True Organic Vegetable Gardening Starts With Composting: Free, Quality, Easy - Build A Compost Bin!

Welcome to the Rusted Garden Homestead. My one piece of advice for new gardeners, before you build a garden, build a compost station, compost, build a compost bin, a pen, something simple. Just get started with composting. It's going to save you a ton of money, and it's going to give you what you need to have healthy, thriving soil, which means you're going to have a healthy, thriving garden. Now, what I want to talk about today is certainly composting. But I want to focus on grass. My lawn is untreated. There's no seed heads on there. People always worry if I use my grass clippings, am I going to get weeds? This has been naturalized. There's no chemicals on here. I know that it's safe. No seed heads on here. So I'm going to cut this down, get all this beautiful green material, high in nitrogen, and I'm going to use it to really jumpstart the stuff that is dry. This is in process. This is on its second year. As you go down to the bottom, there's some good compost starting down there. But I'm going to use the nitrogen from the grass, basically mix the greens into these browns. It's going to heat up. It's going to start decaying more quickly. And then I'm just going to let it cool down. And come spring, this is going to be ready to use, at least as a top dressing, as mulch in my garden. Maybe I'll be able to mix it into the soil. One of the reasons I tell people now to start a compost area, and it can be anything. I mean, it could be pallets, it could just be a pile, is because it is so expensive to buy compost from stores. You're going to just spend a fortune. This is beautiful stuff. Basically the end product of what I was just talking about, mixing in really grass and leaves and actually some cardboard, I end up with this beautiful compost. This is fully broken down. When you buy bagged compost, it's not regulated, which means it can just say compost on there. You know, even got some plastic composting down. Let's get rid of that real quick while I see it. Which means not being regulated. It can be in any stage of breaking down. And if you put in materials into your soil that aren't fully broken down, they're going to take nitrogen from your plants until they finish decomposing. There is absolutely no regulation. You don't know what's in that compost, you don't know how much compost is actually in there, and you don't know how long it's been breaking down. Meaning, compost starts as a pile of organic matter and it has to break down until it gets to a point where you really can't tell what's in there, it has no odor, it looks beautiful. So start composting right away. The other thing is that the resource that I want to talk about today is really using the grass in the fall to build up massive amounts of compost. I will link videos in the description that tells you how to kind of build these different bins real quick, 30 seconds, because I just did a video on this with Kim from CaliKim29. You just need to get four foot fencing, just make a circle four feet wide, link it together so nothing pours out, then you just open it up, you get to the compost. These are leaves that I think are on the second year, I'm not sure. Good stuff is happening in the bottom. This is all of my debris from really the summer garden getting thrown in there. And that's bulky, it's thick. We're going to use the grass to cover this over pretty heavily. The grass is going to smell a little bit, so put your compost bin or your pen where you're not bothered by the odor. This will heat up from the grass, and it's going to quickly help break all this down. This is called cold composting. And over the years, this will continue to break down, and when I need it, I just open the front up, dig out what I need from the bottom. And I have a couple of pens just for this cold composting, all the debris gets thrown in there. I have a yard that's about two acres, I don't put any chemicals on here. I've got all kinds of plants growing. It does really well. It's beautiful. I do recommend not treating your lawns if, you know, you're able to. I get purple flowers, yellow flowers, white flowers, and it's nice and green. It looks good. So I'm going to bag all this, and I'll show you what I do with it. We're going to use the grass clippings and its natural ability to really heat up quickly. Like if you put grass into a trash bag, set it on your curb, you know, a day later it's really hot, it starts to smell. We're going to try to avoid the smell, but don't worry about that. Just fluffing it with a fork or turning it with a shovel helps get rid of that. But this is all just beautiful compost waiting to be created. What I mean by, you know, building the compost bin first is you're going to need it, and it's going to save you a lot of money. And if you have grass, if you have leaves, you're always going to have materials that will break down and create beautiful compost. The problem is, is we build the garden, we get started, and a lot of us never get around to the compost bin. So when you're using grass in the style that I'm going to show you, you really do want a four foot by four foot, five foot by five foot space. You don't want to like put it into trash cans. I have videos on how to use that for composting for leaves. You do want a bigger space. The grass will start to smell. All you got to do is kind of fluff it up, get some oxygen in there, and it helps get rid of the odor. The nitrogen is chewed up by bacteria. It creates a really nice high heat, 120, 140 degrees, and it really helps speed up the process so that you get compost more quickly. Now I'm not talking 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. I'm talking within that year. Fall is a great time to just build the bins and get material in there. Even if you don't use it for two years, come two years from now, you're going to have tons of compost. As I was saying, this is cold composting. Lots of big materials in there. Some of it's drying, some of it's turning brown. We're just going to cover that with grass. We're just making layers of organic matter. You don't need a college degree. You don't need to watch, you know, a thousand videos and read a lot of books. There's no perfection in composting. If you get it into a pen, you're going to end up having compost. So we're going to cover this with the grass. That's bag one. That's a nice layer. We're going to put the second bag in. And we're just really, again, just covering it with a good layer of grass. The nitrogen-loving bacteria, the bacteria that really work at high heat, generate heat to that 120, 140 degrees. These will move in, do some work, and then they go away because there's not going to be a lot of material left after, you know, probably about four or five days. Then the other bacteria moves in. You're always using microbes to help break down your compost pile. And there is a group of microbes that really enjoy all this nitrogen. And as they process it, it heats up the pile. And that heat helps speed up and break things down. The second bag is in. All that bigger debris has been covered. Not only will this help, you know, speed up the process, it's going to help keep moisture in there. And when you have moisture on those bigger pieces, the bacteria can do a better job. You always want your compost bin to be open. It can be in the shade. It can be in the sun. But make sure it stays moist. All the microbes need moisture. This is probably not going to smell a whole lot. It's not that thick of a pile. I mean, if you've got, you know, if you get past eight inches, 12 inches, sometimes it begins to smell. But this is a nice space, four or five feet wide. Not packed too high. Not a huge layer of grass. Beauty of fall. I'm in Maryland Zone 7. The fall is approaching. Leaves are starting to fall off of some of the trees. That combination of browns from the leaves, fresh cut grass, get a heat up, get a break down quickly. I'm just going to leave this alone. I'm not going to do anything to this. I'm not going to really need to turn it because the layer is not that thick. And then I'll put other garden debris on here later. Some more grass. It's going to be way up to here. Come spring, it's going to be dropping down to at least halfway. And then I'll have compost build up slowly, you know, over the years. This is my original composting pen. It's been here for five years. And as you go down, stuff breaks down more, and you can see just soil and compost and everything right down there. I open this up right from the front, dig this out of the way, and then I just take what I need from the center, collapses a little bit, and I just keep layering stuff on here. This is cold compost, so this was debris from the garden. Then I throw grass on it. You can see some of the old grass right there, all dried out. Sometimes I throw in leaves. The beans and seeds that get dropped in here from the fall, from the winter, tend to sprout. They're not being fed. They're not being watered. They're just living out of the compost. And just look how beautiful these green beans are. I'm going to come out here and pick them. I mean, it's amazing. So you definitely want compost. So coming over to here, today is August 23rd. I really won't put my garden beds to rest until sometime later in November. This is not fully broken down. I'm going to throw some grass in there. I'll show you the process. I'm going to throw in some, mix it through, then put in a layer of grass and just let it sit there. Come the end of November, this is not going to be fully broken down, but it's going to be great for a layer of mulch that I can just put on the beds, winterize them, in a sense, put them to sleep. And that layer of mulch will keep moisture in the soil, keep the microbes happy, worms will come up, they will eat this, and then whatever's left behind will break down. My whole point to this video isn't teaching you how to compost. It's pretty straightforward. You just get stuff in a pile, four feet, five feet wide, you know, and let it do its thing. But I want to encourage you just to get started. So let me set this one up. This is about three, four inches of grass put across, you know, the brown material that was under there, the older compost. And I say grass, it's not really grass. There's grass in there, there's weeds in there, there's flowers in there, there's all kinds of stuff in there. It's just kind of my green material. So I'm going to put down three, four inches, really about half of that bag, and then I just go in, I'm doing this one-handed, and I'm just going to turn it over. I want to get a lot of that grass mixed through there. That will help jumpstart the pile, and then I'll put on the next layer. I mixed the grass through, and the pile's a little bit bigger than it was because this was all matted down. When your compost gets matted down, less oxygen is throwing through there, the water doesn't seep in as well. Remember, you've got to keep this moist. And when you're done, if you're not getting a lot of rain in your area, soak everything down. You know, whatever I show you at the end of the video, you'd come and just soak this down, get the moisture in there. So now it's fluffier, air's flowing in there, we've got the greens, we've got the nitrogen, this is going to warm up. It may not get, you know, to 100 degrees. It's going to speed up the process of composting. I don't know if you can see it, it's hard to tell, but there's lots of ants in here. So there was an ant colony in here. The other thing about coming and turning your pile, not even once a week, you know, every two weeks, you know, just put in a fork, shovel, whatever you have to do. Fluff it up. It'll disturb any insects that might be nesting in there and you're not going to end up, you know, really with an ant colony like this. But this has been sitting here all summer. But now it's recharged, it's jump-started. Now I could do the same thing over in that pile. What I'm going to do is bring that material over to here. And I did it a little bit backwards. Usually I move everything from the left to the right and then into the final resting area over there. But that's fine. So I'm going to take those browns and bring them over to here. Before I do that, I'm going to put down the rest of the grass, two or three inch layer across this. That will help keep the moisture in, that will bring nitrogen in, that will bring in the heat-loving or the nitrogen-loving bacteria that heat up the pile. And then I'm going to put some more brown material on there. This is the compost pile three days later. And just by adding in the amount of grass that you're going to see in the video, the pile heats up. Let me get a close look at that, make sure it comes in. That's at 120 degrees. That's going to warm up the pile, obviously, help it break down more quickly. Bacteria that like the nitrogen create that heat. When it cools off, other microbes move in, worms will move in, and it just really helps speed up the process. You don't have to be out here turning it, you know, every couple of days, unless you want to do that. I'll let this just cool down. Maybe in a month, I'll add in some more grass, and it really speeds up the process. I don't have to do a lot of work. This is why I just like adding grass in the method that I'm showing you. A couple inches of the green clippings right on top, nothing fancy. Now I'm going to bring the browns over. This space has been cleared out. Some good stuff down at the bottom, I could use that in the garden now. This will be a place where I put down grass, leaves, grass, leaves, grass, leaves. I'll just keep that going through the fall until the cold temperatures come. Leaves are gone, grass is gone. But that will be future compost. Moved everything over to here, and it's, you know, in these layers that if I would have just, you know, come out maybe in June, fluffed it up, thrown in some grass, come out in July, fluffed it up, thrown in some grass, this would be pretty much done. But I didn't get to it. I am not in a rush to have compost in three months. My whole goal, and what I hope, you know, I can pay to you guys, is just get it started. At some point, it's naturally going to break down into beautiful stuff. So I put down the old compost that was right over there, put in a layer, and I'm going to put some more grass on top of that, and I'm just going to let it sit. If it begins to smell bad for some reason, you know, go ahead and just fluff it up and turn it. That will get oxygen in there, and that will get rid of the odor. Every two weeks, you do want to fluff this, regardless of the odor. Keep the airflow going in there, and it'll break down nicely, and then, you know, as the fall ends, winter rolls in, just let this be, and you'll have great stuff. If at the end of the season, you want to use this as a compost mulch, not mixed through the soil, but just laying down an inch or two on your beds, this will be perfect, and this saves you a ton of money. Full of nutrients. It's going to feed the soil, feed microbes, feed your plants, and it really doesn't cost much at all. Just your time and your effort. This whole process that you're seeing was less than an hour, and that includes, you know, cutting the grass. This is pretty much the power of lawn clippings. Now, maybe you don't have a lawn, or your lawn's not big enough. Talk to family and friends. If they don't use any kind of chemicals on there, weed killers, et cetera, you know, you can help them. Cut the lawn if you want, or after they bag their stuff, immediately pick it up, bring it, use it like I showed you today. When you leave lawn clippings in a bag, there's no oxygen in there. The bag is closed, it heats up, there's no air flow, and it smells very, very quickly. We're not putting huge amounts, as in, you know, a foot pile, two foot pile of grass. If it does smell, fluff it up. But I'm jump-starting my cold compost pile, just threw in another layer of grass, getting my leaves, my leaves, browns, grass area here that I do, start it up again, put down the base right there. That can just sit there. It's going to turn brown. Maybe I get to it next week, maybe I don't. But the whole idea that I want to stress is that you all get a compost bin started in some capacity. And you don't even need anything fancy. You know, if you're using leaves, you need a pen so the wind doesn't blow them away. But you could put down leaves, and then grass, leaves, grass, leaves, grass, in an open area like this, and as long as you kind of top it with the grass, the leaves are going to stay in place, it's going to do its thing, and you didn't spend a lot of money. The end product is this beautiful compost. May take a year, may take two years, but if you just stick with it, and you do a couple of bins, you're always filling a bin, you know, a year or two later, why, another bin is completely ready, another pen is completely ready with compost. And you just mix this into your soil, you're going to have a beautiful garden, you're going to save a ton of money, and this is what organic gardening is truly about. Thanks so much for watching. Please check out my seed shop at therustedgarden.com, and really try, especially in the fall, get a compost bin or pen together, and just start saving leaves if that's all you want to do. And they're really easy to get from the roadside, they're never covered in chemicals or anything like that. And just start some leaf composting. Again, thanks so much for watching.