as either green or brown.  Green items are (you guessed it) GREEN and are things like grass clippings, vegetable scraps, and fruit peels.  Brown items are much to nobody’s surprise, BROWN and are things like hay, paper, and dried garden debris.  You want to have a 1.5:1 ratio of browns: greens.   That is about as simple as it can get.  On the more complicated side you want to have an appropriate mix of carbon and nitrogen.  Too much carbon – your pile is too dry and too much nitrogen – your pile is too moist.  In an effort to minimize how overwhelmed I’m feeling I am going to go for the simple route…not too much brown or green matter.  (Go to earth911.com for many different articles on what you can compost.)  I had read earlier that weeds were something good to put in your compost pile.  Boy oh boy was that exciting since we have our fair share of weeds around the house.  Plus this project would be a good reason to go pull them.  We’ve been dreading those darn weeds but knowing now that they will be used for something good makes it less daunting to get my behind out there and pick them.  These were my thoughts until I started to dig deeper into what you do and don’t compost.  Weeds were kind of in the middle.  You aren’t supposed to compost weeds that are beginning to seed or that are pernicious.  Now, as your standard human being I haven’t the slightest clue if my weeds are seeding or if they are pernicious so…I guess I will be leaving them out of my compost pile for now.  If you put them in your pile while they are seeding or if they are pernicious they may sprout in your compost pile making MORE WEEDS or the seeds may stay in your compost so if you use it on your grass you have simply spread weed seeds ALL OVER YOUR YARD!!!  Needless to say I’m sure the weeds in my yard will be hanging out for a little bit longer before I come up with the motivation to tackle the back breaking activity that is pulling weeds.  Ok, back to composting.  Another exciting compostable item I read about is pet hair!  I have 2 fabulous dogs named Jayden and Abby…they are like my children.  Jayden is a 3 year old black lab mix and Abby is a 10 year old Yellow lab/greyhound/many other things mix and if there is one thing they are great at it is SHEDDING!!  I don’t know how these two dogs still have any hair left on ‘em because they never stop shedding excessively.  Now, I have something I can do with all this pet hair!  It is time for me to go compost pile hunting in and around my house.  Shannon mowed the lawn (in her boot : ) ) last week and there were some grass clippings left that I am going to add.  We don’t have too many “brown” items around here so I’ll have to go scavenging around the house for some.  I know they are out there!  OK, I am off to “shop” around the house for our compost pile : )  I will post a few pictures so you can see what everything looks like!

Kristen Hays

This is the container after I drilled all the holes

This is what it looks like now

These are the dogs!!!