What to do with compost thst has gone yuck?

Flatland

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I admit that me & compost have never been best mates. Normally I throw my veggie waste into manure pile & that's it. But I bought a tumbler compost bin & have been trying to compost veggie scraps. Well at the moment I have a soggy black mess. Too wet. Wondering if i should add a bucket of saw dust which I happen to have or whether I should just ditch it & start again. In a months time we will be doing a burn & I will have ash & charcoal which I normally add as mulch to the veggie garden. Wondering if this could be added to veggie scraps in my tumbler
Has anyone got a tumbler type bin & have they any success with it? They claim to turn veggie scraps in compost in 28 days mine has turned scraps into soggy mess. As I said me & compost bins/piles have never been friends
 

ClissAT

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Yes Flatland, your compost has gotten too wet.
Most kitchen scraps are high in moisture so only a quarter of the volume added at any time should be scraps unless the tumbler bin is full of compost worms.
This means that if you have a 1.5lt container of kitchen scraps you need to add another 4.5lt of other stuff.
That could include course hay or mulch such as sugarcane or lucerne, dead leaves, dried grass clippings, a very small quantity of ash & charcoal, crushed dried egg shells, shredded paper, dried wood shavings or sawdust(not from fresh cut timber & mostly only pine or softwoods) or stable cleanings with or without manure but not with much horse pee as it is too strong & wet (or blood & bone or chook manure for nitrogen/heat creation).

The claim that a tumbler can turn 'stuff' into compost in 28days will only happen under ideal conditions where the temperature inside the tumbler reaches over 40degrees for hours on end for days on end. That generally happens only in high summer when the hot sun shines on the tumbler from 5am to 7pm every day & B&B or chook poo or wet stable shavings or sawdust have been added to beef up the heat creation during the night as well. Also the drum needs to be turned on several occasions during every day to fluff up the contents by including lots of air so the microbes are always being exposed to new food to eat.

The thing with using compost worms is that they generally die in a properly working tumbler because the heat gets too high for them & the turning process damages their fragile skins. They are best used in a static system like a bath tub. If using composting worms, you can add 2/3 volume kitchen scraps & 1/3 hay or other dead/dry matter each time without the whole thing turning to sludge. It is all covered with a thick layer of sawdust or dead leaves to exclude light so the worms are not damaged. The worms turn the scraps into worm pee very quickly which is bled off for use in the garden. That removes that moisture from the composting process on a daily basis & what is left composts much slower under much cooler conditions although it does benefit from a bit of a turning over every week or so.

Check your 'sludge' for saw fly larvae & don't kill them if you find any as they are good for your system. They tend to like wet compost. But do add a volume by ratio of any of the above listed ingredients to help restore goodness to your compost.

So don't give up on your existing compost. Just add a heap of dry stuff to it & some blood & bone or other nitrogen/heat producing ingredient & keep turning it several times daily.
 

Flatland

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Think I will do the bury veggie scrap idea. I am just too much of a compost bin tragic. I think I will use the tumbler for horse poo. it works fine with that. cooks it very quickly.
 

Kasalia

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It is the trend in England especially on allotments, to make a deep trench for climbing beans and put food scraps etc and say chook pellets cover with soil, several months ahead. When it is time to plant, beans grow into this rich compost . I have done this with fish parts from the local co-op for tomatoes. Once I buried parts of a marlin, tail and all, felt like I was burying a mermaid, ever since that has been my mermaid garden.:hook:
 

Flatland

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That sounds like a good idea. I am about to start my tomato patch prep
 

Mark

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I haven't tried a tumbler but I have a few compost bins and to be honest I still prefer the bay system - pile up and turn... pile up and turn, it's the best and easiest way to make compost but yes it's the slowest.
 

Flatland

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I think I will go back to having manure piles & just bury my veggie scraps. Don't have any problems getting the manure to heat up & I have worms in the veggie garden now so they can have the scraps
 

OskarDoLittle

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I have a "little pig" tumbling composted...tragically expensive, insulated so it does get quite hot in there (too hot for compost worms) and it's never made compost in 28days despite a similar claim.
It does however make great compost in a few months. BUT...I've found the best compost in the tumbler comes from using well chopped additives, so I run the mower over mine first. I'm too lazy to cut it all into little pieces. This breaks down things like the tomato stems. It also means that your tumbler full disappears down to very little within a few days, so you have to keep topping it up. (Hello shredded office paper as my dry component...you can probably tell we have a lot of confidential documents that we shred into confetti sized pieces at work!)
Of course once you top it up again, you're back to waiting another month or more for that to break down.
Be wary if you add sawdust that you know what kind of wood and whether it's been treated. (We may have had that conversation before!?)
 
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