Even in winter compost happens. It may be slower but those microbes are still hard at work turning your pile of waste into “Gardener’s Gold.” You can compost all sorts of vegetable based materials. I even heard a news story not to long ago in New Jersey where they compost roadkill carcasses! They bury the poor animals in wood chips and in a few months very little remains of the animal. I wouldn’t recommend this for the home garden since animal carcasses can (and probably will) attract other animals.
Our compost pile has mostly seen kitchen scraps. Quite a few fruit rinds have ended their journey in our bin including grapefruit, orange, and avocado peels. Vegetable leftovers like tomato bits, lettuce, and the stalks of celery that never get eaten because they were forgotten about in the bottom tray of the refrigerator have all been composted. Nothing very unique there! Grass clippings and leaves have both been used. Sticks and pruned branches have been donated to the bin for the composting cause as have coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells and onion scraps. All these things are pretty standard fare for your typical, everyday, run of the mill compost bin.
So here’s the question:
What is the most unusual item(s) you have ever composted?
I suppose the most unique thing we have composted would either be the brown toilet paper roll and paper towel tubes left over after the roll is used or our old friend Jack. (Don’t panic! Jack wasn’t a real person! )
Nothing really crazy here but I’m interested in seeing if there’s anything out there that other people may not have thought about composting! Feel free to talk about it on your blog if you have one or comment here if you don’t! Just post a link so people can find your blog.
Discover more from Growing The Home Garden
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hi Dave,
You should have come to the Perennial Plant Association’s meeting in October. One gentleman who has a orchard in the Nashville area said he composts dead animals. Neighbors and others give him some carcasses and he buries them under his orchard. Says his orchard is doing great! The whole auditorim of about 200 was somewhat aghast. So even in Tennessee! I was going to talk about it on my blog but I was afraid of offending some “Pet People” bloggers (another blog on the Leaf Chronicle’s website). But hey, I am an animal lover but even animals die and what better way to use the remains than to give them back to the earth? That is where I will go when I die-but in the form of ashes.
I think you can compost about anything. I throw fish, lobster shells, tuna casserole, leftover (some of which contain meat), sawdust, rabbit fertilizer and all the usual stuff. Some say you attract pests but tell me what compost bin doesn’t have its fair share of pests already? Disclaimer: I do have a fence around my property and while I have the usual voles, squirrels, chipmunks and birds, I don’t think fox or coyotes can get in. I have never seen raccoons or skunks but they like food in a compost bin just as much as the mice.
I have three big bins going but NEVER have enough compost-even when they have been filled with leaves to overflowing! That is my only complaint-never enough. I don’t usually turn mine, but when I need finished compost I transfer the top stuff and consolidate. I try to do it when my grown son is in town.:)
Tina,
That would have been an interesting talk I think! I think though if you don’t have a fence or something to keep pests out you should stick to vegetable matter mostly. Our yard has seen a number of wild creatures most notably a skunk, ground hog and a possum so composting meat products just isn’t a good idea! And you’re right, you can never have enough compost!
When I was a small child I remember my dad digging a trench around a cabbage plant in the garden and emptying the contents of the can from our out-house lavatory into it. That cabbage grew up to be the biggest cabbage I had ever seen and I have never seen another one as big in nearly 60 years since! But nobody wanted to eat it and eventually it died to become compost itself. Successional recycling!
Hmm, I think I understand why no one wanted to make cole-slaw from that cabbage! It makes sense why it grew so big!
Thanks for visiting Kiwikeith!