Firstly, what’s #gardenchat? Glad you asked. #gardenchat takes place on Twitter. Every Monday co-hosts Tee Riddle the Veggie Gardener and Lisa Gustavson of Get in the Garden guide garden buffs through varied gardening topics.

Last Monday’s topic was all about compost with special guest co-host Chris McLaughlin. Chris blogs at A Suburban Farmer and is author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Composting.

Basically, compost is the end product of the decomposition of organic matter. Mix equal parts brown (carbon) and green (nitrogen) to produce one of earth’s greatest gifts.

What’s brown and what’s green?
Brown Green
Dried leaves                                                                           Grass clippings
Dried grass                                                                             Kitchen scraps
Straw                                                                                        Animal manure (sans dog and cat feces)
Cardboard                                                                              Coffee grounds
Paper shreds (sans shiny colored paper)                     *Green material will always be wet
Pizza boxes
Human and dog hair
Rabbit manure
*Brown material will always be dry

You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much organic matter. Here are the composting methods I use:

Uncontained Compost Piles

Good: Inexpensive – Pick a spot and start piling. Cut/shred compost ingredient as small as possible. This quickens the composting process. Keep your pile moist - I water my compost pile with water I harvest from the shower. Turn every 3 to 10 days for compost in 4 to 6 weeks; turn every other day for compost in about 3 weeks.

Bad: Takes up precious planting room and makes dining al fresco interesting. No one wants to sit next to the compost pile!

Ugly: See above; a picture is word a thousand words.

Tumbleweed Compost Tumbler


Good: Contained composting system eliminates varying stages of decaying piles from plain view.

Bad: Glorified trash can - A few years back when I was a high faluter I forked over $189.99 for this tumbler. Sucker! Compost is produced in batches – Ingredients must be added all at once. Contrary to Tumbleweed’s claim, I do not produce compost in 21 days.

Ugly: A 58-gallon capacity drum is hard to spin. On the other hand, once I spun the tumbler so hard it unhinged off it’s stand.

Vermicomposting

Good: No turning required! Simply add food waste and the worms (red wigglers) do all the work. PS, citrus makes worms angry; do not add to worm bin.

Bad: Must wade through the worms to harvest worm castings and worms don’t yield nearly as much organic matter as uncontained/contained compost piles. But, if you’re one of those succession planting types worms will yield enough castings to support your amending habit.

Ugly: Ocassionaly there are tiny flies. Just duck. I love my worms!

Chris did an excellent job of fielding questions and providing useful information in 140 characters or less. New topic next week – Join the conversation next Monday at 9:00 p.m. EST and don’t forget to add the hashtag #gardenchat at the end of your tweets!